Egypt E-Invoice Guide: ETA Portal, E-Receipts and Rules

Quick answer: An Egypt e-invoice is a signed, structured invoice submitted to the Egyptian Tax Authority (ETA) platform, which validates it before it counts as a valid tax document. Registered taxpayers have had to issue e-invoices for B2B sales since the rollout finished in December 2022, and B2C sellers named in ETA decisions must issue e-receipts from registered POS systems.

Egypt runs one of the strictest e-invoicing systems in the region. A PDF or a paper invoice is not enough for a registered business: every sale has to pass through the ETA platform, carry a digital seal and get a unique identifier. This guide explains how the Egypt e-invoice system works as of 2026, who is covered by the e-invoice and e-receipt rules, what each document must contain and how small businesses and foreign suppliers fit in. If you only need a clean commercial invoice for a client outside the system, our free invoice generator creates one in a few minutes.

Note: This is general information, not tax or legal advice. ETA decisions change often, so confirm your own position with the authority or a registered Egyptian tax adviser.

What an Egypt e-invoice is and how the ETA portal works

Egypt uses a clearance model. Instead of sending an invoice straight to the customer and reporting it later, the seller submits the invoice data to the ETA first. The platform checks the structure, the tax codes, the taxpayer numbers and the arithmetic, then records the document. Only a document the platform has accepted is a valid tax invoice. If you want a wider view of how this compares to network models such as Peppol, see our guide to Peppol vs the clearance model.

The ETA e-invoicing and e-receipt SDK describes the moving parts:

• Taxpayer profile: each business registers on the ETA portal, appoints representatives and registers the ERP or POS systems that will send documents.
• API access: each registered system gets credentials to request an access token, then calls REST APIs over TLS. Documents can be built in JSON or XML.
• Digital seal: the issuer signs each document with an eSeal X.509 certificate, which proves who issued it and that it was not altered.
• Validation: submission is partly synchronous and partly asynchronous. Systems poll for the result or receive a callback with the document status.
• Receiving: the buyer can see invoices issued to it in its own portal account, which is how input VAT is matched to the seller's output VAT.

Businesses with low volumes can key invoices directly into the ETA portal. Larger sellers connect their accounting software through the API, either built in-house or through a service provider. Either way, the logic is the same: no accepted submission, no valid tax invoice.

Who must issue e-invoices in Egypt

The ETA portal states that taxpayers across Egypt had to complete their obligation to issue electronic tax invoices for all services performed and goods sold as of 15 December 2022. The rollout started with large taxpayers in 2020 and moved through several phases, each defined by a decision listing the companies included. The legal basis cited in the SDK is Ministerial Decision No. 188 of 2020.

Two follow-on rules make the mandate hard to avoid:

• Customs link: since 1 April 2023, only entities that issue and deal with electronic tax invoices can import, export or deal with the customs system.
• Blacklist and inquiries: the ETA publishes tools to check which taxpayers are covered by e-invoice decisions and which are registered, so buyers can confirm that a supplier should be sending e-invoices.

In practice, if your business is registered for VAT in Egypt and sells to other businesses or government bodies, you should assume every invoice has to go through the platform. The same principle applies across the region: Saudi Arabia's ZATCA Fatoora system and the UAE's planned 2027 e-invoicing mandate both tie the legal validity of an invoice to an electronic process.

The e-receipt system for B2C sales

The e-receipt is Egypt's answer for retail and consumer sales. It runs on the same platform as the e-invoice, but it is designed for high-volume sales to final consumers through point-of-sale systems. The key points:

• Phased by named taxpayers: the ETA brings businesses into the e-receipt system through decisions with attached lists, grouped into main phases and sub-phases. For example, Decision No. 281 of 2025 named taxpayers at specific Cairo tax offices with a start date of 15 September 2025. There is no single turnover test that switches every business on at once.
• Approved POS: receipts must come from POS solutions integrated with the system. The ETA publishes the approved POS suppliers and lets users verify device serial numbers on its POS site.
• Customer verification: each receipt carries a QR code. Customers can check it using the ETA receipt search page.
• Sector receipt types: the SDK has versions for retail, restaurants and cafes, transport, education, professional services, banking, utilities and others, plus return receipts.

If you sell to consumers and have not yet been named, keep watching the ETA announcements. The rollout has continued through 2025 and 2026, and a business usually gets a fixed window between the decision and its start date to register its POS. For more on how QR codes are used on tax documents in other countries, see our explainer on QR codes on invoices.

What an Egyptian e-invoice must contain

Because the document is structured data, the fields are fixed by the ETA schema rather than left to your template. The core information is the same as any tax invoice, but each item must use the authority's codes.

Section	What goes in it	Practical tip
Issuer	Tax registration number, name, branch and address, activity code	Register every branch you invoice from before going live
Receiver	Business, person or foreign receiver, with tax number or ID where required	Collect buyer tax numbers at onboarding, not at invoice time
Document	Type (invoice, credit note, debit note or export versions), internal number, issue date and time	Keep your own sequential numbering alongside the ETA identifier
Lines	Item code, description, unit type, quantity, unit price, discount	Map your product list to item codes once, then reuse them
Taxes	Tax type and subtype per line, rate and amount	Use the ETA tax type codes; wrong codes are a common rejection reason
Totals	Sales total, discounts, net amount, total tax, total amount	Round consistently, because the platform recalculates totals
Signature	eSeal signature over the document	Keep the certificate valid and backed up

The ETA code tables cover activity types, branches, country and currency codes, payment methods, tax types and unit types. A good internal habit is to keep a clean, sequential invoice numbering system in your own records even though the platform also issues its own unique identifier, because your auditors will still ask for it.

How to issue an Egypt e-invoice: step by step

1. Register on the ETA portal. Use your tax registration number to create the taxpayer profile and add the people who will act for the business.
2. Get a signing certificate. Obtain an eSeal certificate from an approved provider and install it in the system that will sign documents.
3. Register your issuing system. Add your ERP, accounting package or POS as a system in the portal and generate its API credentials, or decide to key invoices in the portal manually.
4. Map your codes. Assign item codes, unit types, activity codes and tax types to your products and services.
5. Test in the pre-production environment. The SDK provides separate pre-production and production endpoints; submit sample invoices, credit notes and debit notes until they validate cleanly.
6. Go live and submit each invoice. Sign and submit at the time of sale, then check the status. Only a valid document should be sent to the customer.
7. Handle corrections properly. Use a credit note to reduce or reverse an accepted invoice and a debit note to increase it. Our debit note vs credit note guide explains the difference.
8. Reconcile monthly. Compare accepted documents in the portal with your VAT return so output and input tax match.

Worked example: a services invoice with VAT

Suppose a Cairo design studio registered for VAT bills a client for a website project. The fee is EGP 40,000, the studio gives a 10% loyalty discount, and VAT applies at the general rate of 14%.

Line	Amount (EGP)
Website design and build	40,000.00
Discount (10%)	-4,000.00
Net amount	36,000.00
VAT at 14%	5,040.00
Total	41,040.00
Deposit already paid	-20,000.00
Balance due	21,040.00

The arithmetic is simple: 40,000 minus 4,000 is 36,000; 14% of 36,000 is 5,040; 36,000 plus 5,040 is 41,040; less the 20,000 deposit leaves 21,040. In the ETA document the discount, net amount, tax and total are separate fields, and the platform recalculates each one. If any figure is off by more than the allowed rounding, the document is rejected. The deposit itself is a payment matter, not a field that changes the tax.

The same calculation works in our invoice generator: enter the line, a 10% discount, a 14% tax rate and 20,000 in the amount paid field, and it shows the 21,040 balance. That is useful for quotes, internal records or invoices to foreign clients, but it does not replace the ETA submission for Egyptian tax purposes.

Small businesses, freelancers and foreign suppliers

Not everyone billing in Egypt is in the same position:

• VAT-registered small businesses: you are inside the e-invoice system even at low volume. The portal's manual entry option keeps costs down, but you still need a signing certificate.
• Freelancers below VAT registration: if you are not registered for VAT, the e-invoice duty generally does not bite in the same way, but you still need proper records for income tax. A clear freelance invoice with a sequential number is the minimum.
• Foreign suppliers to Egyptian companies: a non-resident with no Egyptian registration sends a normal commercial invoice. Your client may account for VAT on imported services and may withhold tax, so agree the invoice details and payment terms upfront. If you bill in dollars or euros, our guide to foreign currency invoices covers exchange rates and wording.
• Exporters: use the export invoice type, and remember the customs link means an exporter outside the e-invoice system will struggle to clear goods.

Common rejection reasons and how to avoid them

Most problems in the first months of e-invoicing are data problems, not technology problems:

• Wrong or missing receiver details: a business buyer's tax number must be valid. Store it in your customer record.
• Incorrect tax codes: a line marked with the wrong tax type or subtype fails validation even if the amount is right.
• Rounding differences: calculate line totals the same way the platform does, and avoid manual overrides of totals.
• Expired certificate: signing fails silently in some systems when the certificate expires. Put the renewal date in your calendar.
• Editing instead of crediting: once accepted, an invoice cannot simply be edited. Follow the steps in our guide to correcting an invoice and issue a credit or debit note.

How Egypt fits into the wider e-invoicing picture

Egypt was one of the first countries in the Middle East and Africa to make real-time clearance mandatory for all registered businesses. Other countries have since followed with their own systems, from Turkey's long-running e-Fatura (see our Turkey e-invoice guide) to Brazil's NF-e. Our country-by-country e-invoicing mandates list tracks the dates elsewhere, and the general e-invoicing guide explains the formats and models behind them.

Egypt also shows how e-invoicing data gets used after the sale. Because the ETA sees every accepted invoice from both sides, it can compare a seller's output VAT with its buyers' input VAT claims month by month. Mismatches that once surfaced only in an audit now show up quickly, which is a good reason to reconcile your own records against the portal every month rather than once a year.

For a business that trades in several countries, the lesson from Egypt is to treat invoice data as structured from day one: consistent item codes, clean customer tax numbers and a reliable numbering system make every national mandate easier.

Create your Egypt e-invoice data with confidence

The Egypt e-invoice system is strict but predictable: register on the ETA portal, sign every document with your eSeal, submit at the time of sale and only send customers documents the platform has accepted. B2C sellers should watch the e-receipt decisions for their name and prepare their POS early. For quotes, records and invoices to clients outside Egypt, use our free invoice generator or start from a clean corporate invoice template. It is free, needs no account, and exports a print-ready PDF invoice.