Guide

Faktwise FAQ and Troubleshooting: Shopify E-Invoicing

Updated 2026-07-02

Faktwise works in the background: as soon as Shopify marks an order as paid, the app creates the matching invoice automatically. For most stores that just happens without any extra clicks. When something does look off, it is almost always one of a handful of common causes. This page collects the questions we hear most often, each with a concrete fix you can apply in a few minutes.

No invoice was created

Check these four things, ideally in this order:

• Is the order actually paid? Faktwise generates the invoice when Shopify reports the payment as received. With delayed payment methods or manually recorded payments, that can be well after the order came in.
• Have you saved your Settings at least once? The first save in Settings is what completes onboarding. Until then, Faktwise deliberately creates no invoices and skips incoming orders without an error message. Fill in at least the required fields (legal name, address, ZIP, city, country, and either your VAT ID or your German tax number) and save once.
• Was the order placed before you installed the app? Orders from before the installation do not get an automatic invoice.
• Is automatic invoicing switched on? Automatic invoicing on paid orders is on by default but can be turned off. Check the toggle in Settings.

The invoice shows the wrong tax

Faktwise applies one of six tax treatments automatically, based on country, customer type, and your settings. If the result looks wrong, go through this list:

• Kleinunternehmer toggle: the German small-business scheme under §19 UStG means you do not charge VAT at all. If the toggle is on, no invoice shows VAT; if it is off by mistake, VAT gets charged.
• OSS toggle: OSS (One-Stop-Shop) is the EU reporting scheme for B2C sales to consumers in other EU countries. With OSS switched on in Faktwise, those sales use the destination country’s standard VAT rate; with it off, German VAT applies. Whether OSS applies to you is your call, and you switch it on yourself; the app never activates it automatically. Background in our guide to EU OSS VAT on Shopify.
• The buyer’s VAT ID: EU cross-border B2B treatment needs a valid EU VAT ID from the buyer. For services that means reverse charge, where the buyer accounts for the VAT instead of you; for goods it is a zero-rated intra-Community supply. Faktwise verifies the VAT ID live against VIES, the EU’s VAT number check, at invoice time. If VIES happens to be unreachable, Faktwise charges VAT as the cautious default. Note that domestic German reverse-charge cases under §13b UStG are not covered.
• Goods vs services default: this setting decides which of the two B2B treatments applies to EU cross-border business sales. Make sure it matches what you actually sell.

The VAT ID field does not show up in my store

The field for the VAT ID and the Leitweg-ID is a theme app block you add once: in your Shopify admin, go to Online Store -> Themes -> Customize, switch to the Cart template, use Add section under Apps, pick Faktwise VAT / Leitweg-ID, and save. The quickest route is the card on the Faktwise Settings page, which deep-links you to the right spot in the theme editor. Two things are intentional here: the block lives on the cart page because that works on every Shopify plan (checkout-step fields are a Shopify Plus feature), and it renders collapsed behind a business-customer toggle so consumers never see fields they do not need. Business buyers expand it and enter their VAT ID and/or Leitweg-ID, the routing number German public-sector buyers use to receive e-invoices. More on the whole flow in our guide to B2B invoices with VAT ID and reverse charge on Shopify.

I expected an XRechnung but got a ZUGFeRD invoice

XRechnung, Germany’s XML invoice format for public-sector buyers, requires seller contact and payment details under its BR-DE rules. If your contact email or IBAN is missing in Settings, Faktwise cannot produce an XRechnung that meets those rules, so it issues the Leitweg-ID order as a ZUGFeRD invoice instead and shows a notice on the dashboard explaining exactly that. The fix takes a minute: add your contact email and IBAN in Settings, and future public-sector orders will be issued as XRechnung. For the format itself, see our guide to XRechnung on Shopify.

My customer did not get the invoice by email

Automatic invoice emails are off by default. Switch them on in Settings and the customer receives the invoice PDF automatically once the order is paid, with a German or English template. Also check whether the order contains a customer email address at all: some orders, for example from point of sale, have none, and then no email can go out. Either way, you can download any invoice as a PDF from the dashboard and send it yourself.

What happens when I refund an order?

An issued invoice is never edited after the fact. When you refund an order in Shopify, Faktwise automatically creates a Gutschrift, a credit note: a separate correction document with positive amounts that references the original invoice number. That keeps your invoice history fully traceable. One current limitation: refunds that cover only shipping or only a custom amount do not create a credit note today. Keep a note of those cases for your accountant.

How long are invoices stored?

Faktwise keeps every invoice as PDF and XML for ten years (the statutory German retention period is eight years since 2025). The archive is designed for the GoBD requirements, Germany’s rules for keeping electronic books and records in an orderly, traceable way: invoices are created so that they are not changed afterwards, corrections happen only through credit notes, and an audit trail records what happened; personal data is encrypted at rest (AES-256-GCM). One important habit: before you uninstall the app, export your archive from the Export page, which gives you a monthly ZIP with all PDFs, all XMLs, and a summary CSV. Background reading: GoBD invoice archiving for Shopify.

Did we miss your question? The dashboard is usually the best first stop: it lists every invoice, lets you download PDF and XML, and shows a notice whenever an order needed special handling. One thing we want to be clear about: Faktwise is software, not tax advice. For questions about your specific tax situation, your tax advisor is the right person to ask. For everything about the app itself, start with the Settings page; most of the issues above are fixed there in under a minute.