Invoicing a client in Saudi Arabia

Said upfront, because it matters more than anything else on this page: Fatoura is not a ZATCA-compliant e-invoicing solution. If your business is established in Saudi Arabia, that's very likely what you actually need, and this tool isn't it.

Why: two different systems

Saudi Arabia runs a mandatory e-invoicing regime, administered by the Zakat, Tax and Customs Authority (ZATCA) under the “Fatoora” programme — a name that resembles this tool's only by coincidence. It requires invoices to be generated as structured XML, not just laid out to look right, with a QR code on simplified invoices, a cryptographic stamp, and, for most businesses, a live integration with ZATCA's own platform. A PDF that looks correct, however carefully it's formatted, satisfies none of that. Fatoura generates a PDF. If ZATCA e-invoicing applies to you, you need an accredited solution built for it, not a generator like this one.

If you're a UAE business invoicing a Saudi client

The rest of this page is for a narrower, different situation: a business established in the UAE that needs to send a clear invoice to a customer based in Saudi Arabia — not a Saudi-established business itself. Here, the question isn't about ZATCA's format; it's about VAT.

Saudi VAT is charged at 15%, against the UAE's 5%. That difference is worth understanding correctly: the rate that applies to a supply is a property of where the supply is treated as taking place, not of who happens to be issuing the invoice or what currency it's priced in.

Whether you, as a UAE business, charge UAE VAT on a sale to a Saudi customer, zero-rate it as an export, or find it falls outside the scope of UAE VAT altogether depends on the nature of what you're supplying and your customer's status — this page won't state the conditions, because they vary by case. The Federal Tax Authority is the place to check where a specific sale actually stands.

What Fatoura can do here

Fatoura supports SAR as a currency, and its VAT rate field is editable rather than fixed at 5%, so it can produce a clear commercial invoice priced correctly for a Saudi client rather than one that quietly assumes UAE VAT. It also carries Arabic alongside English by default, which matters for a Saudi recipient's own accounts team much the way it does for a UAE one. That combination covers a UAE business's own invoice to a Saudi client — it doesn't make this ZATCA e-invoicing software, and it was never meant to.

This page is general information, not tax advice — whether VAT applies, and at what rate, depends on your specific transaction, and the Federal Tax Authority is the authority on a UAE business's own position. For what a UAE tax invoice itself has to show, see what a UAE tax invoice must contain.