Do you need FBR digital invoicing, PRA invoicing, or both?

If you issue sales tax invoices for goods you are inside FBR digital invoicing and the deadline has already passed. If you supply taxable services in Punjab above the rule 3 turnover threshold you are inside PRA eIMS. Businesses that do both, such as a salon selling retail products or a restaurant with a bakery counter, are inside both regimes at once and need two separate integrations.

This guide is the answer to that. It covers FBR digital invoicing and PRA digital invoicing, which are the two services we run, and it is written so that you can work out which of them you need before you spend anything.

The line that divides them

Sales tax in Pakistan is not one tax. Sales tax on goods is federal, administered by the Federal Board of Revenue under the Sales Tax Act 1990. Sales tax on services is provincial, and in Punjab it is levied under the Punjab Sales Tax on Services Act 2012 and administered by the Punjab Revenue Authority.

Two taxes, two authorities, two invoicing mandates, two sets of credentials. They are not alternatives and one does not satisfy the other. What decides your position is what you sell and where you sell it, not how big you are or what your company is called.

The decision tree

The FBR branch, in one paragraph

If you are registered for sales tax on goods, you are inside the federal mandate, and you are inside it now. The dates were set by notification and the notification was replaced twice during 2025: SRO 709(I)/2025 gave way to SRO 1413(I)/2025 of 1 August 2025, which gave way to SRO 1852(I)/2025 of 24 September 2025. The final category of that schedule, covering registered persons other than those listed above, required electronic invoices from 31 December 2025. There is no remaining phase. Our cost, penalties and deadlines guide has the full schedule and the section 33 penalty ladder, and the FBR pillar guide explains the mechanics.

The PRA branch, in one paragraph

If you provide taxable services in Punjab, the question is the turnover threshold in rule 3 of the Punjab Electronic Invoice Monitoring System Rules 2019. A notification gazetted on 15 July 2024 split it: six million rupees or above for restaurant services, ten million rupees or above for all other services. If you are above your figure you register with PRA, take a POS ID and access token per outlet, and submit each invoice through eIMS. What is PRA eIMS covers the system and the August 2026 enforcement drive, and who has to integrate with PRA works through it by business type.

When both apply

This is the case nobody writes about, and it is more common than the vendor content suggests. A salon that also sells retail products. A restaurant with a bakery counter. A gym selling supplements. An events company that hires equipment and also caters. A consultancy that resells hardware alongside its advisory work.

If that is you, here is what "both" actually means in practice.

• Two registrations. A sales tax registration with FBR, and a registration with PRA. Neither substitutes for the other, and the PRA registration has an FBR NTN as a prerequisite, so the order matters.
• Two sets of credentials. FBR integration credentials on the federal side, a POS ID and access token per outlet on the Punjab side.
• Two coding systems. Goods lines carry HS codes on the FBR side. Service lines carry PCT codes on the PRA side. They are not interchangeable, and mixing them up is one of the more common causes of rejected invoices.
• Two returns. A federal sales tax return and a Punjab return, on their own separate deadlines.
• One invoice, split correctly. Where a single transaction covers goods and services, the goods element belongs to the federal system and the service element to the provincial one. Getting that split right on the document is the part that most often needs a consultant rather than software.

None of that is a reason to panic, but it is a reason not to buy software on the assumption that one connection covers you. Ask any vendor directly which authority their system submits to, and treat "we handle Pakistani digital invoicing" as a non answer.

What if you operate outside Punjab as well?

Then there is a third layer. Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan each run their own service tax authority under their own legislation, with their own registration, rates and, in some cases, their own invoicing system. Punjab's rules tell you nothing about the Sindh position, and a chain operating in Lahore and Karachi is dealing with two provincial authorities plus FBR.

We are not going to summarise the other three provinces here, because doing it accurately means reading each authority's current schedule and we would rather say nothing than guess. If it applies to you, ask about each province by name.

A short way to settle it

1. Do you issue sales tax invoices for goods? If yes, FBR digital invoicing applies to you and the deadline has passed.
2. Do you provide taxable services in Punjab? If yes, check your turnover against six million for restaurant services or ten million for everything else.
3. Did you answer yes twice? Then you need both, and the practical questions become sequencing and how the two sit alongside each other in one set of books.
4. Do you operate outside Punjab too? Add a question per province, and get each one answered separately.

Last verified: 22 August 2026. Primary sources read directly for this page: SRO 1413(I)/2025 and SRO 1852(I)/2025 as published in FBR's SRO library; and the Punjab Gazette (Extraordinary) of 15 July 2024, Notification 109 of 2024, substituting the threshold in rule 3 of the Punjab Electronic Invoice Monitoring System Rules 2019. The positions of Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan are deliberately not summarised, because we have not verified them against each authority's current schedule. General information, not tax or legal advice. Where a single transaction spans goods and services, get the split confirmed by a consultant.