--- title: SEPA direct debit in your e-invoices – now with the right data description: E-invoices paid by SEPA direct debit now carry your customer's IBAN, your creditor ID and the mandate reference – each in the right field. author: Robert Reiz published: '2026-11-10T08:16:07Z' updated: '2026-11-10T08:16:07Z' language: en keywords: - EN16931 - XRechnung - ZUGFeRD canonical: https://zeit.io/en/blog/sepa-direct-debit-in-your-e-invoices-now-with-the-right-data --- # SEPA direct debit in your e-invoices – now with the right data Anna runs the billing at a small agency. One of her customers, Huber Bakery, pays by SEPA direct debit: the mandate is signed and the bakery's IBAN is stored on the customer in ZEIT.IO. Every month a ZUGFeRD invoice for €1,190.00 goes out, and the agency collects the amount. In November the bakery's tax adviser gets in touch. She opened the invoice in the DATEV e-invoice viewer and was puzzled: the account to be debited wasn't the bakery's IBAN, but the agency's. And there was nothing at all saying who was collecting the money, or under which mandate. The PDF was fine. The structured data inside the e-invoice – the part accounting software reads automatically – was not. ![SEPA Direct Debit](https://public.zeit.io/2026-11-10-1794298465399-zio-sepa-direct-debit-e-invoice.jpg) **From now on, an e-invoice paid by SEPA direct debit contains your customer's IBAN, your creditor ID and the mandate reference – each in the field it belongs in.** --- ## A quick reminder: what makes up a SEPA direct debit? A direct debit is identified by three pieces of information: * **Your customer's IBAN** – the account the money is taken from. * **Your creditor ID** – it identifies you as the party collecting, e.g. DE98ZZZ09999999999. In Germany you get it once from the Bundesbank. * **The mandate reference** – the reference you agreed with your customer when they signed the direct debit mandate. The European e-invoicing standard (EN 16931) has a dedicated field for each of them. That lets your customer's accounting match the debit on their bank statement to the right invoice and the right mandate. --- ## What changes now ### The right IBAN as the account to debit For invoices with the payment method *"SEPA direct debit"*, ZEIT.IO used to write the IBAN of your own bank account into the e-invoice as the customer's account. Now it writes the IBAN you stored on the customer – without spaces, as the standard requires. The fix applies to ZUGFeRD and XRechnung alike. ### Your creditor ID – new in the settings Under *Settings → Billing address* you'll find the new field *"Creditor ID (SEPA)"*. Enter your creditor identifier there once. ZEIT.IO checks the format and the check digits when you save. If the number is wrong – or an IBAN was entered by mistake – you'll see: *"The creditor ID is invalid. Example: DE98ZZZ09999999999"*. Until now, this field of the e-invoice contained your IBAN, on every invoice, including bank transfers. That was the wrong value. The creditor ID is now only written for direct debit invoices – and only if you've entered one. ### The mandate reference – new on the customer In the customer's payment terms, right below the IBAN, there's a new field *"Mandate reference"*. Enter the reference from the signed direct debit mandate. For direct debit customers it is also shown on the customer's detail page. The mandate reference is taken over from the customer when an invoice is created, just like the IBAN. If you change the customer later, invoices that already exist stay as they are. The field is available to organisations and freelancers, and through the REST API. ### Every change is traceable Changes to the creditor ID and the mandate reference show up in the audit log of the organisation or the customer, with the old and the new value. --- ## What stays the same * **Invoices paid by bank transfer** are not affected. They still contain your bank details as the account to pay into – but no longer a creditor ID, which never belonged there. * **The PDF** looks exactly as before. * **Both fields are optional.** If the creditor ID or the mandate reference is missing, that field simply stays empty in the e-invoice. An empty field is better than a wrong one. * **Freelancers** can't enter a creditor ID – it belongs to an organisation. They can, however, maintain the mandate reference on their customers. * **Invoices already sent** are not changed automatically. If you have to reissue an invoice or regenerate its e-invoice, first check that the IBAN and the mandate reference are on the invoice – they were taken over from the customer when it was created. --- ## Why this matters An e-invoice is made to be read by software, without anyone double-checking it. If it names the wrong account, the best case is a query from your customer's tax adviser. The worse case: their accounting can't match the debit, and you get a payment reminder for an amount you collected weeks ago. With IBAN, creditor ID and mandate reference, your customer's accounting sees at a glance who is collecting, from which account and on what basis. That's what direct debit customers rightly expect. **What's on the PDF is now in the data, too.**