EN 16931

The European Standard EN 16931 is an 8-part series of standards developed by the European Technical Committee CEN/TC 434. Austria worked actively on this standardisation via the national committee 001 Information Technology. It defines a uniform semantic data model for e-invoices in Europe. This data model was specified for the syntaxes UBL 2.1 (Universal Business Language) and CII D16B (Cross Industry Invoice). The underlying EU Directive 2014/55/EU requires all primary public administration bodies in all member states to accept e-invoices in these formats since April, 18^th 2019. However, this does not create any obligation for the contractual partners to transmit e-invoices.

All standards of this series can be obtained from Austrian Standards International. A publication on this website is unfortunately not possible. This European series of standards consists of the following documents:

• EN 16931-1:2017 Electronic invoicing - Part 1: Semantic data model of the core elements of an electronic invoice
• CEN/TS 16931-2:2017 Electronic invoicing - Part 2: List of syntaxes that comply with EN 16931-1
• CEN/TS 16931-3-1:2017 Electronic invoicing - Part 3-1: Methodology for syntax bindings of the core elements of an electronic invoice
• CEN/TS 16931-3-2:2017 Electronic invoicing - Part 3-2: Syntax binding for ISO/IEC 19845 (UBL 2.1) invoice and credit note
• CEN/TS 16931-3-3:2017 Electronic invoicing - Part 3-3: Syntax binding for UN/CEFACT XML Industry Invoice D16B
• CEN/TS 16931-3-4:2017 Electronic invoicing - Part 3-4: Syntax binding for UN/EDIFACT INVOIC D16B
• CEN/TR 16931-4:2017 Electronic invoicing - Part 4: Guidelines on interoperability of electronic invoices at the transmission level
• CEN/TR 16931-5:2017 Electronic invoicing - Part 5: Guidelines on the use of sector or country extensions in conjunction with EN 16931-1, methodology to be applied in the real environment
• CEN/TR 16931-6:2017 Electronic invoicing - Part 6: Result of the test of EN 16931-1 with respect to its practical application for an end user
• ONR CEN/TS 16931-7:2021Electronic invoicing - Part 7: Method for developing and applying an application specification for core invoicing according to EN 16931-1
• FprCEN/TS 16931-8:2022 Electronic invoicing - Part 8: Semantic data model of the elements of an e-receipt or a simplified electronic invoice

Special rules

In order to be able to document national restrictions, so-called Core Invoice User Specifications (CIUS) and Extensions were defined in "CEN/TR 16931-5:2017". A CIUS may only restrict the data model, while an Extension extends or changes the data model. For Austria, there are two CIUSs that build on top of each other:

1. CIUS AT NAT (PDF) - CIUS with the legal rules, which is based directly on the EN.
2. CIUS AT GOV (PDF) - CIUS with special rules from e-Rechnung.gv.at for the federal government. This CIUS is based on the "CIUS AT NAT".

The mapping of Austrian CIUS to UBL fields can be downloaded here.

A registry for the collection of CIUSs and Extensions is currently being planned in CEN/TC 434.

Legal implementation in Austria

EU Directive 2014/55/EU was implemented in Bundesvergabegesetz 2018 §368