N-18 Ordinance (Bulgaria)
What is the N-18 Ordinance (Bulgaria)?
The N-18 Ordinance is the Bulgarian regulation that sets out how sales are recorded and what an online shop owes the tax administration. A shop has to be declared with the National Revenue Agency before its first sale, and the ordinance decides which document the customer receives for each method of payment. Which regime applies — a fiscal device or the exemption written for online shops — is a decision for your accountant.
Example
A Bulgarian appliance shop opens with two ways to pay: card through a virtual POS, and cash on delivery through a courier. Before the first order the owner files the shop’s details with the National Revenue Agency — the web address, where it is hosted, what software runs it, which payments it accepts. The shop is listed in the public register of online shops, and every change to those details is declared again.
For card payments the accountant picks the regime. One route is a fiscal device. The other is the exemption the ordinance writes for online shops: the customer receives a sales document carrying the unique order number, the date, the items, the amount and the method of payment; the sales data is kept; and each month a standardised audit file goes to the revenue agency in the form the ordinance prescribes.
Cash on delivery works differently. When a licensed postal operator collects the money and forwards it as a postal money transfer, the shop issues no fiscal receipt for that payment — the operator’s document travels with the transfer, and the sale is recorded in the usual way.
Why it matters for a business
This is not only an accounting question. The ordinance decides what the software has to produce: an order number, a document for the customer, a record of how each order was paid, and an export of sales in a form that can be filed. Settled before the build, it is one decision; settled afterwards, it is retrofitted in pieces.
The payment list is not purely a commercial choice either, because what you accept changes what you owe. We agree the regime with your accountant at the start of an online store build, and the shop is planned around it.
What to ask
- Who files the shop’s details with the revenue agency, and who updates them when the address, host or software changes?
- Which regime does your accountant recommend for card payments, and what does it require from the shop?
- Does the shop issue a document for every sale automatically, with the order number and the payment method on it?
- Can sales be exported as a structured file, without anyone assembling it by hand?
- Are card, bank transfer and cash on delivery recorded separately on the order and in the reports?
- How long is order data kept, and where does the archive live?