Reference

BR-DE-27 Seller contact telephone number must have valid syntax and length

Under rule BR-DE-27 of the German XRechnung profile, the seller contact telephone number (BT-42) must satisfy strict syntactic and plausibility checks. It must contain at least three numeric digits (0-9) and must not consist solely of placeholder characters (such as "-", "N/A", "000", or whitespace). In German public administration, automated invoice validation systems check phone number plausibility to prevent suppliers from bypassing mandatory contact requirements with fake or uncallable phone strings.

Problem Description

ERROR

German XRechnung rule (KoSIT, BR-DE) · XRechnung 3.0

Context and Significance

Supplying invalid or dummy telephone strings causes immediate Schematron error BR-DE-27, preventing the invoice from passing public sector gateway validation.

Solution

In your company master data, update the seller telephone number with a complete business phone number including country prefix or regional area code (e.g. "+49 30 1234567" or "089 98765432"). In UBL 2.1 syntax, populate <cbc:Telephone> inside <cac:AccountingSupplierParty><cac:Party><cac:Contact>. In UN/CEFACT CII syntax, populate <ram:CompleteNumber> within <ram:TelephoneUniversalCommunication> under <ram:SellerTradeParty><ram:DefinedTradeContact>. Do not use dummy values like "--" or "none".

Quick actions

Validate XML Convert invoice

Valid Examples

BT-42 = "+49 30 1234567" (Standard international format with area code)
BT-42 = "089 9876543-0" (Domestic German format with direct extension)

Invalid Examples

BT-42 = "--" (Punctuation placeholder without numeric digits)
BT-42 = "N/A" (Alphabetic placeholder string failing the minimum 3-digit requirement)

Code Examples

Valid XML

<cac:Contact>
  <cbc:Name>Rechnungsstelle</cbc:Name>
  <cbc:Telephone>+49 30 1234567</cbc:Telephone>
  <cbc:ElectronicMail>kontakt@lieferant.de</cbc:ElectronicMail>
</cac:Contact>

Invalid XML

<cac:Contact>
  <cbc:Name>Rechnungsstelle</cbc:Name>
  <cbc:Telephone>--</cbc:Telephone>
  <cbc:ElectronicMail>kontakt@lieferant.de</cbc:ElectronicMail>
</cac:Contact>

Affected Fields

BT-42 Seller contact telephone number

BG-6 Seller contact

Validation Tools

Official KoSIT Validator

Run the official KoSIT validator with the XRechnung configuration to check EN 16931 and XRechnung rules.

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