Invoice Requirements in Georgia: Rules, VAT and Retention

The invoice requirements in Georgia come from one article of the Tax Code, and there is no official template. An invoice that misses a required element is not a valid tax record, a payment converted at the wrong date puts a wrong figure in the monthly declaration, and consulting wording can move income out of the 1% rate. This post covers the required contents, the number of copies, currency, VAT for foreign clients, wording under Small Business Status and retention.

What a Valid Invoice Must Contain in Georgia

Georgian tax law does not prescribe a government-issued invoice form. It requires the document you issue to qualify as a tax source document, which is defined in Article 72 of the Tax Code of Georgia. The rule applies to the document whether you call it an invoice, a bill or a receipt. A document qualifies when it meets five requirements.

Requirement	What Article 72 asks for	Check before you send it
Parties	The document identifies both parties to the transaction	Your business and the client are both named
Date	The document is dated	The date was set when the transaction took place, not added later
Description	It describes what was supplied, whether a service, a product or delivered work	The description matches the activity your business is registered for
Value	It states the value of the transaction	The amount is written on the document
Copies	It exists in at least two identical copies, one for each party	You hold a copy identical to the one the client received

An invoice that lacks the date, the parties, the description or the value is not a valid tax source document. The document also has to be made at the time of the transaction. An invoice assembled later from memory or from a bank statement does not meet the rule.

An individual entrepreneur with Small Business Status has no duty to run a formal income and expense ledger. Invoices and receipts are the bookkeeping the status requires until a VAT obligation arises, and from that point income and expense accounts have to be kept as well.

How Many Copies of an Invoice Are Required

Article 72 requires the document to exist in at least two identical copies, one held by each party. The PDF you generated and sent to the client is one copy. The second is a copy kept on your side that matches what the client received. A file that exists only in your email outbox leaves the record incomplete.

Invoice Language, Currency and Format Rules

Language, currency and template are your choice, as long as the document meets the five requirements. Where a transaction has to be submitted electronically to the Revenue Service, that is a filing obligation and does not change what the invoice has to contain.

Item	Rule	What stays fixed
Language	No language requirement, and English is accepted	The rs.ge portal, where the income is declared, is in Georgian
Currency	Any currency, with no requirement to invoice in lari	Declared income is converted to lari
Template	Your own template, or the layout your invoicing software produces	The five Article 72 requirements
Electronic submission	No mandatory centralised e-invoicing system for exported services	Some registered transactions are submitted electronically to the Revenue Service with the regular filing

Invoicing Foreign Clients From Georgia

An invoice to a client abroad has to meet the same five requirements as an invoice to a client in Tbilisi. The VAT treatment differs, and the client’s location does not decide where the income is taxed.

VAT on Invoices to Clients Outside Georgia

When the client is genuinely based abroad, the service is usually outside the scope of Georgian VAT. No 18% is added to the invoice, and the income is still declared in the monthly filing.

Without a VAT registration, no VAT goes on any invoice, wherever the client is based. VAT registration becomes mandatory once taxable turnover passes ₾100,000 in any continuous 12 months, and the application is due within 2 working days of crossing the threshold.

For a VAT-registered business, the taxable moment is the earliest of three events: the delivery of the goods or services, the issue of the invoice, or the receipt of an advance payment. An invoice issued on 28 June for work delivered that day and paid on 9 July belongs to June’s filing.

Reverse VAT on Invoices From Foreign Suppliers

Reverse VAT applies to the invoices you receive from abroad. When you buy a service from a supplier outside Georgia, such as software, hosting or a foreign contractor, you declare and pay 18% reverse VAT on it, with or without a VAT registration. A foreign hosting invoice worth ₾1,000 adds ₾180 of reverse VAT to the month. VAT-free invoices to foreign clients do not offset it.

Is Income From Foreign Clients Taxed in Georgia?

The client’s location, the invoice currency and the transfer method do not decide where the income is taxed. Whether income counts as Georgian-source is decided under Article 104 of the Tax Code by where the work was performed, and a Georgian tax resident also falls under a residency-based rule that applies to income billed while travelling.

How to Convert Invoice Income to Lari

Tax declarations are filed in lari, so income invoiced in a foreign currency is converted before it is declared. The rate is the official rate published daily by the National Bank of Georgia for the date each payment was received. Do not use the rate of the invoice date or a monthly average rate.

If a client pays an invoice dated the 1st three weeks later, the rate of the payment day applies. When several payments arrive in one month, each is converted separately at its own date’s rate and the declaration reports the sum.

Payment received	Date	Rate used in this example	Amount in lari
2,000 USD	3rd	2.70	₾5,400
1,500 EUR	14th	2.95	₾4,425
3,000 USD	27th	2.72	₾8,160
Total declared			₾17,985

The rates in the table are illustrative, and the real figure is the rate the National Bank publishes for each date. An individual entrepreneur paying 1% of turnover under Small Business Status owes ₾179.85 on this month.

The total goes into the monthly declaration, filed on rs.ge by the 15th of the following month. Keep a log of each payment with its date and currency.

Invoice Wording to Avoid Under Small Business Status

The description on the invoice affects the tax rate for an individual entrepreneur with Small Business Status. Government Resolution No. 415 of 29 December 2010 lists the activities that cannot hold the status, and consulting of any kind, including tax consulting, is on the list. Auditing, the medical, legal, notarial and architectural professions, banking, insurance, currency exchange, gambling and any activity that needs a licence or permit are on the prohibited activities list too.

The Revenue Service reads your registered activity codes and the wording of your contracts and invoices. If an invoice describes the work as consulting, the Revenue Service treats the income as consulting income, even when the work itself was something else. For clients on our monthly packages, we check that invoice descriptions match the registered activity before the month is declared.

Work performed	Wording that matches the work	Wording that reads as an excluded activity
Writing and delivering code for a client	Software development services	Technical consulting services
Building and running a marketing campaign	Digital marketing services	Brand strategy consulting
Designing a client’s product or brand	Design services	Consulting hours billed alongside the design work

When the client receives something finished, for example code, a design, a campaign or completed books, the activity usually falls outside the exclusions. When the client pays for advice alone and nothing else is delivered, the activity usually falls inside them. This pattern is a guide and not a legal test.

Rewording does not help when the work is advisory in substance. The activity itself is excluded from Small Business Status, and the structure that works for advisory work is an LLC. Rewording later invoices also does not change the tax on income already earned, which can be reclassified at the standard 20% rate with underpayment penalties and daily interest.

Invoices Issued Before Small Business Status Takes Effect

The tax rate for an invoice is set on the day it is issued. Income invoiced before Small Business Status takes effect is taxed at 20%, and that is not corrected afterwards.

How Long to Keep Invoices in Georgia

Article 72 sets the minimum retention period for tax source documents at three years. The three years start at the end of the calendar year an invoice belongs to, so an invoice issued in March 2026 is kept until the end of 2029.

Three years is also the ordinary limitation period for a tax assessment in Georgia, which is how far back an audit can go. Keep records longer than three years in two situations:

• The business falls into a SARAS reporting category. Financial statements filed with SARAS and the records behind them are kept beyond the tax minimum, for as long as the category applies.
• The Revenue Service has questioned a filing. A year under a tax audit or dispute stays open until the matter is resolved.

The records behind the invoice are kept for the same period: both copies of the invoice, the contract behind it, the bank statement or payment confirmation showing when and in which currency it was paid, and any correspondence that shows where the work was performed.

Digital Copies of Invoices

A paper copy of each invoice is not required. A digital copy is accepted when it meets the same requirements as a paper one: a date, both parties, the supply and its value, and at least two identical copies.

Common Invoice Mistakes

These are the mistakes we see most often:

1. Keeping only the file sent to the client, with no retained copy.
2. Leaving out the date, one of the parties, the description or the value.
3. Recreating an invoice later from a bank statement, or backdating one.
4. Converting a foreign payment at the invoice date or at a monthly average.
5. Describing development, design or marketing work as consulting.
6. Issuing invoices before Small Business Status is in effect.
7. Treating a foreign client as proof that the income is foreign-source.
8. Assuming that VAT-free invoices to foreign clients cover reverse VAT on foreign purchases.
9. Deleting invoices after one year, when the minimum is three.

A wrong conversion in a month that has already been filed can be corrected, and it is better to correct it yourself before the Revenue Service raises it. Early correction usually means less interest and a smaller penalty.