With marketplace and shop orders, writing the invoice is not the problem. At fifty orders a day, producing the document is automated on each of the three routes there are for it: through the sales channel itself, through an integration built into your invoicing software, or through an intermediate service such as easybill Connect or Billbee. The problem is completeness: an order that was never imported only surfaces months later, when invoice totals and payouts stop matching. So what to look for when choosing is a reconciliation that reports a missing invoice on its own.
That this is its own trade deserves saying up front. I do not sell through marketplaces, I write quotes and invoices for services: here an invoice follows a conversation, in retail it follows a stranger's click. What both share is the question of who notices when one is missing. That reconciliation work runs automatically here, while approval and posting stay with people (Hiring AI employees, AI Agent for Bookkeeping and Inbox). The opposite direction, how revenue from payment providers then reaches the books, is in Connect DATEV to PayPal, Stripe and Shopify. And one sentence that belongs here: this is not tax advice. Which rule applies to your turnover is something you settle with your tax firm.
When a marketplace sale triggers an obligation to invoice
The obligation hangs on the buyer, not on the channel. Section 14 (2) of the German VAT Act (UStG) obliges you, as a rule, to issue an invoice when you supply another taxable person for their business, or a legal entity that is not a taxable person, and to do so within six months of performing the supply. "As a rule" belongs here because the same provision excepts turnover that is exempt under section 4 nos. 8 to 29 UStG: in the trade in goods that rarely applies, but it is the reason the obligation does not cover every business-to-business transaction across the board. For an ordinary private buyer it does not apply at all: you may issue an invoice, and in practice they expect one, but you are not required to.
That is less a relief than a sorting task, because an order does not show you who is behind it: business customers buy through Amazon Business, and their orders are exactly the cases in section 14 (2) UStG. So treat every order alike rather than sorting afterwards.
Two simplifications are still worth knowing. Invoices with a total of up to 250 euros may be shorter under section 33 of the VAT Implementing Regulation (UStDV): the full name and address of the issuer, the date of issue, the quantity and type of what was supplied, and the consideration plus tax amount as a single sum with the applicable rate are enough. And the German e-invoicing obligation, which has been phasing in since 2025, covers supplies between businesses established in Germany; for private customers and for sales abroad it changes nothing (dates and exemptions, what changes for small businesses). The 250-euro rule has a catch: section 33 UStDV expressly excludes distance sales under section 3c UStG, and those are precisely what shipping into the EU is about.
Three routes, and what separates them
Features and prices of the providers named here change often. Every figure in this article comes from the provider's own pages, retrieved on 20 September 2026.
Route 1: What the channel does itself
Shopify brings both, and here the product term misleads easily. A draft order lets you assemble products and discounts and send "invoices with secure checkout links". What Shopify calls an "invoice" is first of all a request for payment with a checkout link through which the buyer completes the purchase. Whether that document is at the same time an invoice within the meaning of section 14 UStG is decided by its content and by the app that produces it, not by its name in the menu.
With Amazon the difference is not about the document but about the tax calculation. The service provider easybill frames it as a choice, "Ob du selbst rechnest oder Amazon die Steuer berechnet", whether you calculate yourself or Amazon calculates the tax, and names IDU and the VAT Calculation Service, VCS, for uploading invoices. That is a vendor statement about someone else's platform; what is enabled for your account you see in your seller account.
eBay sends the obvious search in the wrong direction: its help page on invoices deals with the fees eBay charges you. For eBay, and for Etsy, the route runs through route 2 or 3.
Route 2: What invoicing software offers
This is where a close look pays off, because "integration" often means something other than expected. sevDesk, whose interfaces a separate post sorts out, lists Amazon, eBay and Etsy among its integrations, but describes each of them through a partner: with "our Billbee interface", it says, you get "professional software for your Amazon bookkeeping", word for word the same for eBay, and for Etsy either through Billbee or through Kassenklingeln.
Lexware Office is similar, and documents it openly. Its help article on payment providers asks right at the start whether your shop system uses "a payment provider that cannot be connected to Lexware Office directly", and points to Billbee, PayJoe and Miracle Sync once more than roughly 50 to 100 documents accumulate per bank transaction. Ready-made integrations exist for ePages and Shopify; all the routes are in Lexoffice Integration.
Route 3: Intermediate services
For retail this is the usual route, because it bundles the marketplace quirks in one place. easybill Connect says it imports orders "aus Amazon, eBay, Shopify und über 70 weiteren Plattformen", from Amazon, eBay, Shopify and more than 70 further platforms, daily or hourly, and that "aus jeder Bestellung wird automatisch eine rechtskonforme E-Rechnung erstellt", every order automatically becomes a compliant e-invoice, sent straight to the customer if wanted, "wahlweise als PDF oder ZUGFeRD", either as a PDF or as ZUGFeRD.
That sentence is a vendor quote, and it takes the term more widely than the law does. A PDF on its own is not an e-invoice: the German Federal Ministry of Finance counts a "einfaches PDF-Dokument", a simple PDF document, among the other invoices, "da es kein strukturiertes Format hat", because it has no structured format. ZUGFeRD from version 2.0.1 does meet the requirements, except in the MINIMUM and BASIC-WL profiles. So the output format is part of what decides whether you are sending an e-invoice at all.
Billbee comes from the inventory management side and lists more than 150 integrations, among them the major marketplaces and shop systems. Invoices, delivery notes "und Co." are produced fully automatically according to the vendor and go straight to the customer. easybill bills by documents, Billbee by orders; the prices are in the question block below.
What invoice data actually comes out of a marketplace
The channel supplies the transaction, not the document. In come the order number and order date, line items with quantity and price, shipping costs, delivery and billing address, payment method and shipping status, for Amazon plus returns as separate transactions, from which easybill builds credit notes and links them to the original invoice. Three things, by contrast, typically do not arrive in usable form, and they are exactly the ones that turn a transaction into an invoice.
- The invoice number. An order number identifies a purchase, not an invoice. Section 14 (4) no. 4 UStG requires a sequential number assigned once by the issuer.
- The correct tax rate. It follows from the destination country and the type of goods, not from the order record. That is why easybill advertises "Korrekte MwSt. für jedes EU-Land", correct VAT for every EU country, and a detection of margin-scheme goods, which has to be set on the article beforehand.
- Immutability. It is a property of the tool the invoice sits in, not of the order file. Records must be kept "einzeln, vollständig, richtig, zeitgerecht und geordnet" (individually, completely, correctly, in good time and in order) under section 146 (1) of the Fiscal Code (AO).
Why completeness matters and speed does not
An import failure is quiet. An order that was not picked up because a connection dropped or because a new order type appeared produces no document and no alarm, and it leaves no gap in the number sequence, because the skipped number was never assigned in the first place: the next invoice simply takes the next number. A sequence without gaps is therefore no proof that no invoice is missing; the counter-check runs against the channel's order list and against the statement the marketplace pays out. There are features for exactly that, and they are the decisive selection criterion: easybill describes how the service loads settlement reports automatically and identifies "fehlende Bestellungen", missing orders, that can then be imported after the fact.
Without such a feature you need a monthly reconciliation of your own. You do not have to design it from scratch: it looks different on Amazon than on Etsy, and in the community and in the calls there are people who have already built one for their channel. Three questions sort the routes above.
- Who assigns the invoice number, and from which range? A separate range per channel is permitted and often sensible; what it must not be is unclear.
- Is there a reconciliation against channel data? Or do you have to count for yourself?
- What happens with returns and partial refunds? A linked credit note with its own number, or a quietly amended invoice?
Selling abroad: the rule changes with the destination
Four questions sit on top of each other here and are readily mixed up. The place of supply follows from section 3c UStG, the tax rate from the destination country, the obligation to invoice from section 14a (2) UStG, and whether the marketplace is liable for unpaid tax is in section 25e UStG. The One-Stop-Shop procedure is a filing procedure: it moves neither the place of supply nor the tax rate and does not touch platform liability, but it does affect the obligation to invoice.
Shipping to private customers in other EU states moves the place of supply first of all. Under section 3c (1) UStG that place is where the goods are located when dispatch or transport to the customer ends, so the destination country with its rate. Below a threshold German taxation stays: section 3c (4) UStG exempts businesses established in only one member state whose consideration for these supplies "insgesamt 10 000 Euro im vorangegangenen Kalenderjahr nicht überschritten hat und im laufenden Kalenderjahr nicht überschreitet" (did not exceed 10,000 euros in total in the previous calendar year and does not exceed it in the current one).
Above the threshold you do not need a return in every country: through the procedure at the Federal Central Tax Office, in the BZSt's words "eine Sonderregelung auf dem Gebiet der Umsatzsteuer", a special VAT arrangement, such supplies are declared centrally in Germany, quarterly. For invoice automation it is above all the third layer that counts: section 14a (2) UStG imposes an obligation to invoice intra-Community distance sales, but expressly exempts anyone taking part in the special procedure under section 18j UStG. Most retailers issue one anyway, because the buyer expects it and because the payout would otherwise have no document behind it.
Somebody therefore has to watch the threshold before it is crossed, because after that every further sale is billed at the wrong rate; easybill advertises monitoring of the OSS thresholds with a warning at 90 percent. Whether your setup falls under OSS at all also depends on whether your goods sit in a warehouse abroad: a separate case for your tax firm.
When the draft is created in the invoicing tool
All three routes above solve transport. They do not decide whether a transaction is plausible, and they do not ask back when two pieces of information contradict each other. That is exactly where Anton, my AI employee for quotes and invoices sits. He does not write an invoice into a file, he creates the contact, the quote and the invoice as drafts inside the invoicing tool, where the number range, the immutability and the e-invoicing formats come from anyway. In my setup that tool is Lexware Office; which tool sits behind it is a question of the adapter, not of the structure.
Two limits are hard-wired into him. He drafts, I approve: nothing is finalised until I have said yes explicitly, and he first names the consequences, such as the invoice number that then becomes final. And no price without a source: if he finds two different prices for the same service, he lists both with where they came from and asks, instead of averaging. The same pattern applies to reconciliation: when the order list, the invoice list and the payout do not match, the report is the result, not a number made to fit. How such an employee grows into a small business is in Bringing AI to a Small Business.
Frequently asked questions
Does Amazon create the invoice itself?
Amazon offers to calculate the tax for you through the VAT Calculation Service. The document itself therefore does not have to come from Amazon: finished invoices can be uploaded via IDU or VCS, according to easybill. What is enabled for your account you check in your seller account.
Is a PDF an e-invoice?
No, not on its own. Under section 14 (1) UStG an e-invoice is "in einem strukturierten elektronischen Format ausgestellt, übermittelt und empfangen", issued, transmitted and received in a structured electronic format; the Federal Ministry of Finance therefore counts a simple PDF document among the other invoices. ZUGFeRD from 2.0.1 embeds structured data in the PDF, except in the MINIMUM and BASIC-WL profiles.
How do I notice that an invoice is missing?
Not from the number sequence: it stays unbroken, because for an order that was never imported no number was ever assigned. It only becomes visible in the reconciliation against channel data. easybill says it loads the settlement reports automatically for this and identifies missing orders. Without that feature you count for yourself, monthly.
What does an automated invoicing solution cost?
The billing models differ more than the prices. easybill charges by documents, from a free tier with 50 documents a month up to Premium at 45 euros. Billbee charges by orders, Starter up to 200 orders with a 9 euro minimum fee, with credit notes and cancellations counting towards it. sevDesk starts at 11.90 euros. All figures net, provider pages retrieved on 20 September 2026.
How to carry on
Take a single month and count three numbers: how many orders the channel shows, how many invoices you have for them, and whether the invoice total matches the payout plus fees and refunds. That answers more than any vendor comparison. If the numbers line up, the rest is convenience. If they do not, you know what to select on: the feature that finds missing orders.
If what is left after that is the exceptions, the question becomes who checks them without taking approval out of your hands. That setup is what I walk through step by step in my community Claude Practitioners.
