Guide

Faktwise FAQ and Troubleshooting: Shopify E-Invoicing

Updated 2026-09-30

Faktwise prepares invoices for eligible paid orders according to your saved settings. Existing merchants keep their previous behavior unless they activate source selection. This page explains how to check a missing invoice, a held order or a delivery problem without creating duplicate work.

No invoice was created

Check these points in 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 completed company setup? Save the required company details in Settings. No invoice can be issued without them. With source selection active, inspect Orders needing review for the reason an order is held.
• 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.
• Is the source permitted? In source-selected shops, unknown or unselected groups wait in Orders needing review. Select the relevant group for future orders, request an eligible held order individually, or dismiss it. Enabling a source does not silently release already-held orders.
• What does the request status say? Queued means preparation is waiting, not that an invoice exists. Use the displayed failure or recovery guidance instead of repeatedly requesting the same invoice.

Can I leave marketplace orders out?

Yes. Open Review automatic sources in Settings and select only the observed groups Faktwise should invoice. You can select several groups. Groups appear as orders arrive, and one group may represent several channels. The rule follows the identifiers Shopify supplies, not an arbitrary order tag or a promise that every marketplace is separately identifiable. New shops begin with the initial own-store source rule; unrecognized sources wait for review. Existing shops change only if the merchant opts in. Read the timing choices: future-only leaves already-queued jobs on their earlier source rule.

Shopify missed an event. Must I issue the invoice manually?

Not necessarily. Check for missed orders lets eligible orders with continuous automatic permission continue automatically. Unknown sources, changed permissions or unsafe order data wait with a reason. A failed or queued check is not proof that all orders were recovered; follow its status and retry guidance. This does not import every historical order.

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 against VIES or a shop-specific cached result up to 30 days old, the EU’s VAT number check, at invoice time. Without a valid current or cached result, the VAT ID does not establish EU B2B exemption. 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. Enable them in Settings if wanted. Individual held-order requests have their own explicit email choice, also off by default. Check that the invoice has been issued, its artifacts are ready, and the order has a customer email address. An attempted delivery with an uncertain outcome is not blindly resent; inspect the displayed status before sending again. You can download an available PDF and arrange delivery yourself.

What happens when I refund an order?

Issued invoices are not edited afterwards. Supported Shopify refunds create a separate credit note referencing the original invoice. In source-selected handling, the correction must match the saved original amounts and available refund history; supported item and shipping refunds can be handled when that evidence is complete. Custom amounts or incomplete history may need attention instead. The older legacy path does not cover shipping-only or custom-amount refunds. Check the correction status and arrange any unsupported correction with your accountant; do not assume every refund has produced a document.

How long are invoices stored?

Faktwise stores issued invoices and their PDF/XML artifacts in its ten-year archive (the statutory German retention period is eight years since 2025). The archive is designed for the GoBD requirements, Germany’s rules for orderly, traceable electronic records: issued invoices are not changed afterwards, corrections use credit notes, an audit trail records events, and personal data is encrypted at rest (AES-256-GCM). Before uninstalling, export every month you need from the Export page. Each ZIP contains available PDF/XML files and a summary CSV; a CSV row does not prove both files are present. Reconcile the rows against the files and resolve missing documents before uninstalling. 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.