ZUGFeRD (which is an acronym for Zentraler User Guide des Forums elektronische Rechnung Deutschland) is a file format for digital invoices that are both human- and machine-readable. The human-readable part consists of a PDF/A-3 file, within which is embedded a machine-readable XML representation of the same information. The second version of the ZUGFeRD specification, which is currently under joint German/French development, is also called FACTUR-X.
Mimotek is making use of their experience of extracting content from PDF files, and of PDF manipulation in general, to develop a new tool (Mimotek Groom), which creates ZUGFeRD/FACTUR-X files from plain PDF invoices. The starting point is a PDF invoice file, which is opened in Mimotek Groom. The interactive software analyses the document, making the content accessible to the operator who associates the various data values with the XML tags that are defined in ZUGFeRD/FACTUR-X schema. Once the xml tags have been populated, the XML invoice is created and embedded in the PDF. Finally, the PDF is made compliant with the PDF/A-3 specification and the required metadata is added, to create a valid ZUGFeRD/FACTUR-X invoice.
This tool, which will be useful for organisations who receive or generate PDF invoices that must be converted to ZUGFeRD/FACTUR-X, is currently under development. For more information please contact us.