What every invoice must show
- A karekod — the QR code GİB specifies in its Karekod Standardı Kılavuzu — has been compulsory on every e-Fatura, e-Arşiv Fatura, e-İrsaliye and e-SMM since 1 September 2023.
- The customer's VKN or TCKN, and for a business seller the seller's own tax office (bağlı olduğu vergi dairesi) as well as the tax number.
- Issue it within 7 days of delivering the goods or finishing the work. An invoice issued after that is treated as never issued at all (VUK 231/5).
- You must invoice a non-business customer once the sale passes 12.000 TL in 2026, and at any amount if they ask; below that a perakende satış fişi is enough.
Numbering, keeping and correcting invoices
Under the Tax Procedure Law (VUK) article 231, invoices run in an unbroken sequence. A business that uses separate pads or series at several branches must write the branch name on each or mark the series so branches cannot be confused. Article 230 also requires the invoice to carry the date of delivery and the waybill (irsaliye) number whenever goods are sold, besides the serial and sequence number.
Records must be kept in Turkish. Article 215 lets documents be written in a foreign currency only if the lira equivalent is shown; invoices addressed to customers abroad do not need the lira equivalent.
Books and the documents behind them, including invoices received, must be kept five years counted from the start of the calendar year after the year they relate to (article 253). Traders without books must keep invoices and expense notes for the same five years (article 254).
Article 353 sets a special irregularity penalty for each invoice not issued or not collected, for an invoice showing a different amount from the real one, and for a paper invoice where an electronic one was required. The penalty is also due when an invoice is treated as never issued under article 231.
Electronic invoicing in Türkiye
Mandatory, and from 2026 effectively universal. Two systems sit side by side. e-Fatura is for invoices between businesses both enrolled in it; e-Arşiv Fatura is for everything else. You are pulled into e-Fatura by gross sales of 3 Milyon TL or more in 2022 or any later year — meet it in 2025 and you must be live by 1 July 2026 — or, at 500 Bin TL, if you sell online, run an e-commerce marketplace, or build, deal in or rent out property or motor vehicles. Fuel licence holders, ÖTV list III manufacturers and importers, SGK-contracted healthcare suppliers, licensed hotels, fruit-and-vegetable commission agents and EV charging operators are in regardless of turnover. Anyone in e-Fatura must also be in e-Arşiv. And since 1 January 2026, a taxpayer with no e-Fatura obligation at all must still issue every invoice as an e-Arşiv Fatura through GİB's free e-Belge portal or a licensed özel entegratör, whatever the amount — the old 3.000 TL floor is gone. Basit usul and işletme hesabı taxpayers keep that 3.000 TL floor until 31 December 2026 and lose it on 1 January 2027. Issuing paper where an electronic document was required costs 17.000 TL per invoice for 2026, capped at 17.000.000 TL a year, and the business buyer who accepts it is fined too. Alongside these: e-İrsaliye (electronic delivery note) for e-Fatura users with gross sales of 10 Milyon TL or more, e-SMM (electronic professional receipt), compulsory for every non-exempt self-employed professional since 1 June 2020, and e-Defter, compulsory since 1 January 2025 for everyone keeping balance-sheet-basis books.