ZATCA Phase 2 After Wave 24: What Saudi Finance Teams Still Receive on Paper

Wave 24 of ZATCA's e-invoicing Integration Phase (Phase 2) covered every taxpayer whose VAT-able revenue exceeded SAR 375,000 in 2022, 2023 or 2024, with an integration deadline of 30 June 2026. That threshold equals the mandatory VAT registration threshold, and as of mid-2026 ZATCA had not announced a further wave — so for most VAT-registered businesses in Saudi Arabia, integration with the Fatoora platform is no longer a future project but a current obligation.

That changes how your own invoices are issued. It does not mean every document your finance team receives is now structured data. This guide recaps Phase 2 and then lists what still reaches you as a PDF, a printed receipt or a phone photo.

Phase 2 in short

Tax invoices (B2B) are cleared by the platform; simplified tax invoices (B2C) are reported to it. ZATCA notifies each targeted taxpayer directly — confirm your own status with ZATCA or your tax adviser. This article is not tax advice.

What still arrives as a PDF or a photo

Phase 2 structures the invoices issued by Saudi taxpayers. On the receiving side, several kinds of documents stay unstructured for the company that has to book them:

1. 1Invoices from foreign suppliers. A supplier in the UAE, Egypt, India or Europe that is not a Saudi taxpayer does not issue through Fatoora. Its invoice arrives as a PDF.
2. 2Simplified tax invoices behind expense claims. The fuel station, restaurant or hotel reports its B2C invoice to ZATCA, but your employee still hands you the printed receipt with its QR code — or a photo of it.
3. 3Invoices from suppliers outside the integration waves, such as businesses registered voluntarily below the mandatory threshold.
4. 4Documents that are not tax invoices: delivery notes, quotations and purchase orders, which the invoice still has to be matched against.
5. 5Invoices from before integration, needed for audits, VAT refund claims or catch-up bookkeeping.

How to size what is left

Take the last 100 inbound documents your team processed and mark each one in the five categories above. For a contracting, trading or logistics business with foreign suppliers, field staff and delivery notes, the share is often large — and none of these categories disappears with Wave 24.

Where WhappScan fits — and where it does not

WhappScan is not a ZATCA-compliant e-invoicing solution and does not issue, clear or report invoices on Fatoora. For your own invoices you need a compliant solution.

WhappScan handles what arrives unstructured: it reads invoices, receipts, delivery notes, quotations and purchase orders sent as a PDF or a photo, and returns their fields — supplier, VAT number, date, VAT, total, and each line where the document has them — ready for Excel or your ERP. Staff, drivers and clients can send the photo by WhatsApp, with nothing to install.

Try it on your own documents: the invoice to Excel tool, the receipt to Excel tool and the purchase order tool are free, need no signup and handle up to three documents a day.

For the neighbouring mandate, see UAE e-invoicing mandate 2027.

For every country side by side, see e-invoicing mandates country by country.

Sources

• ZATCA — Criteria for selecting the targeted taxpayers in Wave 24 of the Integration Phase
• VATupdate — Wave 24 deadline 30 June 2026 (SAR 375,000 threshold)