Rule BR-04
An invoice must have an invoice type code
Every invoice carries a code saying what kind of document it is, taken from the published UNTDID 1001 list.
Business term BT-3, Invoice type code. Source: EN 16931. Our wording, not the normative text, which is published in the Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 rule list and was checked against it on 2026-08-16.
Why it fires on invoices that look fine
Almost nobody hits this rule because they forgot the field exists. They hit it because something between their system and the document dropped it, changed its shape, or filled it with a value that is right somewhere else. These are the causes worth checking first.
- The field holds an internal document category rather than a UNTDID code: "INVOICE", "FACTURE", "SALES_INV", or a numeric type from the seller's own ERP that happens to look like a code.
- The code is valid in UNTDID but not on the list the profile accepts. This is the case worth knowing about, because the sender is not wrong so much as out of profile.
- The document is a credit note being sent as an invoice with code 381. Peppol carries credit notes as their own document type.
What to change
- For an ordinary sales invoice, send 380. It is the default and it is what you want unless something specific applies, such as 384 for a correction or 389 when the buyer raises the invoice on your behalf.
- Check the value against the published list before changing anything upstream. The failure is usually a mapping bug, not a disagreement about which code is right.
- See the full list of accepted codes with their official names on our invoice type code reference.
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Rules you are likely to hit next
A document that breaks BR-04 usually breaks one of these too, because the same mapping gap tends to affect neighbouring fields.
- BR-CL-*: codelists: currency, country, VAT category, invoice type
- BR-05: currency code
Questions people actually ask
- What does BR-04 mean?
- Every invoice carries a code saying what kind of document it is, taken from the published UNTDID 1001 list.
- Which field does BR-04 apply to?
- BT-3, Invoice type code. That is the name the semantic model uses, which is what you search for in your own system's mapping when the identifier alone does not tell you which field to look at.
- Does our validator check BR-04?
- Yes. Paste your invoice data into the free validator and it reports this rule with the value it actually saw, without the document leaving your browser.