Rules / BR-16 · Markdown

BR-16

EN 16931-1 layer: en16931

Checked against Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 2026.5

What does BR-16 mean? The invoice has no invoice lines (BG-25). An invoice must contain at least one cac:InvoiceLine.

Why did my invoice fail BR-16?

An invoice must contain at least one Invoice line (BG-25); a document with a header but no lines is not a valid invoice. Each line describes an item, its quantity and its net amount, and the line totals roll up into the document totals. This rule prevents empty or header-only invoices.

Official rule text

An Invoice shall have at least one Invoice line (BG-25)

Common causes

• No cac:InvoiceLine (or cac:CreditNoteLine for a credit note) element is present.
• Line data was intended to be conveyed only via document-level totals or allowances/charges instead of actual lines.
• A serialization or mapping error dropped all line elements while keeping the header.

How do I fix it?

<cac:InvoiceLine>
  <cbc:ID>1</cbc:ID>
  <cbc:InvoicedQuantity unitCode="C62">1</cbc:InvoicedQuantity>
  <cbc:LineExtensionAmount currencyID="EUR">100.00</cbc:LineExtensionAmount>
  <cac:Item><cbc:Name>Widget</cbc:Name></cac:Item>
  <cac:Price><cbc:PriceAmount currencyID="EUR">100.00</cbc:PriceAmount></cac:Price>
</cac:InvoiceLine>

Related rules

BR-01 · BR-02 · BR-03 · BR-04 · BR-05 · BR-06 · BR-07 · BR-08