Creating: line items, tax and payment

The middle sections of the create form: what belongs in a line item, how the tax breakdown comes about, and which payment details the respective format carries.

Line items

Per row: description, quantity, unit (18 values from piece to pack), unit price, VAT percentage, VAT category.

The expandable Details & discount part holds the item description (BT-154), the GTIN/EAN (BT-157) and exactly one line-item allowance or charge (type, amount, reason) — the form cannot take more than one per item.

“Add line item” and removal require JavaScript; the last remaining row cannot be removed. The page adds up row and overall totals as you go — what counts is the server’s own calculation.

Tax, breakdown and exemption reason

The tax rate is a free numeric field, not a selector. The VAT category offers seven values: standard rate, reduced rate, zero-rated, exempt, reverse charge, intra-Community supply, export (third country).

The tax breakdown is produced automatically from the line items; it is not entered.

There is no separate switch for small businesses or reverse charge

Both are expressed through the VAT category of the line item — exempt and reverse charge respectively.

The exemption reason sits in step 5 under Tax exemption: “Only needed for exempt line items (e.g. reverse charge, intra-Community supply).” Per row you choose the category and enter the exemption reason (BT-120) and optionally the VATEX code (BT-121); two rows are permanently available. The reason is applied to all tax groups of the same category.

If you enter nothing, a safety net inserts the customary text along with its code: reverse charge → VATEX-EU-AE, intra-Community supply → VATEX-EU-IC, export → VATEX-EU-G.

An exemption reason does not belong in the notes

There the same sentence is free text with no normative meaning — and the invoice fails validation.

Payment details

Payment method (bank transfer, SEPA direct debit, direct debit, credit card, debit card, cash, not specified), IBAN, BIC, account holder, remittance reference, payment terms, prepaid, rounding — each only in so far as the format carries it.

There is deliberately no bank name: no e-invoice format carries one. And the create tool produces no GiroCode; the QR code appears in the invoice view under Viewing and Extracting.

Checking the VAT ID

Next to the VAT ID field of both parties sits a check button; it queries the EU VIES system. Separators are stripped and the country prefix from the country selector is prepended (Greece: EL; a prefix already present in the input is not prepended a second time).

If VIES does not answer, “invalid” never appears — instead a neutral note states that only a local check was performed.

Before the query, a staged format check runs that names each stage separately, rather than lumping several causes into one sentence:

Finding	What the message says
shorter than three characters	“too short: a two-letter country code followed by the number is expected (e.g. DE123456789)”
does not start with two letters	“does not start with a two-letter country code”
country code not covered by VIES	names the code, explains that VIES only knows the 27 member states and XI (Northern Ireland), and points to the seller’s registration number as the right field
length or characters do not match the country	“Invalid format for DE: DE + 9 digits expected” — per country with the concrete expectation

VIES is not a worldwide directory

A company number from outside the EU — a Taiwanese 統一編號, a Swiss UID, a British or Norwegian number — is not invalid, it is simply in the wrong field. It belongs in the registration number (BT-30), not in the VAT ID. The same note therefore appears in all nine languages, including for CH, GB and NO.

Where the result is invalid, one of three mix-up hints is added — a Spanish DIR3 identifier, a national tax number with a slash, or a tax rate entered by mistake. These three deliberately take precedence over the country statement: ES21 is far more often a tax rate than a Spanish identifier.