PEPPOL-EN16931-R001

The invoice must name the business process (BT-23) — the identifier of the process it is being sent in. It tells the recipient which rule set to expect the invoice under.

Severity: Error
Applies to: CII, UBL
Rule set: v2026-01-31

Official rule text

Business process MUST be provided.

Why does PEPPOL-EN16931-R001 happen?

The value is a constant and so gets treated as self-evident: the specification identifier (BT-24) is set and the process identifier next to it is forgotten, because the two look alike and neither comes from the invoice data.

How do you fix PEPPOL-EN16931-R001?

Set BT-23 to the fixed value urn:fdc:peppol.eu:2017:poacc:billing:01:1.0 — cbc:ProfileID in UBL, ram:BusinessProcessSpecifiedDocumentContextParameter/ram:ID in CII. It does not vary with the invoice.

In the XML

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

Fails

<cbc:CustomizationID>urn:cen.eu:en16931:2017#compliant#urn:xeinkauf.de:kosit:xrechnung_3.0</cbc:CustomizationID>
<cbc:ID>RE-2026-0042</cbc:ID>

Fixed

<cbc:CustomizationID>urn:cen.eu:en16931:2017#compliant#urn:xeinkauf.de:kosit:xrechnung_3.0</cbc:CustomizationID>
<cbc:ProfileID>urn:fdc:peppol.eu:2017:poacc:billing:01:1.0</cbc:ProfileID>
<cbc:ID>RE-2026-0042</cbc:ID>

NormAPI provides technical validation, not tax or legal advice.