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Nationwide FAQ

e-Tax Invoice and e-Receipt for Thai Businesses

Issuing a tax invoice electronically is not a matter of emailing a PDF. What the Revenue Department looks for is a document signed or time-stamped the prescribed way, genuinely delivered to the buyer, reported through whichever channel you enrolled in, and retrievable years later, one document at a time. This bank gathers what finance teams ask before starting, midway through the switch, and after the first live batch has gone out.

Fees are quoted case by case on real workload · email contact@thailaw-accounting.co.th

Choosing the route that matches your size

How does e-Tax Invoice by Email differ from the certificate route?

The email route relies on a central time-stamp: the seller sends the file to the buyer and a copy through the central service. It suits low volumes and teams who want to start without buying software. The certificate route uses the company's own digital signature, handles high volume, plugs straight into the sales system, and gives more freedom over file formats — in exchange for setup work and an annual certificate to maintain.

At what size should a company skip the email route?

When the monthly count is high enough that someone spends real hours forwarding files, or when the sales system already generates the documents automatically — putting a human in the middle then becomes the weakest link. Another signal is corporate buyers asking for a specific file layout so it drops into their procurement system; the email route has little room to accommodate that.

Can a non-VAT business issue an e-Tax Invoice?

Only a VAT-registered operator may issue a tax invoice. A business outside the VAT system can issue an electronic receipt, which is a different document. If turnover is heading past the registration threshold, we sequence registration first and switch on issuing afterwards, so the document numbering never has to be rebuilt midway.

Can we change route later?

Yes, and it happens often as sales grow. What needs planning is the cut-over point: switch at the start of a tax month so that month's output VAT report comes from one source, and keep the earlier documents in their original form for the full retention period rather than converting history into the new system.

Preparing before you apply

What has to be ready before applying?

At minimum: signatory details matching the current company affidavit, a company mailbox that is not tied to one employee, an agreed document-numbering pattern, and product or service descriptions spelled the way your quotations already spell them. The overlooked item is that mailbox — when the employee it belongs to leaves, official correspondence stops arriving the same week.

How long does the electronic certificate last and how is it renewed?

Certificates run for a fixed term and must be renewed before expiry, otherwise the signature on anything issued afterwards cannot be relied on. We diary the reminder weeks ahead and issue test documents with the new certificate in a sandbox before the live swap, so selling does not stop on changeover day.

Must we rebuild the sales system we already run?

Usually not. If the existing package can export sales data with the required fields, a translation layer can map it into the prescribed structure. Replacing the package should be driven by a separate business reason — stock control, multiple branches — rather than by invoicing alone.

How long from kick-off to the first live document?

With papers in order and a route that needs no development, the answer is measured in weeks rather than months. Where the sales system must be wired to a provider, most of the elapsed time goes into testing real data rather than waiting for approval, because credit notes, debit notes and returns each have to be walked through end to end.

Issuing and fixing documents in practice

What is the correct way to fix a wrong document?

The rule is never delete and never overwrite. If the value is wrong, issue a credit or debit note in whichever direction corrects it. If the error is in buyer details or something that does not move the value, issue a replacement that cites the original number on its face. In every case the trail must show who changed it, when, and why.

A customer says the file never arrived — what then?

Re-send it; no new number is needed because the original document is still valid. What matters is keeping evidence of the first delivery and checking that the recipient address on file still belongs to someone who handles it. Nine times out of ten the cause is a stale contact in the customer record rather than a delivery failure.

Can a document be issued late, in a later tax month?

Avoid it. The moment a tax invoice is due is tied to when liability on that transaction arises, not to when it is convenient to issue. If one has slipped, the question becomes how to report the output VAT in the correct month, and surcharges may follow. We review the first three months after any go-live precisely to catch timing drift early.

Can paper and electronic invoices run side by side?

A transition period is workable, but never the same document in both forms — that is a duplicate issue. The safe method is to split by customer group or sales channel with a hard line between them, fix the date paper stops in advance, and tell customers before it arrives.

Storage and inspection

How long must files be kept, and where?

Follow the retention period that applies to accounting and tax records, which runs well beyond a single financial year. The critical part is being able to retrieve each document in its original form together with the data that proves it intact — not just a freshly printed PDF image. Keep at least two copies that cannot fail together, and test a real restore once a year.

If an officer asks to inspect, what do we hand over?

Typically a listing for the period requested, the original files for the samples chosen, and an explanation of how the numbering runs. Where the sequence jumps, you should be able to say why — cancelled before delivery, for instance. That single point decides whether an inspection closes quickly or drags.

An employee left holding the system credentials — how do we recover?

Far cheaper to prevent than to fix: tie the rights to company-owned accounts and appoint a deputy administrator on day one. If it has already happened, rotate access at every layer at once, check whether anything was issued after the employee's last day, and write the incident down in case it is questioned later.

The system is down on the last day of the month — what now?

Have a written fallback before the day arrives: how sales are recorded while the system is unavailable, and within what window the documents follow. What you must not do is guess at numbers in the meantime — collisions in the sequence create more remediation work than waiting a few hours ever would.

Cost, people and working with us

How many cost buckets are there?

Three: setup, annual upkeep, and the internal hours the work actually consumes each month. The third is the one most often ignored even though it usually weighs heaviest in year one. We price from document volume, how complicated the sales channels are, and the condition of the existing system rather than a flat per-company figure.

Do we need an in-house accountant for this?

You do not need a full-time person dedicated to it, but you do need someone inside the business who can settle pricing and sales-term questions, because most mid-month queries are commercial rather than technical. The checking and filing side can sit with us.

We have several branches or group companies — how is that handled?

Each legal entity needs its own registration and rights, while branches run separate number ranges so any document can be traced to where it was raised. The point to control is cross-referencing between group companies, because related-party transactions are always the first place a reviewer looks.

We want to start — what do you need to quote?

Send the average monthly document count, the name of the accounting or sales system in use, one current invoice sample with customer details masked, and the date you would like to go live. That is enough for us to scope the work and set a timeline without opening up the whole business.

Related subject area Head of Tax · Tax subject area · not evidence of a page-specific reviewer or review date