What is ZATCA e-invoicing?
ZATCA is Saudi Arabia's Zakat, Tax and Customs Authority. Its e-invoicing program, FATOORAH, requires taxpayers to issue structured electronic invoices through compliant systems.
In more detail
According to ZATCA, the program runs in two phases. Phase One, Generation, has been enforced since December 4, 2021 for taxpayers other than non-residents: invoices must be created in an electronic solution and carry the required fields. Phase Two, Integration, started on January 1, 2023 and rolls out in waves. It requires the invoicing solution to connect to ZATCA's systems and use the specified format. A scanned or copied paper invoice does not count. Which wave a business falls into, and the technical details, change over time, so confirm on ZATCA's site. For finance and ERP teams the work is in the integration: field mapping, XML generation, error handling and archiving. This is not legal or tax advice.
Example
A trading company adds an integration layer to its ERP that builds each invoice in the required structure, submits it to ZATCA and writes the response status back to the invoice record. Rejected invoices go to a finance queue with the error code.