Invoicea Juros-AI product

What a compliant invoice must show in United Kingdom.

The fields, the party identifiers, the exact statutory wording for each tax treatment and the GBP rule — each cited to the statute or the tax authority, not a summary of one.

Tax figure in GBP Legal format EN 16931 UBL (Peppol BIS 3.0) PDF counts as the invoice

What the invoice must show

The content United Kingdom's rules put on the face of the document, beyond the parties, line items and totals every invoice carries.

Document title
VAT Invoice
Tax shown in
GBPtotal VAT payable in sterling and the exchange rate used (VAT Notice 700, para 16.4)
Date of supply
Mandatory on every invoice

How each party is identified

The registration numbers and their formats the United Kingdom rules expect on the invoice.

Seller
VAT registration number VAT number · GB + 9 digits · always
Seller
Company number Companies House number · 8 characters · companies
Buyer
Customer VAT number buyer VAT number · reverse_charge

The exact wording, by tax treatment

When no tax is charged, the invoice has to say why — in the words the law names. Each is linked to the statute or tax authority it was read from.

Reverse chargestatute ↗
Reverse charge: customer to pay the VAT to HMRC (s. 8 / s. 55A VATA 1994)
Zero-rated — export of goods outside the UK (VAT Notice 703; s. 30(6) VATA 1994)
Zero-ratedstatute ↗
Zero-rated (Schedule 8, VATA 1994)
Exempt from VAT (Schedule 9, VATA 1994)
Out of scopestatute ↗
Outside the scope of UK VAT — place of supply outside the UK (s. 7A VATA 1994)
Foreign seller (import)statute ↗
No UK VAT charged — goods supplied from outside the UK; import VAT is accounted for by the importer (postponed VAT accounting or at the border)

Notice 700 para 16.3: sequential number, date of issue, time of supply (tax point), supplier name/address/VAT number, customer name/address, description, per-line quantity/unit price/rate/amount ex VAT, discount, total ex VAT, total VAT; foreign currency: VAT in sterling.

The format, and who sends it

A plain PDF still counts as the invoice in United Kingdom; a structured e-invoice is accepted where the buyer asks for it.

Legal format(s)
PDF invoice · EN 16931 UBL (Peppol BIS 3.0)
Transmission
Sent supplier→buyer; no government clearance in the path

Don't just look these rules up. Generate them.

Invoice by Juros-AI builds the United Kingdom e-invoice — EN 16931 UBL (Peppol BIS 3.0) — and checks it against the official schema on your own machine before anything is sent. Invoice by Juros-AI reads any invoice into clean data and is adding compliant invoice creation — the same rules on this page, built into the engine, run entirely on your own hardware. No cloud, nothing uploaded, no figure invented.

Talk to us about United Kingdom invoicing → or see the product — free to evaluate, no account

Every generated invoice is validated on your machine against the official artefacts — the OASIS UBL/CII schemas, the CEN EN 16931 schematron, Peppol BIS 3.0, KoSIT XRechnung, FatturaPA, KSeF FA(3) and the Peppol PINT packages. This page is a reference for build scoping; it is not legal or tax advice.

Invoice rules for other markets