What it means
UBL lets a postal address carry a separate Region element. EN 16931 has no field for it. The seller's address (BG-5) has one place for this kind of detail, the country subdivision (BT-39). This rule fails whenever cbc:Region is present in the seller's postal address, even if it is empty.
Why it matters
This rule is a warning, so the invoice is still accepted. The recipient's software has no field to store a region, so the value is ignored and does not reach their records. It is worth fixing when the region is part of how the recipient finds your address, because it will not be read where it is.
How to fix it
In your invoicing software, look at the address of your own company and move the region into the county, state or province field if there is one. If you build the XML yourself, delete cbc:Region from cac:AccountingSupplierParty/cac:Party/cac:PostalAddress and put the text in cbc:CountrySubentity.
The rule as published
A UBL invoice should not include the AccountingSupplierParty Party PostalAddress Region Where this rule applies
| Rule set | Version |
|---|---|
| EN 16931 (UBL) | 1.3.17 |
| EN 16931 (UBL credit note) | 1.3.17 |
| XRechnung 3.0 (UBL) | 3.0.2 |
| XRechnung 3.0 (UBL credit note) | 3.0.2 |
| Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 (invoice) | 2026.5 |
| Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 (credit note) | 2026.5 |
| SI-UBL 2.0 / NLCIUS (invoice) | 2.0.3.13 |
| SI-UBL 2.0 / NLCIUS (credit note) | 2.0.3.13 |
| France CTC (UBL invoice) | 1.4.0-04 |
| France CTC (UBL credit note) | 1.4.0-04 |
| CIUS-RO UBL Invoice 1.0.9 | 1.0.9 |
| CIUS-RO UBL Credit Note 1.0.9 | 1.0.9 |
Check your file
Drop your e-invoice to see whether UBL-CR-163 still fails, and which other rules do.