Getting a trade customer's VAT number on invoices

Why trade customers need their VAT or tax number on a manufacturer's invoices, how Achekam prints it, and the invoice-screen PDF limit to know about.

By Achekam · 11 October 2026 · 5 min read · For Manufacturing businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya

A manufacturer's trade customers read invoices differently from the public. A hardware chain buying your fasteners, a contractor buying your precast products, a distributor taking pallets of packaged goods: each passes your invoice to an accounts team whose first question is whether they can claim the VAT on it. If the customer's own VAT or tax number is missing, wrong or printed in the wrong place, the invoice comes back, payment waits, and your sales rep gets an irritated phone call.

Getting the customer's number onto the invoice correctly is a small piece of set-up that saves a lot of rework. This article explains why trade customers insist on it, how Achekam records and prints it, what your own VAT details do to the document, and one limit in the current invoice PDF that a Nigerian or Kenyan manufacturer in particular needs to know about.

Why business customers ask for it

For a VAT-registered buyer, your invoice is the evidence for their input VAT claim. The rules differ by country, but in each the buyer's details matter:

• South Africa. A VAT-registered buyer relies on your tax invoice to claim input tax, and its accounts team checks the buyer details on it before claiming.
• Kenya. Since 1 June 2023, input VAT can be claimed only against TIMS or eTIMS invoices. KRA's page on understanding VAT input tax deduction sets out the conditions, including a valid electronic tax invoice that carries the buyer's PIN, the seller having declared the sale, and the window for making the claim.
• Nigeria. Electronic invoicing through the NRS is being phased in by turnover band, which makes accurate customer details on every invoice more important, not less.

Beyond tax, a customer's registration number on the invoice simply makes the document easier for their payables team to match to the right supplier account.

Recording the customer's number

Take the number from the customer's own documents during account opening, not from an e-mail signature. Ask for a copy of the VAT registration certificate, or the KRA PIN certificate, or the Nigerian Tax ID evidence, and keep it with the customer's account documents.

Enter the number on the customer record exactly as it appears on the certificate, and record the legal name the number is registered to. A trade customer's trading name and registered name often differ, and the registered name is the one the tax authority knows.

VAT number or tax number on the document

Achekam prints the customer's number on documents in one of two ways. If it looks like a South African VAT number, it is printed as a VAT number. Otherwise it is printed as a tax number.

That suits most cases. A South African customer's VAT number is labelled as such. A Kenyan PIN or a Nigerian Tax ID does not match the South African pattern, so it appears as a tax number, which is a fair description. If a South African customer gives you something that is not in the VAT number format, such as an income tax reference by mistake, it will print as a tax number; treat that as a prompt to check you have the right number.

Your own VAT number and the Tax Invoice title

The other half of a valid document is your own registration. Enter your VAT registration number in Settings under Firm Profile. Documents made by the server print it, and are titled Tax Invoice only when a VAT number is set. A manufacturer that is not VAT-registered, or not yet, should leave the field empty so its documents are not presented as tax invoices.

Invoices begin as drafts that can be changed or deleted. Issuing one takes the next number in your sequence and posts it to the ledger as debtors, sales and output VAT, after which it can be downloaded as a PDF on your letterhead and e-mailed, with or without a pay link. Check the customer's number on the draft; once issued, the invoice is fixed.

Limits of the invoice-screen PDF

There is a limit to plan around. The invoice PDF downloaded or e-mailed from the invoice screen is currently always headed TAX INVOICE and cites the South African VAT Act, whatever the business's country or VAT number. It is made in the browser; the server's own document template handles the heading correctly, but the invoice-screen PDF does not yet follow it.

What that means in practice:

For a Nigerian or Kenyan manufacturer, the tax document that matters to the buyer is often the electronic invoice in any case. Where automatic sending is not available, a Nigerian or Kenyan business downloads the e-invoice file from Achekam, issues it through its provider or through eTIMS, records the identifiers it got back, and a second person verifies them. Make sure the customer's PIN or Tax ID is on that electronic invoice, because that is the document the buyer's claim will rest on.

A returned invoice, in words

A distributor sends back a manufacturer's invoice because the buyer details show only a trading name with no number. The accounts clerk asks the distributor for its registration certificate, corrects the customer record with the registered name and number, and from then on every draft for that customer carries both. Because the original was already issued, it is corrected with a credit note and a fresh invoice rather than edited.

A quick set-up check

Confirm your own VAT number is in Settings under Firm Profile, or deliberately left empty. Then go through your top trade customers, collect each one's certificate, and update their records. VAT on the lines themselves is covered in South African VAT on invoice lines, and keeping dealer prices and dispatch paperwork in order in dealer price lists, credit limits and waybills.

General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.