[Kalle75]

It is a problem, we have often contact with. Even a big platform like “Etsy” has no sultion for customers for that (the “invoices”/payment receipts are not accepted by tax offices). But very big plaforms or software solutions like Woocommerce, Ebay, Amazon of course have. Maybe I find a solution to create invoices manually.

[Kalle75]

Thank you for your answers. Stripe might provide legally compliant payment receipts, Paypal unfortunately does not. With Paypal it is possible to send an invoice (that is legally accepted) BEFORE someone sends a payment. But AFTERWARDS it`s unfortunetaly not possible. The typical Afterwards-payment receipt is not accepted (I made a couple of times that experience with the German tax institutions, they are horrible and totally strict).

The terminologies and the differences are well known.

In the German tax office it is like that:
They want to have an official Invoice-document (no matter it that one is provided BEFORE or AFTER services are delivered and paid).
If one goes to a tax concultant (ot the tax office) one has, at the end of the year, boxes with loads of invoices. The “invoices” are the base to get money back from the tax-office. No official “invoices”, no money back…

So people neet “invoices” that are sended BEFORE OR AFTER Paying the invoice-amount. Both is accepted by the German law.

I send you a typical invoice, that one get after (or before) buying a service or an article.
Please be aware: Invoices in Germany are in the most time the same, no matter I one has alreary paid or not paid.
Sometime (if one has already paid) one gets a remark on the incoice, like “customer has already paid”. Most time, one does not get. What I mean: In Germany there is no real difference of a invoice in terms of “paying before” or “paying afterwards”.

https://charta-thesauri.de/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/rechnung_example.png

On that document the following dates MUST be written:

Sellername, Selleradress, Seller Tax-number
Date
Invoice-number

If possible: Name, Adresse of person, that bought the services

Price (if so: Included taxes)

I`m thinking of using the payment-data of Simple Membership to generate somehow official invoices whith the needed data.
Maybe I will buy the “export data plugin” to generate automatically invoices on the base of excel or csv-files..

• This reply was modified 1 day, 4 hours ago by Kalle75.

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