What to do when a conversion task is rejected: common reasons, solutions and resubmission.
Sometimes eConnect cannot convert a submitted document into an e-invoice. The conversion task then receives the status "rejected" and you receive an error message by email with the reason. In most cases, you can resolve the issue yourself and resubmit the document.
Below are the reasons why a conversion task may be rejected, with guidance on what you can do for each.
The total amount cannot be determined, or required invoice elements are missing. A valid invoice must contain at minimum an invoice number, invoice date, amounts and identification details of the supplier and buyer.
What can you do? Check that the invoice is complete and resubmit the document. If a specific supplier's invoices are structurally missing data, contact the supplier.
The system has recognized the document as something other than an invoice or purchase order. The automatic classification (Detect API) distinguishes among others: invoices, proforma invoices, logos, receipts, packing slips, purchase orders, payslips, reminders, tax documents, terms and conditions, and attachments. Documents not classified as an invoice or purchase order are eligible for rejection.
The classification itself is fully automatic, but the actual rejection of a conversion task is always a manual action by the quality team. A document can therefore be correctly classified as "not an invoice" and subsequently reviewed by the team.
What can you do? This is typically a correct classification. Proforma invoices are rejected by default and this cannot be overridden. If you want a proforma to be processed anyway, change the word "proforma" on the PDF to "invoice" before submitting the document. This is your responsibility as the customer.
If you want to include the document as an attachment to an invoice, send it together with the invoice in the same email. Is your invoice incorrectly classified as a proforma invoice? Report this to support so the classification can be improved.
The scan is too light, too dark, blurry or of the back side. The OCR engine cannot reliably recognize the text.
What can you do? Rescan the document at a minimum of 300 dpi, ensure good contrast and place it straight on the glass plate.
The PDF has encryption, a digital signature or other restrictions that prevent the text from being read.
What can you do? Remove the protection from the PDF file or ask the supplier for an unprotected version.
The PDF file contains more than one invoice. eConnect always processes one invoice per file.
What can you do? Split the PDF file so that each invoice is in a separate file. A multi-page invoice is fine in a single PDF.
A technical error occurred. The document will be automatically resubmitted within 24 hours on business days.
What can you do? Wait for the automatic reprocessing. If the document has not been processed after 24 hours, contact support.
Tip for persistent processing errors: a PDF that keeps getting stuck on a processing error can often be unblocked by re-"printing" the source file to PDF via Microsoft Print to PDF (or a comparable PDF printer) and submitting the new PDF. This normalises the PDF structure and resolves many embedded-PDF issues without support needing to intervene.
A self-billing invoice was sent to the wrong receiver. As a buyer, submit it as a purchase invoice; as a supplier, submit it as a sales invoice.
What can you do? Resubmit the invoice to the correct email address (purchase or sales).
With ZUGFeRD invoices (hybrid PDF with embedded XML), it may happen that the conversion task shows the status "Successfully processed", but the invoice does not appear in your Inbox. In that case, the IDR recognition succeeded, but the conversion from CII format to UBL failed. The platform can only store valid UBL invoices.
What can you do? Contact support and mention that the conversion task is marked as successful but the invoice is missing. The technical team can adjust the transformation so that similar invoices are processed correctly in the future.
Tip: a ZUGFeRD invoice that scores "green" in external validators may still fail on the eConnect platform. This is because the platform applies stricter requirements (BIS Billing v3 / NLCIUS) than most CII validators.
After resolving the issue, you can resubmit the document by email. Send it to the same email address as the first time. The platform treats it as a new document and starts a new conversion task.
If you believe an invoice was incorrectly rejected, you can report this via support.econnect.eu. Include the document in question with a request for re-evaluation. The eConnect team will review the invoice and adjust the classification or recognition if needed.
Important: every correction made by the Quality Control team is fed back to the IDR as training data. This ensures that a similar error is automatically prevented in the future.
Want to understand how the full conversion process works? Read Conversion task: the process from start to finish.
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