ZATCA for pharmacies: insurance, exempt items and batch tracking

A pharmacy counter produces the most complicated invoice in Saudi retail. Four things happen at once that do not happen in a normal shop.

1. Two payers on one sale

An insured patient pays a share; the insurer pays the rest. Your point of sale must produce a single tax invoice for the full value of the supply, with the payment split recorded as two tenders —not two invoices, and not an invoice for only the patient's share.

The patient's copy shows the full amount and what they paid. The claim to the insurer is a separate commercial process that references the same invoice.

Getting this wrong in the other direction — invoicing only the patient share — understates your output VAT and is difficult to unwind later.

Confirm the exact treatment for your insurer contracts with your accountant. The POS requirement is the same either way: one invoice, full value, split tender, clear reference.

2. Mixed VAT rates in one basket

A single pharmacy basket routinely contains items with different VAT treatments. Your system must:

• Hold the correct VAT treatmentper product, not per category and not per shop
• Compute VAT per line, not on the basket total
• Show the VAT breakdown per rate on the invoice
• Keep the treatment correct when a discount is applied across a mixed basket

The last one catches systems out. A 10% discount across a basket with two VAT treatments must apportion correctly.

Set the treatment once, per product, with your accountant, at import time. Correcting thousands of product records afterwards is a project.

3. Batch and expiry on every line

This is not a ZATCA requirement, but it is a regulatory and safety requirement, and it interacts with your invoicing because a recall needs to identify which invoices carried which batch.

Your system should capture batch and expiry at receiving, sell first-expiry-first, and be able to answer: "which sales included batch X?" Wameed's pharmacy mode does this; see theindustry workflows feature.

4. Controlled items

Items requiring a prescription or additional record-keeping need a distinct path at the counter: a prescription reference captured, a permission on who may dispense, and an audit trail. Again not a ZATCA rule, but the same invoice is the record, so the two belong together.

The invoice itself

Everything from thecomplete Phase 2 guide applies: UBL 2.1 XML, UUID, previous invoice hash, cryptographic stamp, QR with the Phase 2 fields, and reporting within 24 hours for simplified invoices.

Most pharmacy sales are simplified invoices. Sales to a clinic or a company are standard invoices requiring clearance and the buyer's VAT number — seesimplified vs standard.

Returns

Medicine returns are restricted by regulation, and where a return is permitted the invoicing treatment is a credit note referencing the original invoice, never a deleted invoice. Damaged or expired stock goes to a write-off location rather than back to the shelf. See thecredit note guide.

The pharmacy weekly check

1. Scan one printed invoice per terminal — does the QR read?
2. Rejections: zero?
3. Unreported count: zero?
4. Spot-check one insured sale: full value on the invoice, split tender recorded?
5. Spot-check one mixed-rate basket: VAT breakdown correct per rate?
6. Expiry report: anything within your disposal window?

What to insist on from a vendor

• VAT treatment stored per product and editable in bulk
• Correct discount apportionment across mixed-rate baskets
• Split tender with insurer share recorded against the sale
• Batch and expiry captured at receiving, enforced at sale
• Prescription reference capture and a dispensing permission
• Offline issuance — pharmacies are often open when the neighbourhood's connectivity is not

Wameed covers these in pharmacy mode. Details on thefeatures page and theZATCA page.

Not tax, legal or regulatory advice. Confirm VAT treatment with your accountant and pharmacy regulation with the relevant authority.