At a glance
- Authority
- Ministry of Finance (MoF) and Federal Tax Authority (FTA)
- Legal basis
- Ministerial Decisions No. 243 and No. 244 of 2025
- Model
- Five corners, built on Peppol, through accredited service providers (ASPs)
- In scope
- Business and government transactions. Sales to consumers are out of scope.
- First go-live
- 1 January 2027, for businesses with annual revenue of AED 50 million or more
- Format
- Structured XML under the UAE's PINT-AE specification. No QR code.
The official timeline
The Ministry of Finance published two decisions on 29 September 2025 and detailed guidelines afterward (version 1.1 is dated 1 June 2026). The dates below come from those guidelines.
| Who | Appoint an ASP by | Mandatory from |
|---|
| Pilot participants (by agreement) and voluntary adopters | · | 1 July 2026 |
| Annual revenue of AED 50 million or more | 31 July 2026 | 1 January 2027 |
| Annual revenue below AED 50 million | 31 March 2027 | 1 July 2027 |
| Government entities | 31 March 2027 | 1 October 2027 |
Transactions between members of the same VAT group get a grace period of 24 months from 1 January 2027. The guidelines state that administrative penalties apply only from the date a business must implement e-invoicing.
Where that leaves you in October 2026: if your revenue is AED 50 million or more, your ASP deadline has passed and go-live is weeks away. If you are below that line, you have until 31 March 2027 to appoint an ASP and until 1 July 2027 to go live.
Who and what is in scope
The system applies to businesses carrying out commercial transactions in the UAE, including non-residents, whether or not they are registered for VAT.
- In scope: business to business, business to government, government to business and government to government.
- Out of scope: sales to consumers, and any supply to or from a natural person who is not acting in business.
- Excluded: government entities acting in a sovereign capacity; international passenger flights with e-tickets and their ancillary services; VAT-exempt financial services and their zero-rated exports; investment holding companies with only passive income. Goods carried under an airway bill are excluded for 24 months.
Each member of a VAT group onboards on its own and may use a different ASP.
How the five-corner model works
You do not send invoices to the tax authority yourself, and you do not email PDFs to customers. Every invoice travels between accredited service providers over the Peppol network.
- Corner 1: Supplier
Your system creates the invoice data.
- Corner 2: Supplier's ASP
Validates the invoice, converts it to the UAE XML format if needed, looks up the buyer's Peppol address and sends it. It reports the tax data to the FTA at the same time.
- Corner 3: Buyer's ASP
Receives and validates the invoice. If it passes, it reports to the FTA. If it fails, it notifies the supplier's ASP and the FTA.
- Corner 4: Buyer
Receives the invoice in its own system.
- Corner 5: FTA
Receives the tax data and confirms successful reporting back to both ASPs.
Each business has a Peppol participant identifier made of 0235 followed by its 10-digit tax identification number, which is the first 10 digits of its 15-digit TRN. The ASP generates a UUID for every invoice to prevent duplicates.
The obligation stays with you. The ASP carries the invoice, but the guidelines are clear that compliance remains the supplier's responsibility. Buyers must appoint an ASP too, because the same ASP sends and receives.
Choosing an accredited service provider
The Ministry of Finance publishes a list of pre-approved e-invoicing service providers and updates it as more are approved. Final accreditation is granted under Ministerial Decision No. 64 of 2025. Check the current list on mof.gov.ae before you sign.
Questions worth asking any provider:
- Is it on the Ministry's current list, and what is its accreditation status?
- How does it connect to your accounting or ERP system, and who maintains that connection?
- How are rejections and FTA confirmations returned to your system?
- Where are records stored, and can you retrieve them for the FTA on request?
- How does pricing scale with invoice volume?
What to prepare now
Most of the work is data and process, and it does not depend on which ASP you choose. Start here.
- Confirm your annual revenue band and your two deadlines: ASP appointment and go-live
- List every entity, including each VAT group member, that issues or receives invoices
- Collect the 15-digit TRN of every business customer and supplier
- Clean customer and supplier master data: legal names, addresses, tax numbers
- Review invoice, credit note and self-billing processes against the Ministry's mandatory fields list
- Make sure credit notes reference the invoices they correct
- Decide how incoming e-invoices will reach accounts payable, not only outgoing ones
- Agree who owns rejections and FTA confirmations day to day
- Check your record retention against the guidelines
- Shortlist ASPs from the Ministry's list and test the connection with your system
Records and retention
Ministerial Decision No. 243 requires electronic records to be stored within the UAE. The guidelines read this as a requirement that records be retrievable for the FTA.
- Taxable persons: 5 years after the end of the relevant tax period, plus up to 4 more years during a dispute or audit.
- Other persons: 5 years from the end of the calendar year in which the document was created.
- Real estate records: 7 years.
An ASP may store records for you under contract, but the business remains responsible for meeting retention rules.
Common mistakes
- Thinking a PDF is still an invoice. In scope, the invoice is the structured XML exchanged through ASPs.
- Planning only for outgoing invoices. As a buyer, you also need an ASP and a way to receive and process invoices.
- Expecting a QR code. UAE e-invoices do not carry one. That is a Saudi and Egyptian habit.
- Missing the ASP deadline. Appointment comes months before go-live for a reason: connection and testing take time.
- Assuming B2C is in. It is not, so retail-only businesses may have far less to do than they fear.
- Leaving tax numbers incomplete. Without the buyer's TRN, the ASP cannot find the buyer on the network.
How Prospera handles it
UAE e-invoicing in Prospera ERP is coming in 2027 through an accredited provider. The preparation in this guide, from clean tax numbers to credit notes that reference their invoices, can start today on one set of records.
- One customer and supplier record, with TRNs held once and used everywhere
- Invoices, credit notes and purchase bills in one system, ready to connect
- A free systems review maps your deadlines and data gaps against this checklist
Book a free systems review →