# BR-16

> The invoice has no invoice lines (BG-25). An invoice must contain at least one cac:InvoiceLine.

Checked against Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 2026.5

Canonical: https://einvoicecheck.eu/rules/br-16

## Official rule text

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

## 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.

## 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>
```