BR-DE-2
Seller Contact Missing (BG-6)
What This Error Means
XRechnung requires the group SELLER CONTACT (BG-6). In UBL this is cac:AccountingSupplierParty/cac:Party/cac:Contact, in CII ram:SellerTradeParty/ram:DefinedTradeContact. EN 16931 treats the group as optional. XRechnung makes it mandatory and, through BR-DE-5, BR-DE-6 and BR-DE-7, also requires its three fields: contact point (BT-41), telephone number (BT-42) and email address (BT-43). The rule is fatal. KoSIT message: 'Die Gruppe "SELLER CONTACT" (BG-6) muss übermittelt werden.'
Why this happens
BR-DE-2 is checked at cac:AccountingSupplierParty and fires when cac:Party has no cac:Contact at all. Public buyers use this contact for questions about the invoice, which is why XRechnung requires it. Typical causes: the invoicing software has no field for a contact person; the company email was only written into the electronic address BT-34 (cbc:EndpointID), which does not count as a contact; the contact sits at the wrong party, for example in cac:SellerSupplierParty or on the buyer side (BG-9); or a Peppol template was used in which BG-6 is optional. If cac:Contact is present but a child is empty or missing, you get BR-DE-5, BR-DE-6 or BR-DE-7 instead, and an empty element also triggers PEPPOL-EN16931-R008 ('Document MUST not contain empty elements').
How to Fix It
Add cac:Contact as the last child of the seller's cac:Party, after cac:PartyLegalEntity, with cbc:Name, cbc:Telephone and cbc:ElectronicMail.
Step-by-step
1) Find cac:AccountingSupplierParty/cac:Party. 2) Insert cac:Contact after cac:PartyLegalEntity; the UBL schema requires this position. 3) Fill cbc:Name (BT-41) with a person or a department, for example 'Buchhaltung'. 4) Fill cbc:Telephone (BT-42); BR-DE-27 warns if it contains fewer than three digits. 5) Fill cbc:ElectronicMail (BT-43) with one address; BR-DE-28 warns about invalid syntax. 6) In CII, add ram:DefinedTradeContact to ram:SellerTradeParty with ram:PersonName or ram:DepartmentName, ram:TelephoneUniversalCommunication/ram:CompleteNumber and ram:EmailURIUniversalCommunication/ram:URIID. 7) Validate again.
<cac:AccountingSupplierParty>
<cac:Party>
<!-- EndpointID, PartyName, PostalAddress, PartyTaxScheme, PartyLegalEntity ... -->
<cac:Contact>
<cbc:Name>Buchhaltung, Max Muster</cbc:Name>
<cbc:Telephone>+49 30 1234567</cbc:Telephone>
<cbc:ElectronicMail>rechnung@muster.de</cbc:ElectronicMail>
</cac:Contact>
</cac:Party>
</cac:AccountingSupplierParty>Fix Automatically
Upload your invoice to our Smart Repair engine. It checks the file against the full KoSIT rule set, including BR-DE-2, and corrects supported fields with a GoBD audit trail.
Open Smart RepairFrequently asked questions
Can I name a department instead of a person?
Yes. BT-41 accepts a person or a department such as 'Buchhaltung', and a shared mailbox is fine for BT-43. What matters is that someone answers queries about the invoice.
My electronic address (BT-34) is an email. Isn't that enough?
No. BT-34 (cbc:EndpointID) is the routing address for delivery. BG-6 is a separate group for human contact. The same address may appear in both places.
Which checks run on the phone number and email?
BR-DE-6 and BR-DE-7 (fatal) require both to be present. BR-DE-27 (warning) expects at least three digits in the phone number, BR-DE-28 (warning) a syntactically valid email address.
Related Errors
Other commonly encountered validation errors