Automating XRechnung & ZUGFeRD: AI for Structured E-Invoices

1. December 2025

The shift towards structured e-invoicing is transforming how companies organise their financial processes. With mandatory e-invoicing beginning in 2025 and widespread adoption of formats such as XRechnung and ZUGFeRD, manual processing will increasingly become a thing of the past. Yet many organisations are still unsure what these formats entail and how to automate them efficiently.

 

Structured e-invoices offer higher data quality and legal certainty, but they also introduce new technical requirements. This is where AI comes in. Modern AI systems validate invoices, detect inconsistencies and map data to the correct ERP fields, ensuring every invoice flows cleanly into downstream processes.

Structured e-invoices offer higher data quality and legal certainty, but they also introduce new technical requirements. This is where AI comes in. Modern AI systems validate invoices, detect inconsistencies and map data to the correct ERP fields, ensuring every invoice flows cleanly into downstream processes.

At its core, an e-invoice is a structured dataset built according to a fixed European standard, EN 16931. The goal is not to send a digital PDF, but to provide data in a form that software can read without interpretation or ambiguity.

 

The standard defines exactly which fields are mandatory, how values must be structured, and how totals, taxes and line items must be validated. This makes e-invoices machine-readable, which is the key advantage over PDFs.

XRechnung is a fully structured XML format and the official format for all invoices sent to public sector clients in Germany. Its influence is increasingly reaching the B2B sector because it provides a clear, validated and legally compliant structure.

 

Typical characteristics include:

 

• strict datatypes instead of interpreted text
• mandatory fields that minimise errors
• clear validation rules
• high degree of automation

 

With mandatory e-invoicing coming into force, XRechnung is becoming a standard across large parts of the economy.

The ZUGFeRD 2.x format brings together two worlds. A human-readable PDF remains part of the document, while an embedded XML file allows automated machine processing.

 

Important to note: Only version 2.0.1 and higher is fully compliant with EN 16931.

 

For companies, this means:

 

• the PDF remains usable for manual processes
• the XML structure enables parallel automation
• international acceptance is often higher because a readable PDF is still included

 

ZUGFeRD therefore offers a pragmatic transition path, allowing organisations to automate without abandoning PDFs immediately.

Structured invoices only deliver their benefits if they are created correctly. In practice, a range of problems still occurs:

 

• totals do not match line items
• VAT rates are incorrect
• mandatory fields are missing
• IDs are duplicated or invalid
• the format does not comply with EN 16931

 

These errors lead to rejections, delays and, in the future, potential issues with EU-wide reporting under ViDA. Companies therefore need systems that not only process invoices but also validate them.

Modern AI platforms such as BLU DELTA go far beyond simple XML parsing. They perform both technical and semantic validation, detect inconsistencies and flag questionable data before it reaches the ERP system.

 

Key capabilities include:

This dramatically reduces manual workload while significantly improving data consistency and quality.

BLU DELTA is designed to process structured invoice data reliably and fully automatically, whether it comes in XRechnung, ZUGFeRD or mixed form.

 

The strength lies in combining AI intelligence with strict rule-based validation:

 

• extraction and validation in one unified workflow
• tolerance for incomplete or inconsistent data
• deep domain expertise in invoice logic and accounting fields
• ISO 27001-certified cloud or on-premise deployment
• seamless ERP and finance system integration via APIs

 

For companies, this means fewer errors, less manual intervention and significantly faster processing cycles.

XRechnung and ZUGFeRD are more than formats. They form the foundation of a fully digital accounting ecosystem.

 

The earlier companies adopt automated processing, the smoother the transition and the greater the long-term efficiency and compliance benefits.

If you want to assess how well your organisation is prepared for XRechnung or ZUGFeRD, or if you want to see how automated validation and data processing work within your ERP, we are happy to support you.

Take your e-invoice processing to the next level.

BLU DELTA is a product for the automated capture of financial documents. Partners, but also finance departments, accounts payable accountants and tax advisors of our customers can use BLU DELTA to immediately relieve their employees of the time-consuming and mostly manual capture of documents by using BLU DELTA AI and Cloud.

BLU DELTA is an artificial intelligence from Blumatix Intelligence GmbH.