BR-57: Add the country code to the deliver-to address

The short answer

BR-57 fails when cac:Delivery/cac:DeliveryLocation/cac:Address has no cac:Country/cbc:IdentificationCode. Add the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code of the country the goods or services were delivered to, as the last child of that address.

The rule applies only where a deliver-to address is present. When tried, a cac:DeliveryLocation holding only an identifier, with no cac:Address, passed every layer; on an intra-community supply, though, BR-IC-12 needs the country regardless.

What the rule checks

Each cac:Address inside cac:Delivery/cac:DeliveryLocation is tested, and the finding points at that address. The rule asks only whether cac:Country contains an cbc:IdentificationCode element.

The value is not read, which sets this rule apart from the buyer rule BR-11. When tried, an empty deliver-to cbc:IdentificationCode passed BR-57 and was reported by BR-CL-14, as not a country code, and by PEPPOL-EN16931-R008, as an empty element.

A country name is not a substitute: when tried, cac:Country/cbc:Name in place of the code reported BR-57 with the warning UBL-CR-378.

An address written as cac:Delivery/cac:DeliveryAddress is outside the rule entirely. When tried, one with no country at all produced only the warning UBL-CR-682, and the document stayed valid.

How an integration ends up here

Possible causes, from the shape of the rule rather than from measured usage:

• The ship-to address is copied from an order or despatch record that holds street and city but no country, because deliveries were assumed to be domestic.
• Delivery addresses are free text in the source, and only the first line is mapped, into cbc:StreetName.
• The country is written as a name under cac:Country/cbc:Name.
• The delivery country is held on the order header, and the address block is built from a delivery point table that lacks it.

How to fix it

1. Take the country of the delivery point from the order or despatch record that supplied the rest of the address.
2. Add cac:Country with cbc:IdentificationCode as the final child of cac:DeliveryLocation/cac:Address, using the two-letter code, such as GB.
3. If the delivery country is not known, send no deliver-to address. Do not default it to the buyer or seller country unless that is where the delivery went.
4. Keep the address inside cac:DeliveryLocation. Moving it to cac:DeliveryAddress stops this rule from firing, but only because the address is then outside the model, which UBL-CR-682 reports.

Validate your corrected invoice

Before and after

These are fragments, not complete documents. The complete synthetic documents they come from are linked below.

Fragment of the failing invoice: the deliver-to address has a street and no country

<cac:Delivery>
  <cbc:ActualDeliveryDate>2026-09-07</cbc:ActualDeliveryDate>
  <cac:DeliveryLocation>
    <cac:Address>
      <cbc:StreetName>3 Delivery Street</cbc:StreetName>
    </cac:Address>
  </cac:DeliveryLocation>
</cac:Delivery>

Fragment of the corrected invoice: the deliver-to address ends with country code GB

<cac:Delivery>
  <cbc:ActualDeliveryDate>2026-09-07</cbc:ActualDeliveryDate>
  <cac:DeliveryLocation>
    <cac:Address>
      <cbc:StreetName>3 Delivery Street</cbc:StreetName>
      <cac:Country>
        <cbc:IdentificationCode>GB</cbc:IdentificationCode>
      </cac:Country>
    </cac:Address>
  </cac:DeliveryLocation>
</cac:Delivery>

The corrected invoice has cac:Country with the code GB after cbc:StreetName in the deliver-to address; the failing invoice has the street alone. Nothing else differs, and BR-57 is the only finding on the failing document.

Where it applies

• Credit notes use the same cac:Delivery structure. When tried, a credit note with the deliver-to country removed reported BR-57 at the address.
• When the document has a VAT breakdown in category K, intra-community supply, BR-IC-12 goes further and requires a deliver-to country code of at least two characters.
• The deliver-to country requirement is an EN 16931 rule, and the recorded failing invoice passes the Peppol layer.

Related rules

• UBL-CR-682 warns when the deliver-to address is written as DeliveryAddress, which this rule does not read
• BR-IC-12 requires the deliver-to country code on intra-community supplies
• BR-CL-14 checks the value of the deliver-to country code
• BR-11 is the buyer address counterpart, which also rejects an empty code
• Browse every rule in the reference
• Background: Understanding EN 16931 validation errors

Scope and source

Written for Peppol BIS Billing 3.0.21 (May 2026), EN 16931 1.3.16, as applied to UBL 2.1 Invoice and CreditNote documents. Other profiles, syntaxes and releases can define this identifier differently. Guidance version 2026-09-24.1: source checked 2026-09-24, explanation last updated 2026-09-24.

The official definition of BR-57 carries the normative wording and test. This page is our explanation of it, not a copy.

Guidance does not change the engine verdict. Fixing this finding does not mean the document passes every layer, and validation does not certify legal or tax compliance or transmit a document over Peppol.