The latest articles on DEV Community by facturata (@facturata). https://dev.to/facturata https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=90,height=90,fit=cover,gravity=auto,format=auto/https:%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fuser%2Fprofile_image%2F4013869%2Fa75c8204-8a20-4ca1-931f-9b5ae208f8ee.png https://dev.to/facturata en facturata Sat, 04 Jul 2026 19:46:15 +0000 https://dev.to/facturata/i-built-an-api-that-turns-json-into-legally-compliant-eu-e-invoices-factur-x-because-2026-is-329l https://dev.to/facturata/i-built-an-api-that-turns-json-into-legally-compliant-eu-e-invoices-factur-x-because-2026-is-329l <p>If you build software that touches invoices in Europe, the next 24 months are going to be busy. France requires all businesses to receive e-invoices from September 2026. Germany already requires reception since 2025, with issuing phased in 2027-2028. Belgium goes B2B via Peppol in 2026.</p> <p>The dominant format in France/Germany is Factur-X (identical to ZUGFeRD 2.x): a normal PDF invoice with machine-readable XML (EN 16931 standard) embedded inside. Nice idea. Implementing it correctly is not nice: the XSD is the easy part, then come ~200 schematron business rules (BR-<em>, BR-CO-</em>, BR-S-*...), VAT category logic, and country-specific rulesets on top.</p> <p>So I built Facturata: one POST with plain invoice JSON, and you get back a compliant Factur-X PDF (or raw CII XML), validated against the official XSD + full schematron before it leaves the server. There is also /validate (check any Factur-X/ZUGFeRD file, including the French 2026 CTC ruleset) and /extract (pull the XML out of a PDF).</p> <p>Design choices worth mentioning:</p> <ul> <li>Deterministic engine, no LLM at runtime. Compliance tooling should not hallucinate.</li> <li> <ul> <li>Stateless: documents processed in memory, nothing stored. Makes GDPR conversations short.</li> </ul> <ul> <li>- Totals and VAT breakdowns computed server-side, so garbage-in cannot produce arithmetically broken invoices (the rules catch that anyway, but better to never emit it).</li> <li>- Built on the excellent open-source Akretion factur-x library + official validation artifacts. <ul> <li>There is a free web validator (no signup) at <a href="https://facturata.com" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://facturata.com</a> if you just want to check files, and a free API tier (15 docs/month) on RapidAPI if you want to integrate. Feedback very welcome, especially from anyone wrestling with XRechnung or Peppol quirks.</li> </ul> </li> </ul> </li> </ul> api python fintech europe