Grant Thornton shares 90-day roadmap to meet UAE e-invoicing requirements

From 1 January, the UAE’s new e-invoicing requirements will come into effect, bringing important changes to how businesses manage and report their transactions. Experts from Grant Thornton outline a practical 90-day roadmap to help organizations prepare for the new requirements and move towards compliance with confidence.

From January 1, 2027, Phase 1 of the UAE’s mandatory e-invoicing regime goes live for all B2B and B2G transactions of businesses with annual revenue of Dh50 million or more. These businesses must appoint an Accredited Service Provider (ASP) by October 30, 2026.

With roughly three months to go-live, the businesses that transition smoothly are the ones that start now and work to a plan.

Appointing an ASP is the starting point-not the finish line. Onboarding an ASP on the EmaraTax portal is a critical first step but does not guarantee compliance on its own. The ability to generate a compliant e-invoice requires clean master data, correctly mapped invoice use cases, a “gap assessment” of current ERP data fields, accurate VAT treatment of transactions in the PINT-AE format, tested ERP integration, and people who know the new process.

A roadmap for compliance

Based on our extensive expertise in regulatory change and tax, both in the UAE as well as globally, we have established a 90-day roadmap to meet UAE e-invoicing requirements:

DAYS 1-30: Assess and appoint
Get organised and lock in your provider.

• Confirm scope: verify your e-invoicing phase, revenue threshold and which flows (B2B, B2G, free-zone, exports, self-billing) are in scope.
• Mobilise the team: appoint a project owner and bring together Finance, Tax, IT, Procurement and Legal.
• Map transactions: walk through every sales and purchase invoice type and match them with the mandated e-invoicing scenarios (use cases).
• Health check data: clean customer/ supplier data, TRNs, legal names, addresses and item/tax codes.
• Appoint the ASP: shortlist, evaluate and appoint an MoF-accredited ASP. that fits your ERP-by October 30, 2026.

DAYS 31-60: Build and configure
Turn requirements into a working system.

• Map to PINT-AE: align each ERP field to the PINT-AE data dictionary: flag missing mandatory, optional and conditional fields.
• Connect the ASP: set up API/SFTP integration, Peppol ID and SMP onboarding, and inbound (AP) plus outbound (AR) flows.
• Validate VAT: confirm the correct VAT treatment and tax codes for each use case-standard, zero- rated, exempt, reverse charge, exports.
• Redesign processes: update invoicing, credit note, approval and archiving procedures and internal controls.
• Use the pilot window: start early testing in the voluntary phase, where errors carry no penalty.

DAYS 61-90: Test and go-live
Prove it works, then switch on.

• Run test cycles: complete SIT and UAT across all invoice scenarios; resolve rejections and data errors before go-live.
• Reconcile: match ASP-transmitted data against your GL/ERP to confirm nothing is dropped or duplicated. Train the teams: coach AR, AP, Finance and IT on the new flow, dashboards and how to handle a rejected invoice.
• Tell partners: notify customers and vendors of the switch and its impact on their input-VAT recovery. Go live & hypercare: clear thego-live checklist, switch on for 1 January 2027, and monitor closely in the first weeks.

Key success factors

A successful transition to e-invoicing is built on the following key pillars: Data quality; Use-case coverage; VAT accuracy; End-to-end testing; and People & change management.

In our experience at Grant Thornton, technology is rarely the problem – implementation challenges and delays come from data and process gaps. Successful go-live to e-invoicing requires businesses to ensure that these areas are robustly reviewed and tested throughout the 90 days.