Invoices to authorities
Invoicing German federal authorities: through OZG-RE, step by step
Since September 2025 the German federal government has accepted invoices through one platform only, OZG-RE. Who has to use it, how registration works, which channels and limits apply, and what invoices fail on there.
The essentials
- OZG-RE has been the federal government’s only invoice platform since 20 September 2025, run by the Federal Procurement Office of the Interior Ministry. The former ZRE is switched off; its 187 invoice recipients have moved over.
- Registration and use are free. You have to register whatever the channel, email and Peppol included.
- Format: XRechnung in UBL or CII. ZUGFeRD only in the XRECHNUNG profile, and only as the XML without the PDF.
- The authority’s Leitweg-ID is mandatory, as the buyer reference (BT-10). You get it with the order.
Who invoices through OZG-RE
The direct federal administration and the constitutional bodies must use OZG-RE. Indirect federal bodies — federal agencies, corporations and foundations — may use it or run their own solution; over 170 do the former. On top come five states that share the platform: Berlin, Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Saxony and Thuringia. In all, over 330,000 invoices a month go through it.
Whether your customer is one of them is told by the start of its Leitweg-ID:
| Starts with | Meaning |
|---|---|
991 | Direct federal administration, invoice through OZG-RE |
992 | Indirect federal body, invoice through OZG-RE |
993 | Indirect federal body with its own solution: it tells you the channel |
Authorities of the states and municipalities start with their state’s code, 01 to 16. How the Leitweg-ID is built and how to check its check digits: Leitweg-ID: find and check.
Step by step
- 1Get the Leitweg-ID. It is in the purchase order or the contract. If it is missing, ask the office that ordered; do not guess, as an invoice with the wrong ID does not reach the recipient.
- 2Register with OZG-RE. Either with an account of its own — company name, country, VAT ID and tax number, then the user’s name, email address and password, confirmed by an activation link — or through “Mein Unternehmenskonto” with an ELSTER organisation certificate.
- 3Create the XRechnung. With your invoicing software or our free generator, with the Leitweg-ID as the buyer reference. Check the file beforehand in the Validator: it checks against KoSIT’s rule set, the one the platform checks against too.
- 4Submit. Upload it in the portal under “Extern erstellte Rechnung einreichen” (submit an externally created invoice), or through one of the other channels below.
- 5Follow the status and keep the file. The portal shows whether the invoice was delivered or rejected. 28 days after the last status change it deletes it; keeping your file is up to you.
The four channels
Upload
Upload the finished XRechnung in the portal. The usual channel for anyone who invoices the federal government now and then and has software or a generator.
Web form
Type the invoice straight into the portal. No software of your own is needed; the invoice then exists only there.
Each account gets an address of its own, generated for it. One invoice per email; if another file that is not an e-invoice is attached beside it, the whole email is discarded. Supporting documents therefore go inside the XRechnung, not into the mail.
Peppol
The Peppol ID of an authority on OZG-RE is 0204: followed by its Leitweg-ID. Only worth it for anyone who already sends through a Peppol access point.
De-Mail and FTP are not among OZG-RE’s channels.
Limits on size and attachments
| What | Limit |
|---|---|
| 10 MB | |
| Attachments embedded in the invoice | 15 MB; for the web form the same FAQ says 11 MB |
| Number of embedded attachments | 200 |
| Larger files (“Große Anlagen”) | as a link, up to 200 MB in total |
| Peppol | 100 MB |
| Permitted file types | PDF, PNG, JPG/JPEG, XLSX, ODS, CSV; no macros |
What invoices fail on
Formal and arithmetic errors are rejected by the platform itself, with a KoSIT report in English that names the broken rule by its code. Errors of content — wrong price, wrong order — are rejected only by the authority. The commonest formal reasons:
- “Leitweg-ID ist nicht valide”: mostly wrong hyphens or spaces. Check the ID beforehand with the Leitweg-ID checker.
- The buyer reference is missing: BR-DE-15.
- Totals that do not add up, and other rules of the BR-CO family, such as a seller without a VAT ID, tax or register number (BR-CO-26). Our validator names them with a plain-language explanation.
- “Duplikat erkannt”: the same invoice submitted twice.
An invoice that cannot be linked to a user account is rejected without notice under § 4(4) ERechV. Anyone submitting by email without being registered therefore hears nothing.
When the e-invoice is mandatory
To federal authorities since 27 November 2020, under the federal e-invoicing regulation (ERechV). Exempt are invoices for direct awards up to €1,000 (§ 3(3) no. 1 ERechV); the federal FAQ counts the amount net of VAT. You may send an e-invoice even then.
States and municipalities
Apart from the five states on OZG-RE, each state runs its own channel, and municipalities sometimes do it differently again. The authority names the portal and the Leitweg-ID with the order. States with portals at their own address include:
| State | Portal |
|---|---|
| Bremen | zERIKA |
| Lower Saxony | ZeRN |
| North Rhine-Westphalia | E-Rechnungsportal NRW |
| Baden-Württemberg | service-bw |
The federal government keeps the overview of all states at e-rechnung-bund.de.
Common questions
What happened to the ZRE?
The Interior and Finance Ministries decided on 19 November 2024 to keep a single platform, OZG-RE. By 19 September 2025 all 187 ZRE recipients had moved over; the ZRE took no invoices after that and was switched off at the end of 2025.
Can I send a ZUGFeRD invoice?
Only in the XRECHNUNG profile, and then only the XML without the PDF — in effect, an XRechnung in CII. A ZUGFeRD PDF in the usual EN 16931 profile is not accepted by OZG-RE. What sets the two formats apart: XRechnung or ZUGFeRD.
Is there a directory of Leitweg-IDs?
Not a central one. OZG-RE’s web form shows the connected Leitweg-IDs; the federal government still advises using only the ID from the order.
Do I get a confirmation by email?
Better not to rely on it: the federal FAQ says there are no automatic status emails at present, a leaflet from September 2025 says they can be set up. The status in the portal is the reliable one.
Where do I get help?
From OZG-RE’s support for invoice senders: +49 30 2598 4436, Monday to Friday from 8:00 to 16:00, or through the contact form on e-rechnung-bund.de. We are not the operator and cannot see into your account there.
Our free generator makes an XRechnung with a Leitweg-ID that passes the KoSIT rule set before you download it — ready to upload to OZG-RE.
Sources: federal e-invoicing FAQ; email channel; list of invoice recipients; one year of consolidation (25 June 2026); ERechV. Read on 25 October 2026. NormAPI does not run OZG-RE and has no connection with its operator.