Structured XML, exchanged through an accredited provider and reported to the FTA - here’s what your system has to produce, and by when.
Dates checked against the Ministry of Finance, August 2026
Checked against the Ministry of Finance in August 2026. These have moved before - if you are reading this much later, verify them.
| 1 July 2026 | Pilot programme opens, for a selected group of taxpayers |
| 31 July 2026 | Revenue of AED 50m or more - deadline to appoint an Accredited Service Provider |
| 1 January 2027 | Mandatory for businesses with revenue of AED 50m or more |
| 31 March 2027 | All remaining in-scope businesses - deadline to appoint an ASP |
| 1 July 2027 | Mandatory for all remaining in-scope businesses |
| 1 October 2027 | Mandatory for government entities |
Two things follow from that table. If your revenue is at or above AED 50 million, the appointment deadline has passed and your go-live is in January - that is the urgent case, and the first call is to an accredited provider rather than to us. If you’re below AED 50 million, you have until 31 March 2027 to appoint, but the work that actually takes time isn’t the appointment. It’s the state of your master data, and that is worth starting now.
The mandate covers all persons conducting business in the UAE, for business-to-business and business-to-government transactions, except where a specific exclusion has been identified. Businesses that fall outside the scope may still take part voluntarily.
Note what isn’t in that list: business-to-consumer sales aren’t part of the current phases. A retailer selling across a counter is not exempt from the mandate as a business - it’s the B2B and B2G side of what you do that comes into scope.
Three things change in practice, and none of them are solved by editing an invoice template.
The Ministry of Finance is unambiguous that unstructured formats - PDF, Word, images, scanned copies and emails - are not e-invoices. A PDF attached to an email will not satisfy the mandate no matter how correct the figures on it are.
A decentralised model built on the OpenPeppol standard: your system passes the structured invoice to an Accredited Service Provider, that provider exchanges it with your customer’s provider, and the tax data is reported to the FTA. You don’t email it, and the FTA doesn’t collect it from you directly.
Every mandatory field has to be present and correct. A missing TRN, a tax category that doesn’t match the line, or a credit note that doesn’t reference its original becomes a rejection rather than something the recipient squints at and accepts.
VISIONS ERP is not on the Ministry of Finance list of Accredited Service Providers, and we are not going to imply otherwise. If a vendor tells you their accounting software makes you compliant on its own, ask which list they appear on.
The Ministry publishes the current list of accredited providers. That appointment is yours to make, and it is a separate decision from your ERP.
Master data, the document, the tax treatment per line, and the structured invoice data your provider needs - with the mandatory fields populated from records rather than typed in each time.
A provider can only transmit what your system gives it. Correct structured data is necessary but not sufficient on its own - and neither is an accreditation without clean records behind it.
Regardless of which provider you appoint, the invoice data has to arrive complete. That is a master-data problem more than a software one, and it’s the part worth starting now.
This page is about what to buy and when. If you want the full explanation - scope tests, the penalties under Cabinet Decision No. 106 of 2025, and a step-by-step readiness checklist - we’ve written that up separately: UAE e-invoicing: what your business must do, and by when.
All of the master data above already comes from the ledger in VISIONS ERP - the TRN lives on the customer, the tax category on the item, and the credit note is raised against the invoice rather than as a loose journal. See accounting and finance for how the documents post, and VAT accounting software for the quarterly cycle that runs alongside this. If you’re evaluating the whole platform, start at ERP software in Dubai.
Yes. The exchange and the reporting to the FTA go through an accredited provider. Producing correct structured data is necessary but not sufficient on its own.
Appoint a provider by 31 March 2027 and be live by 1 July 2027. The master-data cleanup behind it is what takes months, so starting in 2026 is sensible even though the deadline isn’t.
No. E-invoicing changes how invoices are issued and reported. The VAT return cycle continues - file and pay within 28 days of the end of your tax period, as now.
The current phases cover business-to-business and business-to-government transactions. Counter sales aren’t in scope today, which is not the same as never - build the master data as though they will be.
You can send a PDF as a courtesy. It just isn’t the invoice any more, and it doesn’t satisfy the mandate on its own.
We’ll say so here if and when it happens, and not before. Today the honest answer is that we integrate with providers rather than being one.
The appointment is a form. The records behind it are the work. Start free for 14 days, no card, and export any time.