Treatment of Advance Payments under Saudi Arabia e-Invoicing

Zakat, Tax and Customs Authority (ZATCA) is the tax authority in Saudi Arabia that intended to implement e-invoicing in two phases. Saudi e-Invoicing includes all resident taxpayers except non-residents (for VAT purposes).

Accordingly, ZATCA implemented phase 1 of e-invoicing in Saudi w.e.f 4th December 2021. Also, ZATCA notified two waves under phase 2 of Saudi Arabia e-invoicing as follows:

1. Wave 1 under phase 2: The VAT-registered businesses with more than 3 billion turnover in 2021 fall under wave 1 of phase 2 and must implement phase 2 beginning from 1st January 2023.
2. Wave 2 under phase 2: Businesses registered under KSA VAT with more than 500 million turnover in 2021 fall under wave 2 of phase 2, and they shall begin phase 2 implementation from 1st July 2023.

Hence, the e-invoicing applicable taxpayers must understand and comply with the phase 2 requirements. The businesses must integrate their ERP/accounting/POS systems with the Fatoora portal. Businesses must ‘Clear’ the standard tax invoices and related Credit and Debit Notes (CDNs) in real-time; and ‘report’ the simplified tax invoices and related CDNs within 24 hours from the time of generation to comply with phase 2.

Businesses shall generate e-invoices for advance payments as well using a compliant e-invoicing software in Saudi Arabia. This article explains various scenarios of the advance payment and how to generate e-invoices in such scenarios.

e-Invoices for advance payments in KSA

Advance payments attract Value Added Tax (VAT) in Saudi Arabia, and businesses must generate e-invoices for the same. Also, under the KSA VAT invoicing, you must issue an invoice within 15 days from the end of the month in which the advance is received.

Suppose you received an advance of 1000 riyals on 10th January 2023; you must issue a tax invoice before 15th February 2023.

Let’s take a look at different scenarios in advance payments:

Scenario 1: When received 100% advance

In cases when you receive 100% advance for the supply of goods or services, you must issue a tax invoice mentioning the advance received and VAT on it.

Once you provide goods or services, you shall adjust the advance against the total invoice value and issue the final tax invoice.

Scenario 2: When received part of the advance

You must issue the invoice even if you received part of the advance. So, after providing goods or services, you must adjust the part advance against the total invoice value and issue the tax invoice accordingly.