In this article
Most of what Saudi finance teams ask about Phase 2 is not about the regulation. It is practical: are we in the next group, what changes on go live day, and who in the team owns each step. This Fatoora integration FAQ answers the 12 questions we hear most often as the 1 February 2027 deadline gets closer, using only what the Zakat, Tax and Customs Authority has published.
Wave 25 covers more businesses than any wave before it, because the revenue test is low. If your revenue subject to VAT went above SAR 187,500 in any one of 2022, 2023, 2024 or 2025, you are in it. Here is the whole wave on one line before the questions start.
| Item | Wave 25 |
|---|---|
| Revenue test | Revenue subject to VAT above SAR 187,500 |
| Years checked | 2022, 2023, 2024 or 2025, any single year |
| Integration date | 1 February 2027 |
| ZATCA notification | No later than 1 February 2027 |
| Legal basis | Administrative Decision No. 1448-99-238, issued 24 July 2026 |
What integration means, and who it covers
Phase 1, the generation phase, has applied since 4 December 2021. It asks you to issue invoices from a compliant electronic system instead of a paper book or a spreadsheet you built yourself. Phase 2, the integration phase, started on 1 January 2023 and is rolling out in waves, and it asks for something different. Your system has to talk to the authority directly, invoice by invoice.
1. What is Fatoora integration, in plain terms?
It is a live connection between your invoicing system and ZATCA's Fatoora platform. Each tax invoice is produced as an XML file, carries a cryptographic stamp, and is sent to the authority. Invoices to other businesses are sent for clearance before the buyer receives them. Invoices to individual customers are handed over immediately and reported afterwards. Nothing about this is a file you upload at the end of the month.
2. How do I know whether my business is in Wave 25?
Open your filed VAT returns for 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025 and read the total revenue subject to VAT in each year on its own. If any single year is above SAR 187,500, Wave 25 applies to you. You do not need all four years above the line, and a later drop in revenue does not take you back out of the wave.
The February 2027 date and ZATCA's notice
3. What has to be true on 1 February 2027?
Your system has to be onboarded and sending real invoices through Fatoora by that date, not halfway through a project. In practice that means the technical work, the data clean up and the staff training all sit before the date, with a few weeks of live running as a buffer. Teams that aim for the deadline itself tend to arrive at it mid test.
4. ZATCA has not sent us a notification. Should we wait?
No. The authority notifies the taxpayers in this wave no later than 1 February 2027, which means a notice can arrive late in the window. If you already meet the revenue test, the date applies to you whether the letter has landed or not. Treat the published criteria as your trigger and the notification as a confirmation of something you already knew.
Both the ZATCA announcement for Wave 25 and the decision as published in Umm Al-Qura state the same threshold and the same date, so there is no second reading of either.
Onboarding, the CSID and how long it really takes
5. What is a CSID and how do we get one?
The cryptographic stamp identifier is the certificate that proves an invoice came from a system registered to your business. Your invoicing system generates a request, you sign in to the Fatoora platform with your ZATCA credentials, and you exchange a one time password for the certificate. Each invoicing unit needs its own, so a company with four branch tills is managing four of them, not one.
6. How long does onboarding take?
The certificate itself is often a same day job. The work around it is what fills a calendar: cleaning buyer tax numbers and addresses, mapping your item list and VAT categories, deciding which branches issue which invoice type, and testing each of those paths. Plan in weeks. Our 15 week Fatoora integration plan breaks the same work into stages you can hand out.
7. Do we have to stop invoicing while we switch over?
No, and you should not try. Move one branch or one invoice type to the new flow first, keep the old flow running for everything else, then move the rest once the first group clears cleanly for a week. A hard cut over on the first morning of a month is the most reliable way to lose a day of sales to a field mapping error.
Clearance, reporting and the 24 hour rule
8. What is the difference between clearance and reporting?
Clearance happens before the buyer sees the invoice. A standard tax invoice, the kind you issue to another business, goes to the authority first and reaches the buyer only once it has been cleared. Reporting happens after the fact. A simplified invoice, the kind you hand to a walk in customer, goes to them straight away and is reported to the authority within 24 hours.
9. What happens when Fatoora rejects an invoice?
You get the rejection back with a reason, and it is usually data rather than anything exotic: a missing buyer tax number, a date in the wrong format, a VAT category that does not match the line. You correct the record and reissue. The real risk is not one rejection, it is a system that files rejections in a log nobody opens. Ask any provider where failures appear and who gets told.
A checklist for the weeks before February
If you do nothing else this quarter, do these five things in order. Each one is a half day of work at most, and each one removes a reason for the project to stall in January.
- Confirm the revenue test year by year, from the VAT returns you actually filed.
- List every place that issues an invoice today, including branch tills and any spreadsheet still in quiet use.
- Clean tax numbers and addresses for your recurring business customers first, since those are the invoices that need clearance.
- Name one person in finance, not in IT, who owns rejected invoices day to day.
- Set your own go live date several weeks before 1 February 2027 and treat it as the real one.
Frequently asked questions
10. Does our Phase 1 system automatically work for Phase 2?
Not always. A system that prints a compliant invoice with a QR code satisfies Phase 1, while Phase 2 also needs XML generation, the cryptographic stamp and a working connection to Fatoora. Ask your current provider in writing whether their system can onboard to Fatoora and on what date, and keep the answer.
11. Do we need a particular kind of e-invoicing system?
You need one that meets the e-invoice specifications and security requirements the authority publishes and that can connect to Fatoora. Compare on criteria rather than brand names: XML and cryptographic stamp support, clearance and reporting handled without manual steps, Arabic and English interfaces, several branches on one account, and visible error handling.
12. What if we miss the deadline?
Invoices issued after your wave date without integration are not compliant, and e-invoicing violations carry penalties that the authority sets out by violation type and by repetition. Check the published penalty schedule on zatca.gov.sa rather than a number quoted on a forum. In most cases the commercial cost lands first anyway, the day a corporate customer asks for a cleared invoice you cannot produce.
Getting it done before February
Daftarix handles Fatoora integration inside the same system your team already uses for quotations and invoices: onboarding and CSID issuance from the Fatoora platform, clearance for standard tax invoices, reporting for simplified invoices within 24 hours, and XML with a cryptographic stamp, in Arabic and English with a right to left layout. Invoices are created from accepted quotations, so there is no export and upload step in the middle.
If 1 February 2027 is your date, the next few weeks are the comfortable time to do this rather than the expensive one. Book a demo and we will go through your invoice types, branches and customer data with you.
