It follows your sales tax registration
The obligation attaches to registered persons notified by FBR. If your business is registered for sales tax, electronic invoicing is a present obligation rather than a future one.
Free tool · Karachi
Free FBR digital invoicing software
If your business is registered for sales tax in Pakistan, your invoices now have to be issued electronically and transmitted to FBR as they are raised. This page explains what that actually involves — the part most vendors leave vague — and the free tool we are building to take the tedious half of it off your desk.
FBR IRIS DIGITAL INVOICING — REPORTING PATH
LINKSOFT · KARACHI DWG № LS-FBR-01 EST. 1998
Whether this applies to you
Exempt supplies are still reported
Rule 150R(9) is explicit that supplies of exempt items go through the integrated system too. A zero-tax invoice is still an invoice that has to be transmitted.
Credit and debit notes count
Rule 150S(2) requires notes to be issued electronically through the same system and retained for the same six years.
Offline does not mean unreported
Rule 150XC covers invoices generated during an internet or power failure. They must be clearly identified as offline-mode invoices and uploaded within twenty-four hours of service being restored.
How you get from registered to invoicing
Five steps, and only one of them is genuinely difficult. Step three is where most businesses stall.
- 01
Register on IRIS and pick PRAL as your integrator
Integration itself is reserved to licensed integrators under rule 150XE. Rule 150XF makes PRAL a licensed integrator that must provide integration free of charge, and it is the option nearly every business takes. You do this once, on FBR's own portal, and the credentials that come out belong to you.
- 02
Get your sandbox token
IRIS issues a sandbox security token under the Sandbox Environment tab. Tokens are valid for five years. Sandbox and production tokens are separate and are requested separately.
- 03
Clear the test scenarios assigned to your profile
FBR assigns test scenarios from your business activity and sector. A textile manufacturer gets twelve, a steel manufacturer three, a service provider in services just two. Each one has to be submitted successfully to the sandbox before production opens.
- 04
Collect your production token
Once the assigned scenarios are cleared, the Production Environment tab releases the production token. From that point your invoices carry a real FBR invoice number and a verifiable QR code.
- 05
Issue invoices, and keep them for six years
Rule 150S requires every electronic invoice to be retained for six years, and rule 150T requires that the original transmission can be recreated at audit. That obligation sits with you, not with your software vendor.
The sandbox test scenarios
FBR will not release a production token until your software has successfully submitted a test invoice for every scenario assigned to your profile. There are 28 scenarios in total, and which ones you get depends on two fields on your sales tax registration: your business activity and your sector.
The spread is wide. A manufacturer in textiles is assigned 12 scenarios. A manufacturer in steel is assigned 3 — and not the same 3 that sit inside the textile list, but an entirely different set. A service provider in services is assigned 2.
Ordinarily each one is typed by hand: build an invoice that satisfies the scenario, submit it, read the rejection, fix it, submit again. Repeat until all of them pass.
Official sources
Read it yourself
Everything stated on this page comes from these four documents. Where a vendor tells you something about deadlines or penalties, ask which of them it comes from.
FBR digital invoicing, answered
Is this software approved or licensed by FBR?
No, and you should be wary of anyone who says their software is. Under rule 150XE, integration of a registered person is carried out by a licensed integrator, and rule 150XF makes PRAL a licensed integrator that provides that service free of charge. You register with FBR and PRAL integrates you. This is software you then operate yourself, with your own credentials, to prepare and submit invoices.
Do you see my FBR token?
Your token is encrypted before it is stored, and the key is not held in the database, so a copy of the database on its own is useless. It is decrypted only at the moment an invoice is sent to FBR, and no part of the app will ever display it back to you or to us.
Why do I have to whitelist an IP address?
FBR requires the server that calls its API to have a fixed, whitelisted IP address, and you add it in your own IRIS portal. The app shows you the exact address to enter and walks you through where it goes.
What happens to my invoices if I stop using it?
You export them first. Deleting an account requires downloading the audit pack, because rule 150S obliges you to keep those records for six years and we would rather you left with them than without them.
Which test scenarios will I need?
That depends on the business activity and sector on your sales tax registration, and FBR publishes the full matrix. A textile manufacturer is assigned twelve scenarios; a steel manufacturer three; a service provider in services two. You can look up your own profile on the sandbox scenarios page.
Does it work for debit notes?
Yes, through the same API, and a note needs the FBR reference number of the invoice it amends. FBR only accepts one within a window after the original invoice — its published figure is 180 days. Note that FBR's digital invoicing API offers exactly two document types, Sale Invoice and Debit Note; there is no credit note in it, so a credit has to be handled the way your tax adviser tells you rather than through this system.
Need this inside your own system instead?
The free tool is for businesses that just need compliant invoices. If you run a mill, a school or a distribution network and want digital invoicing built into the system you already use, that is the work we do.