Germany advances its national digital transformation through kick-starting a key development to the next level. KoSIT announced publication of a pre-release draft of XRechnung 4.0 [↗︎] on its official XStandards Einkauf platform at https://xeinkauf.de.
KoSIT oversees national standards and serves as the official Peppol Authority for Germany. This early draft release of XRechnung 4.0 gives businesses, software providers, tax specialists and the accounting community time to align their systems before mandatory implementation. The update connects directly to the forthcoming EN 16931:2026 standard.
Stakeholders expect a parallel usage phase running from 2027 through 2028 or 2029. This transition phase aims to ensure gradual and reliable adoption across the entire German B2B ecosystem.
Driving European alignment
The publication of XRechnung 4.0 builds on previous regulatory updates.
Earlier discussions highlighted the transition from the upcoming update of EN 16931 to XRechnung 4.0.
Our recent coverage of the EN 16931 update also showed how European standards reshape and align national formats.
Key Additions in XRechnung 4.0 (and EN16931-1:2026)
The official draft release by KoSIT [↗︎] introduces more than 50 new Business Terms to the semantic data model. These additions reflect learnings from real requirements from commercial users, accounting and tax practitioners:
- Buyer Reference (BT-10): Systems now support multiple buyer references along with an optional scheme identifier.
- Early Payment Discounts (BG-35): A dedicated business group replaces legacy discount rules (using hashmark characters in a text field) to handle cash discounts cleanly now.
- Third-Party Charges (BG-34): Businesses can explicitly record charges on behalf of external third parties, including correct handling of VAT in this case.
- Granular Delivery Data: Detailed delivery information improves logistics tracking inside structural invoice headers.
- Multiple Order References: Single invoices can now reference several distinct purchase orders and physical deliveries.
Opportunities to add-in more standardized structured information
Specific note deserves the new option to Embed XML Attachments:
Invoices can now include other XML documents directly within the invoice file, opening opportunities to integrate other standards with addtional and specialized information.
This approach allows to combine forces rather than spend energy to compete and fight for sole prevalence.
Collaborative roadmap begins with public workshops
KoSIT published this early draft strictly for preview purposes rather than immediate production use. This strategy allows business software vendors and e-invoicing service providers to build compatible features early. Final technical validation artefacts from CEN will follow, leading to a complete release bundle in early 2027.
In the spirit of this collaborative approach, KoSIT offers two public workshops [↗︎] in an interactive online format in late September and early October.
