Helping clients with Nigerian e-invoicing

What a Nigerian accounting firm can do for a client's e-invoicing on the NRS system, and why Achekam's e-invoice drafts cover only the firm's own sales.

By Achekam · 11 October 2026 · 4 min read · For Accountants & audit firms in Nigeria

Launching soon. Some of the screens this article describes for Nigerian and Kenyan businesses are not reachable in Achekam yet. They are coming soon.

Clients are asking their accountants about e-invoicing, and the questions are rarely technical. "Do we have to do this now?" "Which company should we use?" "What happens to the invoices we already issued?" "Can't you just do it for us?" Most owners do not want to learn a tax portal. They want someone they trust to tell them what to do.

An accounting firm is well placed to be that someone, provided it is clear about where its role ends. The NRS's system is built to include tax consultants, there is useful advisory work around it, and there is one thing a firm using Achekam should understand before offering help: Achekam's e-invoicing drafts are for the firm's own invoices, not its clients'.

Consultants have a place in the NRS system

The NRS describes its e-invoicing portal as supporting tax consultants as well as businesses. It also says the portal keeps invoicing history retrievable for audits and reconciliation. The NRS e-invoicing portal page explains what the national system, the Merchant Buyer Solution, does in creating, validating, submitting and tracking electronic invoices linked to a business's tax profile.

According to the same page, the portal validates invoices automatically for tax and regulatory compliance and reports invoices submitted and received in real time. For a firm, that reporting is the interesting part: it gives an adviser a view of a client's invoicing that does not depend on the client's own records being complete.

Enablement status and approved service providers

The Merchant Buyer Solution's own site gives businesses pages to get enabled for e-invoicing, check their enablement status, search approved service providers and retrieve integration credentials. Those four functions map neatly onto the first questions clients ask:

A firm can walk a client through each step without taking over its access. The client remains the taxpayer and the account holder; the firm advises, checks and keeps a record of what was done.

Why the record-keeping duty matters to the accountant

The NRS's information circular on VAT administration says a taxable person making a taxable supply must implement the fiscalisation system by adopting the Electronic Fiscal System deployed by the NRS, record and report all taxable supplies through it, and keep accurate records of all transactions processed through it.

For the firm preparing a client's VAT return or financial statements, that last duty creates a natural reconciliation. Every taxable supply should appear in three places: the client's sales records, the e-invoicing history held by the NRS system, and the VAT return. When the three agree, the client's position is strong. When they do not, the firm has found something worth raising before the NRS does.

What Achekam does, and for whom

It is worth being precise here, because clients may assume their accountant's software handles their e-invoicing.

A Nigerian firm can record its own NRS e-invoicing registration in Achekam. Once it does, Achekam drafts an e-invoice for each invoice and credit note the firm issues, for the firm to upload through its provider. That covers the firm's own sales, such as its fees to clients. It does not cover a client's sales. How the firm handles its own invoices is set out in a Nigerian firm's own e-invoices.

Three further limits apply:

• Not a provider. Achekam holds no NRS accreditation as an Access Point Provider or System Integrator, and it never generates an Invoice Reference Number itself.
• No live connection as shipped. No Nigerian or Kenyan tax-authority connection is live as shipped. E-invoice transmission works only after Achekam authorises the connector and the firm adds its own production credentials.
• Client VAT from schedules. A client's Nigerian VAT return is computed in Achekam from imported sales and purchase schedules, because the client's own books are not linked to it. The method is described in client VAT returns from schedules.

So the honest offer to a client is advice and reconciliation, not e-invoice submission on its behalf through Achekam.

Advisory work the firm can offer

Within those limits there is real work to do, and much of it builds on what the firm already knows about the client:

1. Readiness review. Is the client a taxable person making taxable supplies? Is it enabled? Which systems issue its invoices today?
2. Provider selection. Help the client compare providers from the NRS list against its invoicing volume and systems, and review the contract terms.
3. Process mapping. Who in the client's business raises invoices and credit notes, and how will each pass through the system?
4. Monthly reconciliation. Match the e-invoicing history to the sales schedule used for the VAT return, and investigate differences.
5. Record-keeping check. Confirm the client can retrieve its history for audits, as the NRS says the portal allows.
6. Year-end tie-out. For audit and review clients, agree annual revenue to the invoicing history and explain any gap.

Scope each service in the engagement letter, and make clear that the client, not the firm, is responsible for processing its supplies through the system.

Choose three VAT-registered clients of different sizes. Ask each whether it has checked its enablement status and chosen a provider, and offer the monthly reconciliation as a defined service to the one whose answers are least certain.

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