ZATCA E-Invoicing in 2026: The Fatoora Rules a KSA Marketplace Seller Actually Has to Meet

If you are VAT-registered in Saudi Arabia, you are inside ZATCA’s e-invoicing regime, and that regime has two phases with different obligations. This page sets out what ZATCA itself publishes about the phases and the notice you get, what it does not publish as readable text, and what changes for a seller running a noon or Amazon storefront in the Kingdom. We fetched ZATCA’s own roll-out page for this; where we are working from something weaker, we say so.

The split between our two readers is unusually sharp here. A business established and VAT-registered in KSA is squarely in scope and needs a compliant invoicing solution. An Indian brand selling cross-border with no Saudi registration may be out of scope for Phase One entirely — ZATCA’s own wording excludes non-resident taxpayers — but that exclusion stops mattering the moment you register, and a sibling check of noon’s current onboarding found that a KSA VAT number is now mandatory for new noon KSA registrations. So "not my problem yet" has a short shelf life.

Illustrative conversions on this page use AED 1 = ₹24.1 and SAR 1 = ₹23.6, the rates we used in September 2026. They move daily, so read every rupee figure as an order of magnitude and never as a quote.

What is ZATCA e-invoicing and what is Fatoora?

ZATCA is the Zakat, Tax and Customs Authority. Its e-invoicing page defines electronic invoicing as "a procedure that aims to convert the issuing of paper invoices and notes into an electronic process" that lets buyer and seller exchange invoice data in a structured form. The programme is branded Fatoora (فاتورة, Arabic for invoice), and the scope covers invoices, credit notes and debit notes — not just the invoice itself, which catches people out on returns and price corrections.

The important thing to understand up front is that this is not "email a PDF instead of posting paper". A PDF is not an electronic invoice for ZATCA’s purposes. The regime requires a structured, machine-readable invoice generated by a compliant solution, and in Phase Two that solution has to talk to ZATCA.

What are the two phases and when did they start?

Quoting ZATCA’s roll-out phases page directly, as fetched on 27 September 2026:

Two details matter more than the dates. First, the non-resident exclusion in Phase One is explicit in ZATCA’s own text. Second, Phase Two arrives by invitation: ZATCA states it "will notify taxpayers of their Phase 2 wave at least six months in advance". You are not expected to guess your date. You are expected to act on the notice.

What does Phase Two actually change for a seller?

Phase One is about your own systems: issue structured invoices, store them properly. Phase Two adds ZATCA into the loop, which is where an off-the-shelf billing spreadsheet stops working. ZATCA’s e-invoicing section points taxpayers at a Solution Providers Directory and a developer portal with a sandbox, and references e-invoicing failure notifications — which tells you something useful in itself: the integration is expected to fail sometimes, and you need someone who watches for that.

The practical consequences for a marketplace seller, in order of how often they bite:

• Your invoicing tool has to be a compliant solution, not a template. If you invoice B2B customers off a spreadsheet today, that stops.
• Credit notes are in scope. Returns are a large share of GCC marketplace volume, and each refund generates a document the regime cares about.
• Marketplace-issued documents are not automatically your compliance. noon and Amazon issue their own tax documents; that does not discharge your own obligation as a registered taxpayer. Confirm the division with your tax representative rather than assuming the platform covers you.
• Somebody has to own the integration. Six months of notice is generous, and it is still six months of somebody’s time.

Do Indian cross-border sellers have to do this?

This is where honesty beats confidence. ZATCA’s Phase One wording excludes non-resident taxpayers, so a genuinely non-resident, non-registered Indian seller is outside that obligation on the face of the text. But three things narrow that gap fast.

First, the KSA VAT Implementing Regulations require a non-resident who is obligated to pay tax to register "within thirty (30) days of the first Supply", with no threshold, either directly or through an approved tax representative. Verified in our earlier regulatory pass from the Implementing Regulations PDF. There is no small-seller allowance to hide behind.

Second, noon’s KSA onboarding now requires a KSA VAT number for new registrations — a sibling writer confirmed this against current onboarding requirements, and it also confirmed that KSA Freelance Certificates are no longer accepted for new noon registrations. If you cannot register without a VAT number, the non-resident exclusion is academic.

Third, once you are registered, you are a taxpayer, and the phases apply to you on ZATCA’s schedule. Plan for it at the point you register, not at the point you get the notice. Our noon KSA seller guide covers the registration route itself, and selling on noon from India covers the cross-border route that leads into it. If you are earlier still, exporting from India to Dubai is the sensible first read.

What does compliance cost, roughly?

ZATCA does not charge you to comply. The cost is software and someone’s attention. Here is an illustrative shape for a small KSA seller, using vendor-category ranges rather than invented prices — we could not verify solution-provider pricing from a primary source and are not quoting figures as ZATCA-published.

For scale, the VAT you are invoicing is the 15% standard rate. On a SAR 500,000 (about ₹1.18 crore illustrative) year of KSA sales, that is SAR 75,000 of VAT flowing through invoices that all have to be compliant documents. A SAR 5,000–10,000 annual software cost against that is not the thing to optimise; the thing to optimise is not being non-compliant on SAR 75,000 of tax. See VAT in the UAE and KSA for how the 15% rate compares with the UAE’s 5%.

What should you do this quarter?

• Establish whether you are registered or required to register. Everything else follows from that. Thirty days from first supply, no threshold, for a non-resident who owes the tax.
• If registered, confirm your phase. Phase One generation obligations have applied since 4 December 2021. Check whether you have had a Phase Two notification.
• Pick a solution from ZATCA’s directory rather than the first search result, and ask specifically whether it handles credit and debit notes.
• Map who issues what. Marketplace documents, your own B2B invoices, and refunds are three different flows.
• Diarise the notification. Six months of warning is only useful if somebody reads the letter.

If you are still at the stage of deciding whether KSA is worth entering, price the compliance overhead into the decision alongside freight and duty — our landed cost calculator is the right place to park these as fixed annual costs.

Want the storefront run while your adviser handles ZATCA?

We are not tax advisers and we do not file your returns. What we run is the commercial side: catalogue, Arabic listings, pricing, ads and the daily operations of a noon or Amazon.sa storefront. If ZATCA is the thing your finance team is solving and the storefront is the thing nobody has time for, look at our noon account management service, or read what the engagement covers and then book a free audit.

FAQ

When did ZATCA e-invoicing become mandatory? ZATCA states Phase One, generation, has been enforceable as of December 4th, 2021 for all taxpayers excluding non-resident taxpayers. Phase Two, integration, has been enforceable starting January 1st, 2023 and is rolled out in waves by targeted taxpayer group rather than all at once.

How will I know which Phase Two wave I am in? ZATCA notifies you. Its roll-out page states that ZATCA will notify taxpayers of their Phase 2 wave at least six months in advance. The per-wave revenue thresholds are published as an image rather than as text, so we are not repeating specific cut-offs here — rely on your own notification.

Do non-resident sellers have to comply with Fatoora? ZATCA’s Phase One wording explicitly excludes non-resident taxpayers. But the KSA VAT Implementing Regulations require a non-resident obligated to pay tax to register within thirty days of the first supply, with no threshold, and noon KSA now requires a VAT number for new registrations — so in practice most sellers reaching Saudi customers end up registered, and therefore in scope.

Is a PDF invoice enough? No. ZATCA describes e-invoicing as converting paper issuance into an electronic process with structured exchange between buyer and seller, generated through a compliant electronic solution. A PDF emailed from a word processor does not meet that, and Phase Two additionally requires integration with ZATCA’s systems.

Do noon and Amazon handle ZATCA e-invoicing for me? They issue their own tax documents, and that is not the same thing as discharging your obligations as a registered taxpayer. We could not reach noon’s help centre on this pass to quote its current articles, so confirm the exact division of responsibility with the platform and your tax representative rather than assuming it is covered.

What is the KSA VAT rate and where is it published? 15%. Our verification pass found it stated on a ZATCA page and attributed to Royal Order A/84 of 1442H, effective 4 October 2020. Note that the English Implementing Regulations do not contain the rate, so cite the Royal Order rather than a ZATCA URL if the source matters.