Accounting software for Saudi SMEs: a buyer's checklist

Start with how you trade

Before comparing products, write down five facts about your business. Do you sell mostly to businesses, to consumers or both? How many branches, tills and warehouses issue invoices or hold stock? Do you buy or sell in currencies other than SAR? Do you track batches, expiry dates or serial numbers? Who keeps the books: your own team, an external accountant or both? The answers decide which of the questions below matter most to you.

VAT and invoicing

• Standard and simplified invoices. Does the system decide which one to issue from the buyer's VAT number, and print each correctly?
• Tax treatment per line. Can a line be standard-rated at 15%, zero-rated or exempt, with the treatment chosen when the invoice is raised?
• Corrections. Are credit notes and debit notes raised from the original invoice, with a reason, rather than by editing it?
• The return. Which VAT reports are prepared from the books, and which lines of ZATCA's return form do you still map by hand?

Our guide to preparing the Saudi VAT return from the ledger explains what a good VAT report should show.

ZATCA e-invoicing

Phase 1 applies to every VAT-registered business; Phase 2 applies from the date ZATCA gives you. Ask any vendor:

• Is your Phase 2 connection live in ZATCA's production environment today, and since when?
• Is each branch or till onboarded as its own unit, and how do we add one later?
• What happens when ZATCA does not respond, and who sees rejected documents?
• Can we see a printed simplified invoice with its QR code from our own test setup?

Our Phase 1 vs Phase 2 explainer and Phase 2 buyer checklist go further.

Arabic

Saudi rules expect tax invoice content in Arabic, and many businesses issue bilingual invoices. Staff may also prefer to work in Arabic. Ask to switch the interface to Arabic, then print an invoice for your own company and check that every label and field you need appears correctly. Confirm the language requirements for your invoices with your tax adviser.

Branches and stock

• Can users be limited to their own branch?
• Do transfers between branches have dispatch and receipt steps?
• Can you count stock by batch, and value it as of a past date?
• Is there a company-wide view for the owner?

Bank, close and control

• Bank reconciliation. Can statement lines be matched to receipts and payments, with unmatched items listed?
• Month-end close. Can a month be signed off and locked, so figures stop changing after the VAT return?
• Audit trail. Is every change recorded with the person and time?
• Approvals. Can large purchases, transfers and credit notes require a second person?

Payroll, data and price

If you run payroll in the same system, check GOSI and wage protection requirements separately with the vendor and your adviser. Ask how you export your data if you leave, in which formats and at what cost. Ask for prices in SAR, what each plan includes and how many users and branches it covers. Insist on a trial with your own products and customers, not only the vendor's demo company.

Run a trial that tells you something

A vendor demo shows the product at its best. A trial with your own data shows how it behaves with your products, customers and habits. Give the trial two weeks and a short script:

1. Load a sample of real products, including any with batches or serial numbers, and a handful of real customers and suppliers.
2. Raise a standard invoice to a business customer and a simplified invoice at the counter, and print both.
3. Record a supplier bill, a return and a credit note, then move stock between two branches.
4. Import a month of bank statement lines and reconcile them.
5. Run the VAT reports for that month and compare them with what your accountant prepared.
6. Ask your accountant to log in and say whether they can work with it.

If a step needs a workaround in the trial, it will need the same workaround every day after go-live.

How NAQIX answers these questions

• Taxes are set per legal entity and per product, with standard, zero-rated, exempt and out of scope treatments on invoices. Credit notes can be raised against the original invoice with a reason, and debit notes are always raised from the invoice they correct.
• For Saudi companies, NAQIX prepares a VAT return summary and a KSA VAT return register for review. It does not file the return; you or your tax agent submit it in the ZATCA portal.
• The ZATCA Phase 2 integration, per branch, is built and has been tested against ZATCA's sandbox. The production connection is not open yet, so NAQIX does not clear or report live invoices with ZATCA today. Ask for the current status before you rely on it.
• The interface can be switched to Arabic. Print your own Saudi invoice in a demo and check the layout you need.
• Branch-scoped users, inter-branch transfers, batch and expiry tracking, bank reconciliation and a month-end close signed off by a second person are part of the product. Prices can be shown in SAR, and every plan starts with a 40-day free trial.

The NAQIX page for Saudi Arabia, the Accounting & reports and Tax & compliance pages and the ZATCA invoicing overview describe the current setup.