UK postal codes not transferred to E-Rechnung

Maak

When I enter the address of a customer in the UK on the invoice, the postcode and city are not automatically transferred to the corresponding fields in the E-Rechnung. This is obviously because British postcodes are not recognized.

If I enter them manually in the X-Rechnung, they are not retained, because when I go back to the normal invoice input mask and then look again in the XRechnung window, they are gone again.

Example:
8th Floor (Floor)
West One (Building)
Forth Banks (Street)
Newcastle upon Tyne (City)
NE1 3PA (Postal code)
United Kingdom (Country)

I find these addresses strange too, but that's just how they are.
BTW: Selected currency of the invoice is USD, not GBP

SubTotal version: 1.5.68
OS + version: macOS 15.2

timo

Thanks for that feedback. I will make the following change in the next update (1.5.89):

When a UK postal code is detected in the address field (of either seller or buyer), the app treats the address as a UK address and prefills the postal code in the e-invoice dialog
If an address is treated as "UK address", the app checks the line directly above that "postal code" line and if it contains no digits, this line will be used and prefilled for the "city" (of both buyer and seller)
I also removed detecting and filling out the "LineOne" field of "PostalTradeAddress" of both seller and buyer (BT-35 & BT-50) since it is not a mandatory field, the detected value may be wrong and the value currently cannot be checked and adjusted in the UI

Hope this logic works for you! If not, please let me know

Maak

timo
Sometimes the county is also given above the postal code. This would then look like this:

"Level 8, West One
Forth Banks
Newcastle upon Tyne
Tyne and Wear
NE1 3PA
United Kingdom"

In some countries like Ireland, addresses do not aways require a postcode. e.g.:

Hollyhill Industrial Estate
Hollyhill, Cork
Republic of Ireland

It would be good if, in case of doubt, you could always manually enter the postcode and city in the XRechnung window and then have it saved.

Or simply provide an input mask with street, city, postcode and country in separate fields. Maybe even with addable input fields for additional address lines that no one can foresee. In the XRechnung itself, only the city and postcode appear anyway.

timo

Is it required that the county is sometimes in the address because otherwise the address is wrong? Is it mandatory information or just preference?
Is there sometimes no postcode in Irish addresses because there is no postcode or because it is preference or not required to uniquely identify the city? The postcode is a mandatory field for some e-invoice standards (XRechnung) so what would you otherwise enter as poscode if the address does not have a postcode?

In other words, is it possible to adjust your address examples so it does contain a postcode and the city above the posstcode?

I think I've covered this in other threads before but I'd really try to avoid saving information that has been entered to the e-invoice dialog permanently and individually for each invoice. This would add a lot of complexity and I'd have to add many fields to a data model that would be often changing when new fields are being added.

Maak

I did a little research:

The county can only be omitted if there is no second place of that name in Ireland or if an Eircode is provided.

However, the Irish Eircodes have only existed since 2014 and are not mandatory. Many companies still do not use them at all. So you would have to search for the code on the internet every time. It's a bit laborious, but it should be OK.

If you search for the Eircode using my example address from Apple, you will find that there are actually different Eircodes at this address because every single building in Ireland has its own Eircode!
Addresses without any understandable location information can occur. A correct Irish address is also:

Apple
T23 YK84
Ireland

Or even just:

T23 YK84
Ireland

Or with all of them at once (the code always comes after the location in Ireland):

Apple
Hollyhill Industrial Estate
Hollyhill
Cork
T23YK84
Ireland

Whereby this spelling is also correct:

Apple
Hollyhill Industrial Estate, Hollyhill
Cork
T23 YK84
Ireland

The spelling I wrote yesterday in this thread, on the other hand, is unusual (Hollyhill, Cork) If the address is written in one line at the bottom of a letter, it is easy to get the formatting wrong. (Ialso come from Germany and have to look everything up.)

Eircode search (works both ways): https://finder.eircode.ie/#/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_addresses_in_the_Republic_of_Ireland

As I only read today, it is probably better to use the EU-wide standard Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 anyway when sending invoices to other EU countries: https://docs.peppol.eu/poacc/billing/3.0/bis/
Maybe something you could include?

timo

Thanks for that research. I must say that with the next update, only UK postcodes will be considered, but not Irish Eircodes. Are you also sending a lot of e-invoices to Irish companies? I am hesitant to add special cases for each country as this could become unmanagable. But if it turns out that many users need this, I might be able to add support for Irish postcodes as well.

I am not familiar with Peppol, but isn't that just a network to send the e-invoices over with? This wouldn't mean we could omit certain data in the e-invoice data itself.

Maak

Yes, sending invoices to Ireland happens to me from time to time. If it could be implemented at some point, that would be great.

Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 is an EN 16931-compliant XML invoice format that is recognized throughout the EU. Except by German authorities. (Probably soon, though, if I've skimmed it right.)

From the FAQ:
What is Peppol BIS Billing 3.0?
The Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 format, like the XRechnung format, is a CIUS of EN 16931. Within the Peppol network, interoperability in the exchange of electronic invoices is ensured by the fact that all members are obliged to be able to receive and process documents in the Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 format. In addition, other formats can be supported.
https://xeinkauf.de/faq/peppol/#technischegrundlagen

Since we are supposed to write in English here, you obviously want to sell internationally. So it seems to me that this is a format that should be supported.