Charge VAT and issue tax invoices

Niblr calculates VAT on every order, shows it in the cart before payment, and prints it on a sequential tax invoice carrying your TRN. You turn it on in Settings → Tax. Niblr never files or pays anything on your behalf — the arithmetic and the paperwork are ours, the return is yours.

Do I need to charge VAT?

That depends on where you trade and how much you sell, and it is a question for your accountant or your tax authority — not for this page. In the UAE, registration becomes mandatory once taxable supplies and imports pass AED 375,000 a year; the official UAE government VAT page is the authoritative source.

VAT is off by default in Niblr, which is the correct setting for a business that isn't registered. While it's off, orders carry no tax and invoices show no VAT line at all — not a zero VAT line, none. Don't switch it on because it looks more professional; an unregistered business charging VAT has a real problem.

How do I turn VAT on?

Go to Settings → Tax in your admin and work down the tab:

1. Tick I am registered for VAT. The remaining fields appear only once this is on.
2. Enter your Tax registration number (TRN). This is required — Niblr won't let you save a registered store without one, because a UAE tax invoice isn't compliant without it.
3. Set the Rate (%). It defaults to 5 for the UAE; use 15 for Saudi Arabia, and so on. Fractional rates like 7.5 are fine.
4. Decide whether My product prices already include VAT. This is on by default. It's the most consequential setting on the page — see below.

Save. From that moment, new orders carry tax. Orders already placed are untouched.

Do my prices include VAT, or does it get added on top?

This is the setting people get wrong, so it's worth being precise. Inclusive tax is extraction, not addition.

With My product prices already include VAT on — the norm in the UAE and India, and the default here — a product listed at AED 100 still costs the shopper AED 100. The VAT is the portion contained within that price:

Setting	Listed price	VAT at 5%	Net	Shopper pays
Prices include VAT (default)	AED 100.00	AED 4.76	AED 95.24	AED 100.00
Prices exclude VAT	AED 100.00	AED 5.00	AED 100.00	AED 105.00

Inclusive VAT is 100 × 5 ÷ 105 = 4.76, and the total never moves from what you listed. Exclusive VAT is 100 × 5 ÷ 100 = 5.00 on top, and the shopper pays more than the sticker price. If you switch this setting off, every price on your storefront effectively rises by the rate — check your product prices before you do.

All of this runs in integer minor units (fils, paise, cents). There is no floating-point arithmetic anywhere in the calculation, and net + tax always equals gross exactly.

What does a shopper see before they pay?

The cart shows the tax line before checkout, labelled to match your setting:

• Prices include VAT → Includes VAT (5%), with the total unchanged.
• Prices exclude VAT → VAT (5%), added to the total.

The figure in the cart is an estimate calculated on the line total, because shipping and discounts aren't known yet. The authoritative amount is computed again when the order is actually placed, on the subtotal minus discount plus shipping. Your payment gateway plays no part in any of this — it captures the amount the cart hands it and computes nothing, which is exactly why the number has to be right before it gets there. See accepting payments.

What's on the tax invoice?

Every order gets a PDF invoice, numbered sequentially per store and emailed to the customer. When the order carried a TRN, that document is issued as a Tax Invoice and includes:

• The words "Tax Invoice" as the heading
• Your store name and trading address, and your TRN as it stood on the day of the order
• A sequential invoice number for your store
• A rate-labelled VAT row — VAT (5%) — and the taxable amount
• The gross total the customer paid

The TRN is what promotes the document. Without one, Niblr issues a plain invoice instead of printing a "Tax Invoice" heading it can't back up — printing the heading without the number would itself be non-compliant.

Can I change how the invoice looks?

Yes. Everything below lives in Settings → Tax, under Invoicing, on the same tab as your rate and TRN.

Your business address. Fill in the address fields first. On a UAE tax invoice your trading address is mandatory content, and an invoice without one is not compliant — this is the one part of the section that is not optional if you're registered.

Template. Three buttons — Classic, Modern and Compact — and a link beneath them, Preview this template (sample invoice), that opens a PDF in a new tab. The preview is produced by the same code that issues a real invoice, against sample order data, so what you see is what a customer will receive. Every store starts on Classic; nothing changes until you pick something else and save.

A template changes the layout, the table style and where your accent colour appears. It cannot remove anything. The TRN, your address, the invoice number and the VAT row print on all three, because there is no setting that hides them.

Accent colour. Leave it blank to use your storefront's brand colour. Classic ignores it entirely — it's deliberately monochrome — so if you pick a colour and see no change, that's why.

Font. Three choices, bundled with Niblr so the invoice renders identically every time. This is not the same list as your storefront fonts, and it can't be: an invoice is rendered on our servers at the moment an order is paid, and a font fetched from the web at that moment would be a way for an invoice to fail.

Your logo. The logo you uploaded in Settings → General prints at the top of the invoice automatically. There's nothing to set here.

Trade licence number, bank details, payment terms, footer note. All optional, all printed when filled. Bank details are free-form label-and-value pairs — up to six — so you can use whatever your market expects: IBAN and SWIFT in the UAE, IFSC and account number in India. Payment terms is a short line like Due on receipt. The footer note is a closing line on every invoice — a thank-you, a returns note, your support address.

The template, accent colour and font all show in the preview before you save. The text fields — address, bank details, terms, footer — are read from your saved settings, so the loop is: change a design control and preview straight away; change text, save, then preview.

Can the invoice go to a different address than the delivery?

Yes, in two ways.

At checkout, a shopper can tick My billing address is different and enter a second address. The invoice then bills to that address rather than the delivery one. Left unticked, the invoice bills to the delivery address, exactly as before.

You can also add or correct a billing address yourself, on the order, after the fact — a business customer who emails their invoicing details a day later is the usual case. Open the order and edit Billing address. This does not change an invoice you've already sent; it applies to the next one issued, or to a re-send.

Click-and-collect orders have no delivery address, so the checkout box reads Add a billing address for my invoice instead. If the shopper gives one, the invoice uses it; if not, it bills to their name and email and prints no address at all — rather than the collection point, which is your address, not theirs.

What happens if I change my rate later?

Nothing happens to invoices you've already issued, by design.

The rate, the inclusive/exclusive choice and your TRN are snapshotted onto each order when it's placed, and the invoice reads the order rather than your current settings. Change your rate, or deregister entirely, and every historical invoice still shows what was actually charged on the day. A tax invoice that silently restates itself months later is a compliance problem, not a convenience.

Does Niblr file or pay my VAT?

No, and this is not a limitation we plan to remove. Niblr calculates and documents; you file.

We are never in your payment flow — money settles directly to you through your own gateway keys — so we never hold the tax you collect and could not remit it if we wanted to. What we owe you is a correct invoice, because we're the one issuing it under your name. Filing the return, paying the authority, and keeping records for the required period (five years in the UAE) are yours. Your order and invoice history exports as spreadsheets on any plan, including Free.

Does this work for Indian GST?

Not yet. What ships today is a single-rate, UAE-shaped implementation: one rate, one registration number, inclusive or exclusive.

That is not GST. An Indian merchant using it would get a single "VAT" line, with no CGST/SGST/IGST split, no HSN codes, no place-of-supply logic and no GSTIN handling. Don't use it as a GST invoice. If you're selling in India, keep VAT switched off and issue GST invoices through your accounting software until this ships.

What this doesn't do

Stated plainly, so nothing here surprises you at audit time:

• One rate per store. There's no per-product or per-category rate, and no way to mark individual items zero-rated or exempt.
• Simplified invoices only. A shopper can give a billing address, and you can add one to the order, but Niblr doesn't capture a buyer's TRN — so it can't produce a full B2B tax invoice, the form the UAE requires for supplies above AED 10,000 to another registered business. For those, you still need to add the buyer's registration details yourself.
• No reverse charge, and no handling of cross-border or out-of-scope supplies.
• No returns or filing. Niblr produces no VAT return, and submits nothing anywhere.

Related: accept payments · export your records