What's the current ZATCA wave I should care about?+
ZATCA Phase 2 has been rolling waves of taxpayer cohorts since 2023. As of mid-2026, the relevant target depends on your revenue threshold — ZATCA publishes the next wave's cutoff and the integration window per cohort. If your annual revenue cleared the threshold in any prior period, you're already in. The Fatoora portal lists your wave and integration deadline.
Is ZATCA Phase 2 actually clearance, or pre-clearance?+
Both — depending on invoice type. Standard tax invoices (B2B) require pre-clearance: you submit, ZATCA stamps with cryptographic seal + QR, you issue. Simplified invoices (B2C) are pre-cleared offline using the device's CSID and reported within 24h. Mixing these flows is where most ERPs break.
Does our existing SAP DRC India setup help in KSA?+
Not directly. SAP DRC for KSA is a separate scenario than IN_INVOICE. Localisation, cryptographic stamping, the eGov gateway endpoint, and the certificate flow are all KSA-specific. Code reuse is mostly limited to the eDocument framework scaffolding.
What's the right way to handle the cryptographic stamp from SAP / Oracle?+
Two options: (1) call ZATCA's APIs from a middleware module that handles CSID provisioning, XAdES signing, and the QR generation, then post the signed XML back to the ERP for storage; (2) use SAP DRC's native KSA cryptography stack and let SAP do it. Option 2 is cleaner if you're on S/4HANA Cloud; Option 1 is the realistic path for ECC or non-SAP.
What ERPs has Cloudare implemented for ZATCA Phase 2?+
Oracle Fusion, Oracle EBS, NetSuite, SAP S/4HANA, Microsoft Dynamics 365 F&O, Zoho Books, and Odoo — across mid-market and enterprise tiers. The integration pattern is consistent: ERP outputs invoice JSON/XML, middleware handles ZATCA UBL 2.1 transformation + XAdES + QR, response posts the IRN/UUID back.
What happens if my clearance API call fails?+
ZATCA mandates a fallback flow. The invoice can be queued and re-submitted, but you cannot issue to the customer until clearance returns. Build for graceful retry with exponential backoff. The most common failure modes are certificate expiry, schema-validation mismatch (typically VAT-number formatting), and clock skew on the signing host.
Are there penalties beyond the obvious 'fail to file' ones?+
Yes. ZATCA can suspend the ability to issue invoices, which is operationally catastrophic. Penalties also apply to invoices that pass syntactic validation but fail later business-rule checks (rare, but they exist). The published schedule starts at SAR 1,000 and scales with the number of violating invoices.
What's the archive retention requirement?+
6 years from end of tax period, with the original XML preserved including XAdES signatures and QR. Storage must be readable on demand by ZATCA auditors. Most ERPs handle this via standard document archival; verify your retention policy aligns.
Can I use a non-resident ASP / EGS provider?+
Yes for the EGS (issuing solution) provided it meets ZATCA's technical specifications. The accreditation is for the device/software, not the vendor's country. ZATCA publishes the list of compliant EGS units.