When a business customer asks for a tax invoice
What a shop should give a business buyer who needs a full tax invoice for goods bought at the counter, without recording the same sale twice.
By Achekam · · 6 min read · For Retail businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
A contractor puts a basket of paint, fittings and cable on your counter and asks for "a proper tax invoice with the company name on it", because their bookkeeper will not accept a till slip. The cashier hesitates. Ring the sale up and then type an invoice as well? Write the company name on the slip with a pen? Send the customer away?
Each of those answers causes trouble later: a sale recorded twice, a buyer who cannot claim back the VAT they paid, or a document your own records do not support. Here is a counter routine that gives the business buyer what they need and keeps your books straight, whether the shop trades in South Africa, Nigeria or Kenya.
What the till receipt already shows
Start with what every customer already gets. In Achekam the till receipt is a PDF that the server makes from the posted sale. It lists every payment, shows VAT by rate and prints your business's tax number, and the cashier can print it, download it or e-mail it to the customer.
For many small purchases that is all a buyer's bookkeeper needs. What a plain receipt does not carry is the buyer's own name and tax number, and for a VAT-registered buyer making a larger purchase that is usually the sticking point. What a full tax invoice must contain is set by each country's law. In South Africa, SARS explains it, together with the documentary proof a vendor keeps, in its VAT 404 guide for vendors. Check your own tax authority's rules before deciding which counter sales need more than a receipt.
Selling on a trade account so a receivables invoice is written
The cleanest way to give a business customer an invoice in its own name is to sell to it on account. With the Wholesale add-on you keep trade customers with credit limits, payment terms and a hold. At the till, a sale can then be charged to that trade customer's account. That writes a receivables invoice in the customer's name, and the till checks the account's hold and credit limit first. A supervisor or manager can override either, but only by recording a reason.
Because it is still a till sale, it posts like any other: one balanced journal carrying the revenue, the output VAT and the cost of the goods against inventory, with the amount owed going to the on-account receivable instead of the cash drawer. Stock comes off at that till's location in the same step.
This route suits the regulars: the builder who comes in every week, the guesthouse that buys linen each season, the school that restocks stationery every term. Set them up once and every purchase lands on their account with an invoice behind it.
Invoicing from receivables instead of ringing the sale up
Other buyers are one-off, like a company that sends a staff member to buy a fridge for the office. You may not want a trade account for that. The alternative is to leave the till out of that sale and raise a customer invoice in receivables. You create it as a draft, check it, then issue it; issuing takes the next number in your sequence and posts debtors, sales and output VAT.
Know the trade-off first. Invoice lines are typed in rather than picked from your product list, so the invoice does not take the fridge off stock and posts no cost of sales. All invoice revenue also lands on one account, Professional Services Revenue (4100), even for a shop. For an occasional sale your accountant can tidy that up; for regular counter trade the till route keeps stock and margins right. What a till sale posts to your books explains the till side in more detail.
Never both: avoiding a sale recorded twice
The habit to train out of staff is ringing up the sale and then, because the buyer wants an invoice, raising a receivables invoice for the same goods. Both post revenue and output VAT. Your sales are overstated, your VAT is overstated, and the customer's account shows a debt for goods they have already paid for.
Make it a house rule: one sale, one document path. Either the sale goes through the till, as a cash sale or on a trade account, or it is invoiced from receivables. If a buyer only mentions the invoice after paying, do not create a second sale to keep them happy. E-mail the receipt, and refer anything more to the person who looks after your books.
The customer's VAT or tax number on the document
Two numbers matter on a business customer's document: yours and theirs.
Yours is entered in Settings, under Firm Profile, as your VAT registration number. Documents made by the server print it, and they carry the title Tax Invoice only when a VAT number is set. A shop that is not registered for VAT therefore does not produce server documents headed Tax Invoice, which is correct.
One caution at the time of writing: the invoice PDF downloaded or e-mailed from the invoice screen itself is always headed TAX INVOICE and cites South Africa's VAT Act, whatever your country or VAT status. That is a known defect in the PDF the browser makes. If you trade in Nigeria or Kenya, or are not registered for VAT, check the heading before that PDF leaves the shop.
The buyer's number prints as a VAT number only when it looks like a South African VAT number; any other number prints as a tax number. A Kenyan buyer's KRA PIN or a Nigerian buyer's Tax ID is therefore labelled as a tax number. Copy it from the buyer's letterhead or registration document, never from memory.
Kenyan shops have one more step. Every business in Kenya must issue its tax invoices electronically through KRA's eTIMS, so the document your business customer relies on is the eTIMS invoice. Where Achekam has no live eTIMS connection, you issue the invoice through another eTIMS channel and record the control-unit invoice number and the other details it returns, after which the invoice counts as fiscalised.
A counter procedure for business buyers
Pin this beside every till:
- Ask before you ring. "Do you need an invoice in your company's name?" belongs at the start of the sale, not after the change is counted.
- Look the customer up. If they have a trade account, charge the sale to it and let the till check the hold and the limit.
- Regular buyer, no account yet? Ask a manager to open one on the Wholesale screen, with terms and a limit, before their next visit.
- One-off buyer? Either ring a normal sale and e-mail the receipt, or hand the sale to whoever raises receivables invoices. Never both.
- Take the number down properly. Copy the VAT number, PIN or Tax ID from a document.
- Check the heading. Make sure the document you hand over matches your VAT status.
If your buyers arrive at a trade counter rather than a shop floor, selling on account at a trade counter covers the same ground from a manufacturer's side, and VAT on invoice lines explains how South African rates are chosen line by line.
Where to start
List the handful of business customers who ask for invoices most often and set them up as trade accounts before their next visit. Then brief every cashier on the one-sale, one-document rule. The next time a contractor asks for a tax invoice at the counter, the answer will be quick and the ledger will still agree with the shelves.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
