PEPPOL-EN16931-R008

The document must contain no empty elements. A tag with no content is not an absent value; it is a claim that something was transmitted.

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

Official rule text

Document MUST not contain empty elements.

Why does PEPPOL-EN16931-R008 happen?

Mappings write fields unconditionally and set the value afterwards. Where the source is null, an empty tag is left behind — most often on note fields, references and optional identifiers that are only sometimes populated.

How do you fix PEPPOL-EN16931-R008?

Write an element only once a value exists. In most serialisers that is a condition around the write call rather than a clean-up pass afterwards — stripping empty tags at the end rarely catches all of them.

In the XML

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

Fails

<cbc:ID>RE-2026-0042</cbc:ID>
<cbc:IssueDate>2026-08-26</cbc:IssueDate>
<cbc:Note/>

Fixed

<cbc:ID>RE-2026-0042</cbc:ID>
<cbc:IssueDate>2026-08-26</cbc:IssueDate>

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