Leitweg-ID Explained: What It Is, Who Needs It and Where to Find It

If you invoice a German public authority, sooner or later you will be asked for a Leitweg-ID. It is not something you apply for as a supplier: it identifies your customer, the authority, and tells the invoice portals where to deliver your XRechnung. Here is how it works and where it goes in your invoice.

What the Leitweg-ID does

Germany's public administration receives e-invoices through central portals, such as the ZRE (Zentrale Rechnungseingangsplattform) for direct federal administration and OZG-RE for indirect federal administration and participating states. Thousands of authorities sit behind these portals, so each invoice needs an address label that says which office it belongs to. That label is the Leitweg-ID, literally a 'routing path ID'. The portal reads it and forwards your invoice to the right authority's system.

The format, briefly

A Leitweg-ID has up to three parts separated by hyphens: a coarse addressing part based on the official regional key that identifies the federal, state or municipal level, an optional fine addressing part that identifies a specific authority or department, and a two-digit check digit calculated with the ISO 7064 modulo 97-10 method. An example structure is 04011000-1234512345-06. You never need to construct one yourself; you only need to copy it correctly, since portals verify the check digit.

Who needs one and where to get it

• You need a Leitweg-ID whenever you send an XRechnung to a German public-sector client: federal ministries and agencies, and state or municipal bodies depending on the state's rules.
• The authority assigns and communicates its own Leitweg-ID. Look for it in the contract, the purchase order, the tender documents, or ask your contact person at the authority.
• You do not register for a Leitweg-ID as a supplier. It identifies the buyer, not you.
• Purely private B2B invoices do not use a Leitweg-ID. The Buyer Reference field can instead carry whatever reference your business customer requests, or their internal order reference.

Where it goes in the invoice

In EN 16931 terms, the Leitweg-ID goes into the Buyer Reference, business term BT-10. XRechnung makes this field mandatory, which is one of the ways the German profile is stricter than the base standard. If the field is missing or the ID is malformed, the receiving portal usually rejects the invoice automatically, so double-check it before exporting.

The E-Rechnung app has Leitweg-ID support built in for public-sector clients: enter it once for a saved client and it lands in the right field of every XRechnung you export. If you are new to invoicing authorities, our overview of XRechnung vs ZUGFeRD explains why the public sector expects XRechnung specifically.

General information only

This article describes the Leitweg-ID system in general terms as of 2026. Portal requirements and state-level rules vary and change; check the guidance of the specific authority or portal you are invoicing, and ask your Steuerberater if you are unsure about your obligations.