Invoice template in Germany: free sample with all mandatory details (§ 14 UStG)

Your first invoice is a milestone – and at the same time a little exam in German tax law. Because an invoice (Rechnung) is not a polite request for payment, but a document with legally defined mandatory details (Pflichtangaben). If one of them is missing, your business customer cannot deduct input tax, the tax office demands a correction – and you end up rewriting the invoice.

In this article you get a complete invoice template to copy, an explanation of every mandatory field, and the typical mistakes – from forgotten exemption notes to double-issued numbers.

The mandatory details of an invoice (§ 14 Abs. 4 UStG)

Every invoice to a business needs this information:

1. Full name and address of you and your customer.
2. Your tax number (Steuernummer) or VAT identification number (USt-IdNr.). Either one is enough.
3. The issue date of the invoice.
4. A sequential invoice number – every number may only be issued once (§ 14 Abs. 4 Nr. 4 UStG). "2026-001", then "2026-002" and so on. Only uniqueness is required: according to the VAT application decree (Umsatz- steuer-Anwendungserlass, UStAE 14.5.10), gaps are allowed, as are multiple numbering schemes – for example one per year.
5. Quantity and type of the goods delivered, or the scope and type of the service ("web design landing page, 8 hours").
6. The date of delivery or service – for ongoing services, the service period ("01.08.–31.08.2026").
7. The consideration (net amount), broken down by tax rate.
8. The applicable tax rate and the tax amount – or, alternatively, a note on the tax exemption or the Kleinunternehmerregelung.

For small-amount invoices (Kleinbetragsrechnung) up to 250 euros gross (§ 33 UStDV), the customer address, the invoice number and the time of delivery or service may be omitted; net and tax amount as a single sum are sufficient. Anyone who always uses the full variant is on the safe side, even with repeat customers.

Invoice template to copy

A complete service invoice looks like this:

Max Mustermann                        ← your name + address
Musterstraße 12
80331 München
hallo@mustermann.de

An                                    ← customer name + address
Musterfirma GmbH
Beispielweg 3
10115 Berlin

Rechnung Nr. 2026-042                 ← sequential number
Ausstellungsdatum: 05.09.2026

Leistungszeitraum: 01.08.–31.08.2026  ← when was the service provided?

Positionen:
  Webdesign Startseite ........ 8 Std. à 75 € = 600,00 €
  Texterstellung .............. 3 Std. à 65 € = 195,00 €

Nettobetrag:                              795,00 €
Umsatzsteuer 19 %:                        151,05 €
Gesamtbetrag:                             946,05 €

Zahlbar bis 19.09.2026 auf IBAN DE02 ... 
Verwendungszweck: Rechnung 2026-042

For a Kleinunternehmer invoice, only the tax block changes:

Nettobetrag:          795,00 €
Gesamtbetrag:         795,00 €

Gemäß § 19 Abs. 1 UStG wird keine Umsatzsteuer berechnet.
(No VAT is charged under § 19 (1) UStG.)

All the details on the Kleinunternehmerregelung – including the thresholds of 25,000 and 100,000 euros in force since 1 January 2025 – can be found in our own article on the small-business invoice. Just this much here: since 1 January 2025, as a Kleinunternehmer you don't have to issue e-invoices in XRechnung or ZUGFeRD format yourself – but you do have to be able to receive them.

The most common mistakes on invoice templates

These five mistakes are the ones we see most often – all of them are easy to avoid:

• A missing or duplicate invoice number. What counts is uniqueness: "2026-042" twice does not work, but a skipped number is not a legal error. Cancellation and correction invoices must be clearly identifiable as such and refer to the original invoice. A pure correction document needs no number of its own – clearly referencing the original invoice number is enough (UStAE 14.11). Cancel and reissue, however, and the new invoice must get its own unique number; the original number may never be reused.
• "See attachment" instead of line items. The quantity and type of the service must appear on the invoice itself, not in a separate file.
• Forgetting the tax block. Without tax rate and tax amount (or an exemption note), the invoice is formally incomplete.
• The wrong address. The company name must be exactly as it appears in the contract – not "Mr. Müller" but "Müller GmbH".
• Missing service period on consolidated invoices. If you bill monthly, the period must be stated explicitly on the document.

How long do you have to keep invoices?

Good news first: it was not the Growth Opportunities Act (Wachstumschancengesetz) but the Fourth Bureaucracy Relief Act (BEG IV) that shortened the retention period for accounting vouchers (Buchungsbelege) – which includes your invoices – from ten years to eight years effective 1 January 2025 (§ 147 Abs. 3 Nr. 4 AO, § 257 HGB). The shorter period applies to all vouchers whose old deadline had not yet expired at the start of 2025. Books and annual financial statements must continue to be kept for ten years.

You must archive digital invoices digitally; simply printing them out and filing them away is no longer sufficient for e-invoices.

A template is good – but retyping it every day?

A template is the perfect starting point. But in the long run you won't want to keep copying invoices by hand into a text document: numbering schemes, customer data, tax blocks and PDF generation are exactly the work that tools take off your hands.

That is exactly why we are building Gewerber: invoices with all mandatory details at the click of a button, the correct Kleinunternehmer notes added automatically, time tracking built right in – as an open-source platform that is free to use during the beta. A look at the invoicing features is worth it before you type up your next sample invoice.