Consistent view documents across all formats
Published: May 20, 2025
Last update: September 16, 2026
Currently, hardly any other topic in the field of business processes is generating as much excitement as the mandatory acceptance of e-invoice formats, which will take effect at the beginning of 2025. Even though the focus of e-invoicing is on process automation, one element in the process chain for processing e-invoices is often overlooked: user-friendliness. After all, where automated processing is either undesirable or impossible, invoices must still be manually reviewed and approved by people in practice.
Unfortunately, the multitude of e-invoicing standards in national and international invoicing also creates problems when it comes to viewable documents. The various e-invoice formats are sometimes—as with ZUGFeRD — with a traditional document-based presentation of the invoice as a PDF, but in some cases without it—such as with the German XRechnung or the Italian Fattura PA.
The machine-readable XML format of the e-invoice is not well-suited for employees within companies to review the content and technical details of an invoice. People want to receive invoice documents in a format they are familiar with for review. The absence of a visual copy significantly disrupts the approval process.
Even when visual documents are included with e-invoices, they generally differ significantly in terms of presentation, design, and layout, and are often confusing. Users must therefore repeatedly familiarize themselves with the respective invoice layout and search for the relevant information for verification—an effort that should not be underestimated.
Furthermore, the sample document that may be included is not legally binding and, as practice shows—especially with ZUGFeRD—is frequently incorrect. For processing an e-invoice—and thus also for manual review and approval—only the digital data record is relevant.
While suitable software solutions—such as our e-invoice pro —it is possible to verify whether the contents of the accompanying PDF preview document match the data in the XML data record, but how should the correct data record be displayed to the user in the event of discrepancies?
Our comprehensive e-invoice management solution will therefore offer the following option in the future: regardless of the input format, a uniform PDF preview document will be generated—automatically and auditable—based on the XML data set — a standardized view document in PDF format will be generated and made available to users for visual verification.
For example, a PDF supplied with ZUGFeRD can either be discarded, reported in the event of an error following an optional comparison with the XML data set, or included as an additional document.
Four key advantages of the standardized preview document
- Users always receive a uniformly formatted view document for review and approval, on which they will always find all relevant fields and line items in the same locations —even with international e-invoice formats. This significantly simplifies manual review.
- The newly generated, standardized view document can also be used in a wide variety of applications independently of the actual XML data record of the e-invoice. Examples include linking it to customer or supplier records or to project documentation. In these cases, the focus is generally on documentation purposes, and all relevant systems will be able to display PDFs.
- For long-term retention in the context of audit-proof archiving, the structured data record is legally binding. However, the generated PDF view document is a useful supplement to the XML data set, as it will remain easily readable by humans even when archived.
- Last but not least, the viewable document generated by e-invoice pro is as accessible as possible and can therefore also be used by employees who rely on an accessible work environment.
“Without a reliable and standardized viewable document for content review and approval, e-invoicing is of little practical use. People want documents, not XML.”
Tobias Widmann
Product Owner for E-Finance and E-Invoicing Expert, Insiders Technologies GmbH
The newly generated visual receipt provides all relevant information in the necessary scope in a compact and clear manner. It thus differs significantly from technologies previously available on the market, which—being impractical — often generate multi-page previews even for short invoices.
Our customers and partners will also have the option to customize the scope of the statement and define its design themselves using colors, fonts, etc.
In addition, our solution offers the advantage of being able to generate consistently formatted view documents even for international formats. This ensures efficiency in use and reduces barriers to understanding documents from other countries.
