Invoice generator › German clients

Invoicing a client in Germany

German accounts departments read invoices carefully. That is not a stereotype about pedantry — it is that a supplier invoice with a missing field cannot be posted, so it comes back to you and the payment clock restarts.

• Reverse charge
• USt-IdNr
• 30 days

The invoice gets checked before it gets paid

In most countries an invoice with a small omission still gets paid, and somebody fixes it later. In Germany the more common outcome is that it is returned. The person on the other end is not being difficult: their bookkeeping system will not accept a document that is missing a required field, and their own deductibility depends on it being right.

The practical consequence for you is that the effort of getting the invoice correct the first time is not perfectionism, it is cash flow. A returned invoice typically costs you two to four weeks, because the payment term starts again from the corrected document.

The VAT number is the field that decides everything

Before you decide how to treat VAT, you need your client's VAT identification number — in Germany the Umsatzsteuer-Identifikationsnummer, usually written USt-IdNr. It is the prefix DE followed by nine digits, so it looks like DE123456789 — no letters, no spaces, no slashes. If what you have been sent contains a slash or a dash, it is almost certainly a Steuernummer and not the number you need.

Do not confuse it with two other numbers German businesses have. The Steuernummer is a domestic tax number and is not valid for cross-border transactions. The Handelsregisternummer is the commercial register entry. If your client sends you one of those, ask again specifically for the USt-IdNr — politely, because they may not know the difference either.

Validate the number you are given in the EU VIES database rather than trusting it. A number that fails validation is not a formality: if you zero-rate an invoice on the strength of an invalid number, the exposure is usually yours, not the client's. Our VAT checker does the lookup and tells you what the result means for the document.

Your client is checking you, too

Germany runs its own confirmation service alongside VIES. The Federal Central Tax Office — the Bundeszentralamt für Steuern — operates the Bestätigungsverfahren, which exists so that a German business can confirm that its counterparty in another EU member state was in fact registered at the time the supply was made. It is offered as an online form and as an API.

That timing detail is the part worth absorbing. Your German client is not only checking that your VAT number looks plausible today: they are establishing, for their own records, that it was valid on the date of your invoice. This is why a registration that changed recently, or one that lapsed and was reinstated, produces a query that feels disproportionate. From their side it is not.

The practical consequence: make sure your own VAT registration is current before you invoice into Germany, and if anything about it has changed lately, mention it in the covering email rather than letting their check surface it.

What the document has to say

For services supplied to a business in another EU member state, the general rule places the transaction where the customer is, not where you are. You invoice without VAT and the German client accounts for it themselves. That mechanism only works if the invoice says so explicitly — an invoice with no VAT and no explanation reads like an error.

Both parties' VAT identification numbers must appear on the document, and the invoice needs a statement that the customer accounts for the tax. In German-facing documents this is often written in both languages, which costs you nothing and removes a question:

"Reverse charge — Steuerschuldnerschaft des Leistungsempfängers. VAT to be accounted for by the recipient."

Steuerschuldnerschaft des Leistungsempfängers — literally, the recipient of the supply is the person liable for the tax — is the phrase German bookkeeping expects to see. Put it on the document in German even if the rest of the invoice is in English: it is the formulation their system and their accountant recognise, and translating it into your own words gains you nothing.

If you are not in the EU

The reverse charge mechanism described above is the EU-to-EU case. If you invoice from outside the EU — Switzerland and the UK being the common ones for this audience — the German client generally still self-assesses the tax, but the paperwork and the wording differ, and you have your own domestic rules to respect on top.

For the Swiss case specifically: Swiss VAT has stood at a standard rate of 8.1% since 1 January 2024, with a reduced rate of 2.6% and a special rate of 3.8%. Those rates are what you would charge a Swiss customer. They are not what you put on an invoice to a German business — a service supplied to a business abroad is generally outside the scope of Swiss VAT — but knowing the numbers matters when a German client asks why your invoice shows no tax at all and you need to explain it in one sentence.

For the Swiss case the statement is a different one, and it is about your own tax rather than theirs. Under Swiss VAT law the place of supply for a service to a business abroad is where the customer is (art. 8 LTVA), so the supply falls outside Swiss VAT. The invoice should say that: the service is performed outside Swiss territory and is not subject to Swiss VAT.

Written plainly on the document, in English, that reads as:

"Place of supply outside Switzerland — not subject to Swiss VAT (art. 8 LTVA). Reverse charge: VAT to be accounted for by the recipient."

Two sentences, and the German client's accountant has the answer to both questions they were going to ask: why there is no Swiss tax, and who pays the German one.

Payment terms and how to state them

Write the due date as a date, not as a number of days. "Zahlbar bis 30.09.2026" is unambiguous; "net 30" invites a conversation about when the clock started. The customary term with German business clients is 30 days net — 30 Tage netto, with no early settlement discount assumed. That is market practice rather than a rule, so it is something to agree in the quote rather than to assert on the invoice for the first time.

Payment will almost always arrive by SEPA transfer, so give your IBAN and BIC clearly and make sure the account name matches the business name on the invoice. A mismatch between the two is a common reason for a payment to be held for a manual check.

Put your invoice number in the payment reference line and ask them to quote it. If they run a purchase-order system, the PO number matters more to them than your invoice number — ask for it before you invoice, and put it on the document.

Language, currency and the small courtesies

Invoice in euro. Technically you can invoice a German client in another currency, but you are creating a conversion step for their bookkeeping and a reason for the amount to be queried.

English is normally accepted by any company that works internationally. If your client is a small local business, a German-language document will move faster — and a bilingual one, with the line descriptions in both languages, works everywhere.

Describe the work in terms a person outside your discipline can recognise. "Design services" tells an accounts clerk nothing and invites a query; "Website redesign, phase 2 of 3, per proposal of 4 August" can be matched to a purchase order and posted without asking anyone.

Build it

Our invoice generator carries both VAT numbers, the reverse charge note and a stated due date, and produces a PDF a German accounts department can post. No account needed, nothing stored.

Frequently asked questions