E-Invoicing in the Trades: Receiving, Archiving, Transmission Routes

Updated: 2026-08-02

In the trades, e-invoicing meets a working day it was not designed for: the owner is on site, the bookkeeping happens at the kitchen table in the evening, and the materials supplier announces they will only send XML from next quarter. The good news: the hurdles are smaller than they sound.

What actually applies to your business

Two obligations, cleanly separated:

• Receiving: applies since 1 January 2025 to every business — no turnover threshold, no transition period.
• Sending: from 2027 above €800,000 prior-year turnover, from 2028 for everyone else. Details in E-Invoice Deadlines.

Invoices to private customers stay out of scope. So a business working mainly for consumers is only affected for the smaller share of its outgoing invoices — but fully affected on receiving, because suppliers, wholesalers and subcontractors are businesses.

Hurdle 1: receiving invoices when nobody is in the office

Receiving needs no software — it needs a decision: one fixed inbox that every supplier knows.

What works in practice:

• A dedicated address such as [email protected] — not the owner’s personal inbox, which nobody reads during holidays.
• Actively tell every supplier that address, rather than waiting until the first invoice lands in the wrong mailbox.
• Keep it reachable on mobile. An incoming XRechnung can be opened right in the browser and displayed as a readable invoice — from a phone too, with no installation and no account.

The XML file itself looks unusable at first glance. Opening an e-invoice shows how to turn it into a normal invoice view.

Hurdle 2: archiving without storage worries

The fear of exploding cloud storage does not hold up in practice — it comes from the scanning era.

An XRechnung is therefore usually smaller than the scan it replaces. At 2,000 incoming invoices a year, we are talking about a few hundred megabytes for the entire retention period.

More important than space are two rules:

1. Retain the structured original, not the printout or a PDF generated from it. With ZUGFeRD the PDF including the embedded XML belongs in the archive — not the extracted XML alone, and not the PDF without its attachment.
2. Unalterable and for eight years, under the German GoBD rules. The details, including what happens when you change software, are in Archiving e-invoices.

Hurdle 3: telling suppliers your transmission route

The law prescribes no transmission method. In practice the vast majority simply travels as an email attachment — that is sufficient.

Alongside that there are:

• Download portals run by large suppliers. Drawback: you have to remember to fetch from them. Switch to email delivery where possible.
• Peppol — a network that matters mainly for public-sector bodies and cross-border trade. For the average trade business it is not a requirement.

A short notice to all suppliers is enough preparation — address, format, done:

Please send invoices to [email protected] only. We accept XRechnung and ZUGFeRD; an additional paper copy is not required.

Hurdle 4: your own invoices to contracting parties

Anyone working for general contractors, housing associations or municipalities often needs an e-invoice today — regardless of their own turnover threshold, because the client demands it.

Two points decide between acceptance and rejection:

• Format: for public-sector clients it is XRechnung, for private clients usually ZUGFeRD. The decision aid is in Which format?.
• Leitweg-ID: mandatory for authorities. It is assigned per contracting body — get it when you accept the job, not when you write the invoice, and store it against the customer in master data.

Interim and final invoices are no special case, by the way: both go out as normal e-invoices, the final one referencing the amounts already billed.

Ready in 20 minutes

1. Decide on an invoice inbox and tell every supplier.
2. Take an XML or ZUGFeRD file you have already received and open and validate it in the browser — that proves receiving works.
3. Decide where the original files are stored and agree it with your tax adviser.
4. For public-sector jobs: request the Leitweg-ID and store it in the customer record.

The full changeover plan for your own outgoing invoices is in Five steps to e-invoicing.