Receiving E-Invoices: What You've Had to Handle Since 2025

Posted on September 11, 2026

← Back to Pillar: E-Invoicing in Germany for Freelancers and Small Businesses Related articles: Archiving e-invoices · Small businesses and e-invoicing

Since 1 January 2025, every business in Germany must be able to accept e-invoices from other businesses — no exceptions, so freelancers and small businesses (Kleinunternehmer) too. An email inbox is enough to receive them. What matters is what happens next: you must be able to read the invoice, check it and keep the structured data in its original format. You can't refuse a correct e-invoice.

What "able to receive" means in practice

Accept: an email address where suppliers send invoices is enough.
Read: with ZUGFeRD you see the PDF as usual. With a pure XRechnung you need a program that displays the XML file in readable form.
Check: are the amount, VAT rate, your address and the mandatory details right? Errors in the data can put your input VAT deduction at risk.
Keep: the XML data must remain available, unchanged and machine-readable, for eight years — a printout or the PDF picture alone isn't enough. More: Archiving E-Invoices

Where it goes wrong day to day

Most self-employed people get their first e-invoices from large providers: phone, hosting, software subscriptions, office supplies. Often you don't even notice, because the ZUGFeRD PDF looks like any other invoice. The problem only starts when the PDF lands in a folder and the embedded XML file gets lost along the way — for instance because the invoice is printed and scanned back in.

How SmoovOps helps with receiving

When you upload a ZUGFeRD PDF to SmoovOps, it reads the sender, amount, date and invoice number straight from the embedded data — exact, not estimated. This works on every plan, including the Free plan. The document gets an E-invoice (ZUGFeRD) badge, and you can create a partner from the sender in one click. SmoovOps doesn't currently read pure XRechnung XML files on the receiving side; you'll need a separate viewer for those.

Real-world example

A photographer found out that her hosting provider had been sending ZUGFeRD invoices for months. She had been printing and filing them — which meant the embedded data was lost for her records. Since she started uploading the original PDFs directly, every invoice and its data sits in one place, and typing in amounts is a thing of the past.

What you can do now

Set up one dedicated email address for incoming invoices and tell your suppliers. Collect your next five incoming invoices and check which of them are already e-invoices.

FAQ

Do I have to be able to receive e-invoices as a Kleinunternehmer? Yes. The small-business exception only covers sending, not receiving.

May I refuse an e-invoice and ask for a normal PDF? You can't refuse a correct e-invoice. Conversely, you may ask for an e-invoice once your supplier is required to send one.

Do I need a special inbox or Peppol? No. A normal email inbox is a valid way to receive e-invoices.

Note: This article is not tax advice. The binding sources are the German Federal Ministry of Finance and your IHK (chamber of commerce) (both in German); for your specific case, ask your tax advisor.

All of it in 13 pages: Get our free booklet E-Invoicing, Compact as a PDF – with the decision tree, a mistakes check and a switch-over plan – and receive the SmoovOps newsletter. → Get the booklet