Shopify VAT invoices: what a compliant EU invoice must contain

A business customer asks for "a VAT invoice". What they mean is a document their accountant can use to reclaim the VAT, which means it has to carry specific content. Miss a field and the deduction can be refused — their problem first, then yours, because they will be back.

The list below is the common EU core, harmonised by the VAT Directive. National rules add to it; none of them subtract.

The mandatory fields

About you, the seller

Full legal name and address — the registered entity, not just the shop name.
Your VAT identification number.
In several countries, your company registration number and legal form as well.

About the document

The word identifying it as an invoice.
A sequential number from one or more continuous series. This is the field with the most rules attached to it and it gets its own guide.
The issue date.
The date of supply — the date goods were delivered or the service performed — when it differs from the issue date.

About the buyer

Name and address.
Their VAT number, required whenever the reverse charge applies, and expected by business buyers in any case.

About what was sold

Quantity and description of each item.
The unit price excluding VAT.
Any discount not already in the unit price.
The VAT rate applied per line.
The taxable amount per rate, the VAT amount per rate, and the total.

Legal mentions when they apply

The reverse charge wording on an intra-EU B2B supply.
The exemption reference when the sale is exempt.
Margin scheme wording for second-hand goods, art, and similar.
Late payment penalties and recovery fees, mandatory in France.

The two cases that go wrong

Reverse charge on B2B across an EU border

You are in France. Your customer is a VAT-registered business in Germany and gives you a valid German VAT number. You do not charge French VAT. The German business accounts for it themselves. Your invoice must show 0% VAT, both VAT numbers, and the reverse charge mention — in France, "Autoliquidation", or the Article 196 reference to the VAT Directive.

Three ways this fails in practice:

The VAT number is not checked. A number that is invalid or not registered for intra-EU trade means the reverse charge does not apply and you owed VAT on that sale. The check is the VIES service, and doing it at the moment of sale is the only time it is cheap.
The number is never collected. Shopify's standard checkout has no VAT number field outside B2B on Plus. The usual workaround is a cart attribute added in your theme, which is what InvoicePilot reads.
The buyer is not actually a business. A VAT number in a form field is not proof. Validate it, store the result and the date, and keep the invoice consistent with what the check returned.

Simplified invoices, and why they are a trap for online sales

Most member states allow a simplified invoice below a threshold — commonly €100, but national — with reduced content: no buyer details required, no per-rate breakdown in some cases.

The trap is that a simplified invoice generally does not work for distance sales or for intra-EU B2B, which is most of what a Shopify store does. It is designed for the counter of a shop. Reaching for it to avoid collecting buyer details on an online order usually produces a document that is not valid for the transaction it describes.

What Shopify gives you, and where it stops

Shopify calculates VAT well. Rates by country, the EU distance-selling threshold, and tax-inclusive or tax-exclusive display are all handled in the tax settings, and the amounts on the order are the amounts you want on the invoice.

What it does not do is issue the document. The order confirmation carries the totals but not the legal identity fields, not a sequential invoice number, and not the legal mentions. So the compliant invoice is always produced from the order, by something else: by hand, by a template in Order Printer, or by an app.

That is the gap InvoicePilot fills: it reads the paid order, applies its own gapless number, prints both parties' legal blocks, breaks the tax down per rate, and adds the reverse charge mention when the buyer's VIES-validated VAT number qualifies. Free for the first 15 invoices a month, $9/month after that.

One thing worth doing today, whatever tool you use

Look at the last invoice you sent a business customer and check three fields: your VAT number, their VAT number, and the invoice number. If any of the three is missing, or if the invoice number is your Shopify order number, that is the thing to fix first — it is the same fix for every invoice you will send afterwards.

Written on 4 August 2026 against the common EU rules. National requirements add fields; for your own case, ask your accountant.