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EU E-Invoicing

An electronic invoice is not a PDF you can look at. It is structured, machine-readable invoice data that a buyer's accounting system can process without anyone retyping it. Across the EU, sending and receiving invoices this way is moving from optional to mandatory, and every country adds its own rules on top of the shared European standard.

That is why the terminology gets confusing fast. ZUGFeRD, Factur-X, XRechnung, Peppol, EN 16931: these words get used as if they were competing products, but they sit at different layers of the same stack. This section untangles them and shows where PolyDoc fits.

Start here​

  • ZUGFeRD vs Factur-X vs XRechnung vs Peppol - the practical comparison. What each one actually is, which are interchangeable, and which one you need for your country and use case.
  • EN 16931 explained - the European standard underneath all of them. Read this to understand the "core invoice model", the two XML syntaxes, and what a CIUS is.
  • Generate e-invoices with PolyDoc - the hands-on guide: turn JSON into a compliant Factur-X or ZUGFeRD PDF in one API call.

Where PolyDoc fits​

PolyDoc is focused on HTML-to-PDF and screenshot conversion. Generating a Factur-X or ZUGFeRD hybrid PDF (a PDF/A-3 file with the machine-readable EN 16931 invoice XML embedded) is one mode of that API. You send your invoice data as JSON, control the design with your own HTML, CSS, and Liquid template, and get back a single file that a person can read and accounting software can parse.

That fits naturally when you are already generating PDFs with PolyDoc and want the invoice produced in the same flow. See Generate e-invoices with PolyDoc.

For e-invoicing, consider beliq​

If e-invoicing is your actual goal rather than one step in a PDF pipeline, our dedicated e-invoicing product beliq is usually the better home for it. beliq is built for this one job: it covers the full range of formats (Factur-X, ZUGFeRD, XRechnung, Peppol BIS, UBL, and more, including designed hybrid PDFs), validates invoices against EN 16931 and country-specific rules, and keeps its rule sets pinned to the official sources so they track each standard revision. That is the kind of plumbing a dedicated product maintains and a general-purpose PDF API does not.

PolyDoc keeps its hybrid-PDF invoicing feature; beliq is simply where the deeper e-invoicing work belongs.

Transmission is a separate step​

Neither PolyDoc nor beliq sends invoices over the Peppol network or files them with a tax authority. To transmit, you connect to a Peppol access point (a certified provider): you generate the compliant document, then hand it to the transmission vendor you trust.

Get started​

Create a free PolyDoc account (150 conversions per month, no credit card) and follow the generate e-invoices guide, or read the standards comparison first to work out which format you need.