E-invoicing comes with a thick layer of terminology — some Arabic, some English abbreviations — and much of it appears in ZATCA notices and your system's messages without explanation. Here is a practical glossary of the terms that matter, ordered from general to technical.
Document terms
Standard tax invoice: the invoice for business and government transactions, with full fields including the registered buyer's VAT number; it is the input-VAT deduction document. In Phase 2 it passes clearance before being shared.
Simplified tax invoice: the point-of-sale consumer invoice, delivered at purchase with its QR code, reported within 24 hours.
Credit note: a document that reduces the value of an issued invoice (a return, a later discount, an overstatement correction), and must reference the original invoice.
Debit note: its mirror — it increases the original invoice's value.
The two paths
Clearance: the standard invoice's Phase 2 path — submitted to the Fatoora platform, validated and approved in real time before you share it with your customer.
Reporting: the simplified invoice's path — delivered to the customer immediately, then reported to the platform within 24 hours.
Fatoora platform: ZATCA's platform that receives and manages documents; it is where invoicing units are registered and their certificates issued.
Waves: Phase 2's rollout in groups of taxpayers by taxable revenue, with notice at least six months before each group's date.
Invoicing units and their certificates
E-invoice Generation Solution (EGS) unit: any device or system that issues invoices — a till, a POS, an accounting system. Each unit registers with the Authority independently.
CSID: the cryptographic certificate an invoicing unit holds and signs its documents with. It begins as a temporary compliance certificate during checks, replaced by a production certificate once they pass.
Cryptographic stamp: the digital signature on the invoice using the unit's certificate — proving both the invoice's origin and the integrity of its content.
Inside the invoice
UBL: the international standard the invoice's XML format is built on, under the constraints ZATCA has specified.
UUID: the globally unique identifier of each invoice, alongside its human-readable sequential number.
Invoice counter (ICV): a strictly increasing counter inside each invoicing unit — no gaps, no repeats.
Previous invoice hash (PIH): the SHA-256 fingerprint of the preceding invoice, embedded in each invoice, forming a chain that any tampering breaks.
TLV encoding: how the QR code's data is represented — a tag, a length, then a value for each field, with the packet Base64-encoded.
PDF/A-3: an archival PDF format that allows an XML file to be embedded inside it — one document carrying both the readable layout and the structured data.
Environments
Sandbox: a developer test environment simulating the platform's interfaces with no legal effect.
Simulation environment: a mirror of the Fatoora platform for exercising the full integration path — registration through clearance — before production.
Every term here has a fuller article in Resources — start with the one matching your stage, and try what you read hands-on in alFatora's free sandbox.
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