BR-DE-2Die Gruppe "SELLER CONTACT" (BG-6) muss übermittelt werden.

Official rule text

Every XRechnung invoice must carry the "SELLER CONTACT" group (BG-6) — a named contact at the seller, with a way to reach them. EN 16931 leaves this group optional; it becomes mandatory only through the German CIUS, including B2B.

Severity
Error
Applies to
CII, UBL
Rule set
v2026-08-31
Checked on

Written and checked against the official KoSIT rule set by Dmytro Yalanskyi, NormAPI.

Why does BR-DE-2 happen?

Invoice templates usually carry contact details only in the letterhead. When mapping to the structured format the contact group is dropped entirely, because the internal data model has no mandatory field for it. The expression only checks that the group is there: an empty cac:Contact already satisfies BR-DE-2 — and immediately triggers BR-DE-5, BR-DE-6 and BR-DE-7, because the contact point, the telephone number and the email address are each required by a rule of their own.

What the validator checks

The expression the official KoSIT rule set evaluates — not paraphrased, but read from the Schematron file it ships. UBL and CII address different document trees, so the same rule reads differently in each.

UBL
cac:Party/cac:Contact
CII
ram:DefinedTradeContact

Source: rule set v2026-08-31

How do you fix BR-DE-2?

Send BG-6 with contact point (BT-41), telephone (BT-42) and email (BT-43). In UBL that is cac:AccountingSupplierParty/cac:Party/cac:Contact, in CII ram:SellerTradeParty/ram:DefinedTradeContact. All three have to carry a value: the expressions test with normalize-space, so an empty element or a single space does not count.

In the XML

A UBL fragment. The CII path is named above — same change, different element names.

Fails
<cac:AccountingSupplierParty>
  <cac:Party>
    <cac:PartyLegalEntity>
      <cbc:RegistrationName>Muster GmbH</cbc:RegistrationName>
    </cac:PartyLegalEntity>
  </cac:Party>
</cac:AccountingSupplierParty>
Fixed
<cac:AccountingSupplierParty>
  <cac:Party>
    <cac:PartyLegalEntity>
      <cbc:RegistrationName>Muster GmbH</cbc:RegistrationName>
    </cac:PartyLegalEntity>
    <cac:Contact>
      <cbc:Name>Buchhaltung</cbc:Name>
      <cbc:Telephone>+49 30 1234567</cbc:Telephone>
      <cbc:ElectronicMail>rechnung@muster.de</cbc:ElectronicMail>
    </cac:Contact>
  </cac:Party>
</cac:AccountingSupplierParty>

Download an example invoice that triggers BR-DE-2 ↓

Related rules

NormAPI provides technical validation, not tax or legal advice.