Rules / PEPPOL-EN16931-R008 · Markdown
PEPPOL-EN16931-R008
PEPPOL BIS Billing 3.0 layer: peppol
Checked against Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 2026.5
What does PEPPOL-EN16931-R008 mean? Document MUST not contain empty elements.
Why did my invoice fail PEPPOL-EN16931-R008?
No element in the document may be present but empty (no child content and no attributes). Empty elements carry no information, break downstream processing, and usually indicate a mapping bug, so Peppol forbids them outright.
Official rule text
Document MUST not contain empty elements.
Common causes
- A field was mapped from a source value that turned out to be null, leaving <cbc:...></cbc:...>.
- Placeholder tags left in a template that were never populated.
- An optional group (e.g. an empty cac:PartyName or cac:AllowanceCharge) was serialized with no content.
How do I fix it?
Remove the element instead of leaving it empty. Change <cbc:Note></cbc:Note> to either a populated <cbc:Note>Delivery next week</cbc:Note> or omit the element altogether.
Related rules
PEPPOL-EN16931-R001 · PEPPOL-EN16931-R002 · PEPPOL-EN16931-R003 · PEPPOL-EN16931-R004 · PEPPOL-EN16931-R005 · PEPPOL-EN16931-R007 · PEPPOL-EN16931-R010 · PEPPOL-EN16931-R020
Check your invoice against this rule
Paste it into the live demo, or call POST /v1/validate. See the quickstart.