How to issue a simplified tax invoice in Saudi Arabia: the steps, the fields and the 24-hour report
A simplified tax invoice is the one you give a consumer: generated by a compliant solution at the moment of sale, handed over at once with its QR code, and reported to the Authority within 24 hours. The steps in order, the fields it must carry with the rule that checks each, and a worked example at 15% VAT from a VAT-inclusive price.
E-invoicing for online stores in Saudi Arabia: getting every order invoiced without touching XML
Most store orders are consumer sales, so each one takes a simplified invoice reported to the Authority within 24 hours. No store platform reports anything to ZATCA on its own — and the one thing that silently stops every order being invoiced is an establishment that installed the app but never finished its Fatoora connection.
Can a Saudi business still invoice from Excel or Word? What ZATCA requires, and what to use instead
No. Since Phase 1 began on 4 December 2021, ZATCA has required invoices to come from a compliant e-invoicing solution, and Phase 2 adds what no spreadsheet can produce: XML with a UUID, a hash chain, a cryptographic stamp and a QR code, cleared or reported through Fatoora. Who is in scope and when, the three honest options, and a checklist for moving off the template.
E-invoicing for contractors in Saudi Arabia: progress claims, advance payments, retention and subcontractors
A progress certificate proves the work; the tax invoice raised on it is what goes to ZATCA. For a contractor billing a VAT-registered owner that invoice is a standard one, cleared before the owner receives it. How to invoice each claim, the advance and its recovery, retention, penalties, variations and subcontractors, with one claim worked through at 15% VAT.
Saudi e-invoicing glossary: every term, acronym and field code in ZATCA Phase 2
A precise, quotable definition for every term a person meets when they connect to Phase 2: the phases and the acts, the document types, the certificates and the hash chain, the QR code, the BT and KSA field codes, the validation vocabulary and the tax vocabulary.
How to check that a supplier invoice is a valid Saudi e-invoice
The buyer's side of Saudi e-invoicing: why a simplified receipt cannot support your input VAT deduction, how to tell in seconds which phase produced a supplier's QR code, what to read off the page by eye, the honest limits of what any of that establishes, and what to ask a supplier for when the document is wrong.
Onboarding to Fatoora: the OTP, the CSR and the two certificates, explained
The handshake every ZATCA Phase 2 integration has to complete before it may send a single invoice: what the one-time password actually delegates, what the compliance certificate proves that the production certificate does not, how many compliance documents you will really be asked for, and the honest cause behind each way it fails.
What a ZATCA-compliant tax invoice must contain: every required field, and the code that catches it
A field-by-field reference for Saudi e-invoicing: the seller block, the buyer block, the document fields, the line fields and the QR code — each with the validation rule that catches it and whether that rule rejects the invoice or is returned alongside acceptance.
Credit notes and debit notes in Saudi e-invoicing: correcting an invoice you have already sent
An invoice that has been cleared or reported cannot be edited and cannot be deleted. It is corrected by issuing a second document that references it: a credit note (381) if the buyer now owes less, a debit note (383) if they owe more. Plus the one situation that needs no note at all.