Hotel invoices and e-invoicing: required details, VAT rates and a clean process

What belongs on a hotel invoice

Whether you run an eight-room guesthouse or a sixty-room city hotel, the same basic rules apply to your invoices as to any other business. The invoice has to show who supplied what to whom, in which period, at what price and how much VAT it contains. If a required detail is missing, a business guest may not be able to reclaim the input VAT, and at that point the invoice comes back to your front desk with a request for correction.

The list below summarises what is usually required in Austria and Germany. It does not replace tax advice: details such as the threshold for small-amount invoices, the recipient’s VAT number or special cases for guests from abroad are set out in each country’s VAT law, and they change from time to time. Have your invoice template approved once by your accountant before you use it day to day.

Small invoices benefit from simplified rules. In Germany, an invoice of up to €250 gross counts as a small-amount invoice (Kleinbetragsrechnung); in Austria the limit is €400 gross (as of 2026, check with your tax advisor). Fewer details are then required, for example no guest name and address. In practice most hotels still issue full invoices, because business guests need them for their expense claims.

Room, breakfast and extras: show them separately

In both Austria and Germany, accommodation itself is taxed at a reduced rate. In Germany the overnight stay is taxed at the reduced rate of 7%, in Austria at the reduced rate of 10% (as of 2026, check with your tax advisor). Other services are not automatically included: drinks, minibar, parking, spa or meeting rooms are often taxed at a different rate.

Breakfast is where the two countries differ. In Austria, breakfast as part of the stay is usually taxed together with the overnight stay at the reduced rate, while drinks may be treated differently. In Germany, breakfast is not part of the reduced-rate accommodation and must be shown separately; the rate for food and drink has changed several times in recent years. Many German hotels bundle breakfast, parking and Wi-Fi for business travellers into a package that has to be split correctly. A short check with your accountant pays off before you set up rates and packages.

Packages such as “room with half board” or spa breaks are particularly tricky. The guest sees one price, but the invoice has to show which share falls under which VAT rate. Define the split once in the rate, not every time at the front desk.

Deposits, final invoices and corrections

Many hotels ask for a deposit at the time of booking, and for the full amount on non-refundable rates. The payment arrives before the service has been provided. It has to reappear on the final invoice at check-out: as an amount already paid, deducted from the total. Whether you also need to issue a separate deposit invoice, for example because a corporate client asks for one, is a question for your tax advisor.

And if something is wrong? An issued invoice is not overwritten, however tempting and quick that would be at the front desk. The clean way is to cancel the invoice with a credit note (in Germany also called a cancellation invoice or invoice correction) and to issue a new, correct invoice. That way every audit can see what was originally charged and why it was corrected.

Complete numbering goes with it. Every invoice number is used exactly once, including for cancelled invoices. If a number is missing from the sequence, you must be able to explain why. That only works if the number is assigned when the invoice is finally issued, not when a draft is created.

E-invoicing in hotels: what changes for corporate clients

Under the new rules, an e-invoice is an invoice in a structured, machine-readable format based on the European standard EN 16931. Common formats in Germany are XRechnung, a pure XML file, and ZUGFeRD or the equivalent Factur-X, a PDF with the structured data embedded in it. People read the PDF, accounting software reads the data.

In Germany, all businesses have had to be able to receive e-invoices from other businesses since 1 January 2025. The obligation to issue them follows in stages: as things stand, from 2027 for larger companies and from 2028 for everyone. Small-amount invoices up to €250 are currently exempt, and you may still issue paper or PDF invoices to private guests (as of 2026, check with your tax advisor). For a hotel this means: the corporate invoice for a longer business trip or a seminar will turn into an e-invoice, the invoice for a family on summer holiday will not.

In Austria, e-invoicing has so far been mandatory mainly for invoices to federal public authorities. As things stand, there is no general obligation between businesses there; at European level, an extension for cross-border business is in preparation. When German corporate clients stay with you, their accounting departments will still increasingly ask for a structured invoice.

Corporate invoices and handover to your tax advisor

Business guests come with their own requirements: the invoice is made out to the company, not the guest; some companies want one invoice per stay, others a monthly collective invoice; extras such as the bar or minibar are often paid privately by the guest. For corporate agreements, put in writing which services are billed to the company and which the guest pays personally. That saves discussions and split invoices at check-out.

At the end of the month your tax advisor needs invoices, credit notes, payments and bank transactions in a form they can import without retyping. In Germany that is usually the DATEV format, in Austria often BMD. The better payments are already matched to invoices in the hotel, the fewer queries come back from the accountant.

How STRYK handles it

In STRYK the invoice is created straight from the booking: room, extras, minibar, POS items from the restaurant and bar, and the tourist tax are carried over as lines with quantity, price and their own VAT rate. For companies, STRYK keeps the company name, address and VAT number separate from the guest; for corporate agreements, the stays of a period can be billed on one collective invoice. You can create quotes in advance and turn them into an invoice once they are accepted.

As long as an invoice is a draft, it can be edited. STRYK assigns the number only when the invoice is issued, from a number range that belongs to your hotel; gaps are logged. Issued invoices cannot be changed or turned back into a draft: corrections are made with a numbered credit note that stays linked to the original. Preview, download and email use the same PDF, which you can produce in 18 languages with your logo, your colours and your bank details.

When you send an invoice to a company, STRYK creates the e-invoice as a ZUGFeRD document under EN 16931, and as XRechnung for German public-sector clients with a Leitweg-ID. Where e-invoicing is mandatory, as for German business customers from 2027, STRYK chooses it automatically; otherwise only with the company’s consent. STRYK shows missing recipient details beforehand. Incoming supplier e-invoices in XRechnung or Factur-X format arrive in the document inbox.

You define the deposit and the balance in the rate plan. Online payments run through the built-in payment service, and STRYK collects the balance at the cancellation deadline if the payment method and the guest’s consent allow it; after a free cancellation, the online payment is refunded automatically. You import bank statements as CAMT.053 or CSV and match the transactions to open invoices. For your accountant, STRYK creates a tax advisor package in DATEV or BMD format, as CSV or Excel.