A German storefront, an English invoice
Smuuve sells at-home hair care. The shop is in German, with menu items like Produkte, Ergebnisse and Anleitung, and a gold banner across the top carries a sale code. The product photo shows a small line of bottles: shampoo, conditioner, a smoothing spray and a protection spray.
The invoice is in English. That is the setting on the account, and it is the one detail that makes this shop different from the other German stories in the series.
What changes when the language changes
Almost nothing in the tax rules. Section 14 of the German VAT act asks for the same fields whatever language the document is in: names and addresses of seller and buyer, a tax number or USt-IdNr., the date, a consecutive invoice number, the goods, the net amount, the rate and the tax amount. A tax office can ask for a German translation, so a seller who issues English invoices should be able to produce one.
For a shop that sells mostly to private buyers, the rest is light. A consumer can be sold to without an invoice, and an order under 250 euros gross can use a shortened invoice. Most shops send the full document anyway, because it looks right and one layout covers every order.
The e-invoice rules, with receiving in place since January 2025 and sending phased in through 2028, apply to sales between businesses. A hair-care shop with consumer customers is mostly outside them.
The Blue template
Smuuve has used PDF Invoice since 2021, and the app has sent 3,200+ documents. The template is Blue invoice, in English, with automatic emails to customers. The account also holds a refund, an order document, a quote and a packing slip.
Blue puts the seller block at the top left, with address, phone, tax ID and register number, then the invoice number, date and amount on the right. A payment address and payment method sit in two coloured bars, followed by the line items with SKU, quantity, price and subtotal, then subtotal, VAT and grand total. In English the labels read Invoice, Payment Address and Grand Total, and the tax line says VAT. The seller's tax ID and register lines print as entered, so the fields section 14 asks for are on the page whichever language is chosen. The sample on this page uses the layout as is. Every name, address and ID on it is invented, and its four products follow the bottles visible on the storefront.
Results
The number is 3,200+ documents sent since 2021, and each one comes from the same template without anyone touching it. The shop has no matched review, and there are no figures on revenue or time saved to report.
Try it
If your customers read English or you sell beyond Germany, you can set the invoice language independently of your storefront. Install PDF Invoice from the Shopify App Store to try the Blue template, and run the free invoice audit to check your German fields.