BR-DE-27:Seller Contact Telephone Must Contain At Least Three Digits
Contact telephone numbers must follow proper format guidelines. German XRechnung requires telephone numbers to be properly formatted for machine processing, typically with country code and without invalid characters.
Engine Classification
Normalize payment means code to XRechnung-allowed values
Confidence: 85% · Applied automatically in pipeline
What is BR-DE-27?
BR-DE-27 is a fatal validation rule defined in the XRechnung (Germany) specification (DEU national rules). It validates the PaymentMeansCode element in the UBL invoice XML.
When this rule fires, the invoice is non-compliant and will be rejected by Peppol access points and national validation services. The sending system receives a rejection response and the invoice does not reach the buyer.
Target path: //cac:PaymentMeans/cbc:PaymentMeansCode
Why This Error Matters
Invoice will be rejected by XRechnung validation. Improperly formatted phone numbers cannot be processed by automated systems and fail schema validation.
BR-DE-27 is a hard failure. Invoices that trigger this rule are rejected at the access point and never reach the recipient. In Peppol networks, this means your sending system receives an MLR (Message Level Response) with a rejection status. The invoice must be corrected and re-sent, adding delay to your payment cycle.
Invoice Navigator can automatically correct this error in your pipeline. The fix is applied with full audit evidence, so your compliance trail remains intact.
Validator Behavior
- ·Causes invoice rejection
- ·Rejected by XRechnung endpoints
- ·Error returned: BR-DE-27
- ·Specification: XRechnung (Germany)
How to Fix It
Before / After
<Invoice> <!-- Issue: XRechnung requires seller contact telephone to contain at le --> </Invoice>
<Invoice> <!-- Issue resolved per XRechnung (Germany) --> </Invoice>
Technical Reference
//cac:PaymentMeans/cbc:PaymentMeansCodeCommon Causes
- ·Phone number entered with spaces or dashes in wrong places
- ·Missing country code prefix
- ·Invalid characters like parentheses or letters
- ·Extension number formatted incorrectly
- ·Local format used instead of international format
Seeing this in production? The API handles BR-DE-27 automatically. See the fix response →
Frequently Asked Questions
This error occurs when the seller contact telephone (BT-42) contains fewer than three numeric digits. XRechnung requires telephone numbers to have at least three digits to be considered valid contact information.
Enter a complete telephone number with at least three digits. Use international format like +49 30 12345678 for German numbers. Remove any placeholder text or letters that are not part of the phone number.
Use international format: +[country code] [area code] [number]. For Germany: +49 30 12345678. The number should contain only digits, spaces, and optionally + for the country code prefix.
No, the telephone field should only contain numeric digits. Letters are not counted toward the minimum three digit requirement and will not be valid for machine processing.
Related Errors
Last updated: 27 February 2026
Handle BR-DE-27 Automatically in Your Pipeline
The compliance engine auto-remediates this error with controlled safety policies and evidence pack generation.