Online Access Act-compliant Invoice Submission Portal (OZG

Online Access Act-compliant

Invoice Submission Portal

(OZG-RE)

Operating guide for

invoice senders

Operating guide, version 1.0 page 1 of 13

Online Access Act-compliant Invoice Submission Portal (OZG-RE) Operating guide for invoice senders

English version 1.0

Bundesdruckerei GmbH

Kommandantenstraße 18

10969 Berlin



(OZG-RE)

Operating guide for

invoice senders


1. System overview

Bundesdruckerei provides an Invoice Submission Portal which complies with the Online Access Act.

This system (referred to here by its German abbreviation “OZG-RE”) is used by public-sector customers of the German federation and by several federal states to receive electronic invoices in XRechnung standard format. The portal allows invoice senders to send their invoices via the following transmission methods: web submission, upload, email (with an XRechnung file as an attachment) and Peppol.

2. Buyer reference (“Leitweg-ID”) in the OZG-RE

In order to address an invoice correctly and/or to identify the recipient within the authority in question, the invoice sender needs to know the buyer reference (“Leitweg-ID”). This buyer reference is a required field in the XRechnung format. The invoice recipient (e.g. an institution of the indirect federal administration, a recipient of federal funding or an institution of a participating federal state) is obliged, under its buying or procurement process, to inform the invoice sender of the correct buyer reference to use.

Note: If your accounting software is capable of generating invoices in XRechnung format (version

1.2 or later), you should add the buyer reference to the invoice recipient’s information under

“buyer reference” (BT-10).



(OZG-RE)

Operating guide for

invoice senders


3. Registering a company account in the OZG-RE

If you are not yet registered with the portal, please create an OZG-RE account. This consists of a

company account and an associated user account. More user accounts can be added to the same

company account.

1. Open the portal in your web browser using the following link: https://xrechnung-bdr.de

2. Click on “create new user account”.

Note: Registration always requires creating a company account. The user who carries out the

registration automatically becomes the administrator of that company account. Registration should

therefore only be done by a responsible member of the company. The administrator can add

further user accounts to the company account. The steps involved in this process are described in

section 4.



(OZG-RE)

Operating guide for

invoice senders


3. Enter your company’s information and click on “continue to user section”.

Note: Click on the symbol for more information about the relevant field.



(OZG-RE)

Operating guide for

invoice senders


4. Enter your user information and set a password.

Important: The first user to register is automatically the administrator of the company

account.

Note: Additional user accounts can be created but they will not have administrator rights.

Accept the terms of use and Data privacy termsder . Click on “create user”.

5. You will then receive an email containing an activation link. Click on the link (or copy the

link into a new browser window) to complete the registration process.

6. You will then receive confirmation that your registration was successful.



(OZG-RE)

Operating guide for

invoice senders


4. User management in the OZG-RE (administrator rights required)

As a user with administrator rights you can

create new user accounts

reset passwords

require passwords to be changed

change user account information

lock/unlock user accounts

delete user accounts

You can reach the user management dashboard by clicking on “start user administration”.

To delete or lock a user account, select the account by checking the relevant box to the left of the

list. Then click on the symbol for the action you wish to perform.



(OZG-RE)

Operating guide for

invoice senders


Clicking on a user account in the list will open the dialogue box below:

To save changes to user account information, click on “update user”.



(OZG-RE)

Operating guide for

invoice senders


Users with administrator rights can update their company’s information by clicking on “start

company account management” and using the dialogue box below.

The company account can be deleted using the dialogue box below:

Important: If a company account is deleted, all associated user accounts are automatically

deleted as well. See data privacy terms for details.



(OZG-RE)

Operating guide for

invoice senders


5. Sending an invoice via the OZG-RE

Once you have signed into your OZG-RE account, you can send invoices using the various

transmission methods (web submission form, upload or email).

Web submission

The web submission input method is appropriate for creating invoices if your accounting system

does not allow you to directly create a file in XRechnung standard.

To use this method, select input data in the main menu.

This will open a form in which you can enter all relevant invoice data.

Please fill out all the fields in the current tab. Then click the button to proceed to the next tab.

To go back to the previous tab, click the button.

The final tab shows an overview of all the data you have entered.

You can submit (send) the invoice by clicking on .

Note: Red exclamation marks on the left of the tab view mean that required fields in that tab have

not been filled out.



(OZG-RE)

Operating guide for

invoice senders


Email with attachment or upload

If your invoice is already available as an XRechnung file, you can submit (send) the invoice as

follows:

a) as an email attachment

b) by uploading it

Important: If you want to submit attachments together with your XRechnung invoice, please

observe the following:

Before submission, please ensure that all invoice attachments are embedded in the XRechnung file.

The email attachment may only contain the XRechnung file.

Re. a) To submit/send the XRechnung file by email with attachment, click on “send email”. This

will open a new email in your email programme. The recipient field will already contain the

individual email address of your OZG-RE account. Attach one single XRechnung file to this email

and send it.

Note: The individual email address of your OZG-RE account is a cryptic email address intended

only for submitting XRechnung invoices. Alternatively to the above procedure, you may want to

create your own email message (with an XRechnung file as an attachment). In this case, you can

copy the individual email address by clicking on email address and then paste it into the recipient

field of your email. The individual email address remains constant. Alternatively, you can add this

email address to the contacts of your email programme.

Re. b) To send an XRechnung file via upload, click “start” under the option “submit externally

created invoice”.



(OZG-RE)

Operating guide for

invoice senders


This will open a window allowing you to search for and select the relevant file:

Select the XRechnung file and click “open”.

The upload will start automatically.

If uploading was successful, a message will appear briefly saying “action completed successfully”.

6. Sending an invoice via Peppol

In order to use the Peppol invoice submission method, you will need to have a Peppol account with

a Peppol provider. Peppol accounts have their own Peppol participant ID. If you do not have a

Peppol account, you can set one up with the help of an external Peppol provider.

This will allow you to submit (send) XRechnung invoices from the Peppol network via your Peppol

provider.

In order to be properly addressed, the buyer reference (“Leitweg-ID”) of the invoice recipient must

be recorded both in the Peppol participant ID and in the required field (BT-10) of the XRechnung.

Note: XRechnung invoices submitted via Peppol do not appear on the page which shows the

processing status of submitted invoices. Invoices submitted via Peppol are processed in a separate,

independent environment.



(OZG-RE)

Operating guide for

invoice senders


7. View processing status of submitted XRechnung invoices

The current status of submitted XRechnung invoices can be viewed by clicking “start” under the

option “processing status of submitted XRechnung invoices”

The status of an invoice can be one of the following:

Initial: Invoice has been created in web submission but not yet sent. You

have the option to continue processing.

Awaiting collection: Invoice has been successfully transmitted and is awaiting collection

by the recipient.

Collected: Recipient has collected the invoice and confirmed receipt of the

invoice.

Rejected: Invoice has been rejected by the system or the recipient due to an

error of form or content.

Deleted: Last change in status of the invoice was more than 28 days ago.

The invoice was therefore deleted by the system.

Example: Overview of the processing status of submitted XRechnung invoices

These are the columns displayed in the overview:

Entry ID: identification number of the submitted invoice

Invoice type: type of invoice submitted

Buyer reference: buyer reference (“Leitweg ID”) of the recipient authority

Date created: date when the invoice was submitted

State of progress: processing status of the invoice

Submission channel: submission method used

Note: If a recipient rejects your invoice, you will not receive a separate notification. You should

therefore check the processing status of submitted invoices regularly.

Collected



(OZG-RE)

Operating guide for

invoice senders


Guide to the functions:

1 Refresh Update the overview of submitted invoices

Upload invoice Upload another invoice

Download invoice Download a submitted invoice

View invoice View or save a PDF document created from the invoice data

View processing history

View the processing history of a submitted invoice

Continue Continue entering data if necessary and then submit the invoice

8. Service and support for invoice senders

Please contact us if you have any further questions.

As an invoice sender you can reach us as follows:

by telephone from Monday to Friday (except holidays) from 8:00 to 16:00:

+49 (0) 30 2598 4436

or by email at: [email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

Documents

Online Access Act-compliant Invoice Submission Portal (OZG