Importing e-invoices (E-Rechnung)

Cine Power Planner can read structured vendor e-invoices and turn them into draft expenses, so you don't have to re-type them by hand. This covers the formats German and other EU vendors send under the e-invoice mandate.

What you can import

XRechnung — both the UBL and CII variants
ZUGFeRD / Factur-X — the hybrid PDF (a normal-looking PDF with the invoice data embedded inside it) and the bare XML
PEPPOL BIS Billing 3.0 (UBL)
Facturae 3.2.2 (Spain)

UBL credit notes are recognized as well as UBL invoices — see Credit notes.

Four ways an invoice gets in

All four routes hand the file to the same reader, so an invoice becomes the same kind of draft expense whichever way it arrives.

Route	Where	Good for
Import e-invoice	Accounting → Expenses	Files already on this device
E-invoice inbox	A private forwarding address — Settings → Accounting → E-invoice inbox	Letting vendors, or your own mailbox rule, deliver invoices without you touching them
Share sheet	Share a file into the app and pick Vendor bill — see Share to App	One invoice you were just sent
Bulk import	Accounting → Expenses → Bulk import	A folder of mixed receipts and invoices at once

Importing files yourself

Go to Accounting → Expenses.
Click Import e-invoice and pick one or more files (.xml or .pdf). You can select several at once.
Each file becomes a draft expense. A short summary tells you how many imported, how many were duplicates, and how many couldn't be read.
The Import e-invoice card shows "N imported · review" when drafts are waiting. Open each draft, check the details, set a category, and finalize it.

That count is not limited to the batch you just picked — it counts every e-invoice draft still awaiting review, including ones that arrived by email while you were away.

The e-invoice inbox (forward by email)

Every account has one private inbox address, shaped belege-<token>@cine-power-planner.com, where the token is random and unique to you. Forward a vendor invoice there and the server reads it, creates a draft expense, and attaches the original file — no app open, no file picking.

Open Settings → Accounting → E-invoice inbox to see it. The address is created on first visit and stays the same until you rotate it, so it is safe to save as a forwarding target or hand to a vendor.

Copy puts it on your clipboard.
Rotate issues a brand-new address and the old one stops working immediately — anything sent to it afterwards is dropped without notice, so update your forwarding rules at the same time.

What the channel accepts:

The invoice must be an attachment. The message body is not read, and a link to download the invoice is not followed.
Up to 10 attachments per email, each up to 12 MB.
The same structured formats listed above. A hybrid PDF is read from its embedded XML; a bare XML works too.

Two things worth knowing before you rely on it:

There is no notification. Nothing pings you when an invoice arrives. New drafts appear in Expenses the next time you open the app — the "N imported · review" count on the Expenses screen is where you will see them.
A plain PDF or photo still creates a draft here, labelled "E-invoice email — needs manual entry", with the file attached so you can type the figures in yourself. This is the one place the app behaves differently — see Good to know.

What gets filled in

Vendor, invoice number, dates, net / VAT / gross, IBAN, and the per-rate VAT breakdown + line items are read straight from the invoice. The original file is kept attached to the expense for your records (GoBD); for a hybrid PDF the extracted XML is kept alongside it.

The expense header carries a single VAT rate, and on a mixed-rate invoice that is the dominant one — the rate covering the largest share of the net total. Nothing is lost: the full per-rate breakdown and the line items are stored on the record.

A few things are left for you on purpose:

Category — never set automatically. A Vorsteuer suggestion is offered for reverse-charge (§ 13b) invoices and for intra-community acquisitions.
Exchange rate — for non-EUR invoices you set the rate yourself. The invoice is brought in at its stated amounts with no automatic rate lookup.

A draft can also arrive with review flags — a credit note, a non-EUR amount, reverse charge, or a buyer mismatch when the invoice names a VAT ID that is not yours. Advisory EN 16931 checks (missing invoice number, totals that don't add up, no due date) are surfaced the same way. All of them are non-blocking: a readable invoice is never rejected over them.

Credit notes (Gutschriften)

A vendor credit note is recognized automatically and booked as a reduction (a negative amount), so your totals, EÜR / UStVA, and DATEV export stay correct — it is never counted as a cost. The stored copy of the invoice keeps the amounts exactly as the vendor stated them; only the expense header carries the sign.

Duplicates

If you import the same invoice twice it is detected and skipped, with the option to import it anyway. The match is the seller's VAT ID + invoice number; when either side has no VAT ID, it falls back to the invoice number + total.

An invoice with no invoice number at all cannot be matched, so it is never treated as a duplicate — re-importing one creates a second draft. The same is true of the plain-PDF drafts the email inbox creates: there is nothing to key on.

Deleting an imported expense frees the invoice to be imported again — a row in the bin does not count as "already imported".

Good to know

In the app — the Import e-invoice button, the bulk import and the share sheet — a plain scan or photo (a PDF/image with no embedded e-invoice data) is not imported: it is counted as unreadable, and Scan receipt / Upload file is the path for those. The email inbox is the exception: it creates a "needs manual entry" draft instead of dropping the file.
Imported invoices land as drafts: nothing is booked until you review and finalize it.
This channel is inbound only. Creating and sending your own e-invoices lives in the invoice editor.

Last Updated: 2026-09-10 Version: 0.790.2

Importing E-Invoices