German VAT number format - urgent help please!

[steve_amv8]

Does anyone on here understand German VAT numbers?

One of our clients has given us their VAT number / UST-Nr. as 04522301117.

Problem is that German VAT numbers are meant to be DE followed by 9 digits and so the number above gets rejected! I can't find anything on Google about any format other that the DE999999999 version.

Any ideas anyone?!

[steve_amv8]

Cheers for the quick reply. Sadly doesn't help though - really odd that I can't find any reference to the 11 digit number on the web, except on sites related to our customer!

[steve_amv8]

We've come to the conclusion that it is an internal German format so we've hassled them again for a "proper" EU format number.

Cheers for the replies