What your records actually have to contain
51 mandatory fields for an electronic standard tax invoice. 49 for a commercial electronic invoice. Here is what they are, grouped the way a business owner thinks about them — and what usually goes wrong in each group.
Read this as a working checklist, not as the specification. The authoritative field list is the PINT AE specification published by the UAE Ministry of Finance, and your accredited service provider will map to it. What follows is the same information reorganised so you can check your own records against it before anyone starts an integration.
Group 1 — Who you are
Your legal name, trade licence details, Tax Registration Number, address, and contact details.
Where it lives: your company settings in your accounting system, usually typed in once when the file was set up and never checked since.
What goes wrong: the name in the system is the trading name, not the legal name on the licence. A TRN typed with a transposed digit. An address from a previous office.
Group 2 — Who your customer is
Their legal name exactly as registered, their TRN where they are VAT-registered, their address and country, and their buyer reference where they require one.
Where it lives: your customer master file.
What goes wrong: this is the single biggest cause of failure. The same customer entered three times under three spellings. "LLC" present on some records and not others. TRNs collected years ago and never validated. Customers who have since changed their legal name after a restructure.
Group 3 — Identifying the document
Invoice number, issue date, document type code, currency, and where relevant the tax point date and any contract or purchase order reference.
Where it lives: your invoice numbering settings, and anywhere invoices are raised outside the system.
What goes wrong: numbering that is not sequential. Two series running in parallel because someone kept a manual book. Numbers reused after a cancellation. Invoices raised in Excel and never entered into the accounting file at all.
Group 4 — The line items
For each line: description, quantity, unit of measure, unit price, line total, tax category, tax rate and tax amount.
Where it lives: your product or service item list — if you have one.
What goes wrong: free text. Everything typed fresh each time, so the same product appears as "steel pipe 2in", "2 inch steel pipe" and "pipe (steel) 2\"". No unit of measure. A tax category picked by whoever raised the invoice that day.
Group 5 — Tax and totals
Taxable amount by tax category, tax rate, tax amount, total excluding tax, total including tax, amount due, and the VAT amount expressed in AED.
What goes wrong: invoices raised in USD or EUR where the AED tax amount is not stated. Rounding handled differently by the system than by the person checking it. Discounts applied at the document level in a way that does not reconcile to the lines.
Group 6 — References and links
References to a preceding invoice for a credit or debit note, delivery details, payment terms and payment means.
What goes wrong: credit notes that do not reference the invoice they correct. This is common, it is easy to fix going forward, and it is very difficult to fix retrospectively.
The pre-integration checklist
Work through this before anyone connects anything. Each "no" is a piece of work.
| Check | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Our legal name in the system matches the trade licence exactly | Mismatch fails validation on every invoice |
| Our TRN is correct and appears on the company record | Mandatory field |
| Every customer appears once, under one legal name | Duplicates create inconsistent output |
| Every VAT-registered customer has a validated TRN | Mandatory for those customers |
| Invoice numbering is sequential with no gaps or duplicates | Required, and the first thing an auditor checks |
| All invoices are raised in one system, not partly in Excel or a book | Anything outside the system cannot be transmitted |
| Products and services are coded items, not free text | Needed for consistent line data |
| Every item has a unit of measure and a tax category | Mandatory line fields |
| Foreign-currency invoices show the VAT amount in AED | Common failure on export-facing businesses |
| Every credit note references its original invoice | Required reference field |
| Our accounting system can export structured data, not only PDF | Decides whether integration is simple or a project |
General information only. This page summarises publicly available guidance so a business owner can understand it. It is not personalised tax, legal or financial advice, and your own obligations depend on your circumstances. Confirm your position with the relevant authority or a qualified adviser before acting.