BR-2
Invoice Issue Date Missing (BT-2)
What This Error Means
The invoice issue date (BT-2, cbc:IssueDate) is mandatory. It must be formatted as YYYY-MM-DD per ISO 8601. A missing or incorrectly formatted date prevents the receiving system from determining the tax point date and payment due date.
Why this happens
BR-2 fires when the invoice issue date (BT-2, cbc:IssueDate) is missing or not in the ISO 8601 form YYYY-MM-DD. A very common cause is a locale-specific date format leaking into the XML — e.g. 15.07.2024 (German), 07/15/2024 (US) or 15/07/2024 — instead of 2024-07-15. Other causes are an empty element, a date-time value with a time component, or a string with surrounding whitespace.
How to Fix It
Set cbc:IssueDate to the invoice creation date in YYYY-MM-DD format (e.g. 2024-07-15). Do not use slashes, dots, or locale-specific formats.
Step-by-step
1) Format the issue date strictly as YYYY-MM-DD, e.g. 2024-07-15 — four-digit year, two-digit month, two-digit day, separated by hyphens. 2) Remove any time component, slashes, dots, or locale formatting. 3) Make sure the export routine formats dates with an invariant/ISO formatter, not the OS locale. 4) The same rule applies to other date fields such as the due date (BT-9) and tax point date (BT-7). 5) Re-validate.
<cbc:IssueDate>2024-07-15</cbc:IssueDate>
Fix Automatically
Upload your invoice to our Smart Repair engine. It will detect and fix BR-2 errors automatically with a GoBD audit trail.
Open Smart RepairFrequently asked questions
Which date format does XRechnung require?
ISO 8601: YYYY-MM-DD, e.g. 2024-07-15. German formats like 15.07.2024 are invalid and trigger BR-2.
Can I include a time?
No. BT-2 is a date, not a date-time. Provide only YYYY-MM-DD with no time, timezone, or 'T' separator.
Related Errors
Other commonly encountered validation errors