Webshop fiscalization in Serbia: what an online store must do - Zephyra Studio

An online store in Serbia that sells to private individuals must issue a fiscal receipt for every sale and send it to the buyer electronically, through a fiscal solution approved by the Tax Administration. The law has applied since 1 November 2021 (the transition period ended on 30 April 2022), and a seller that operates only online can use the free virtual fiscal receipt processor. For the website this means real work: the shop has to send receipt data, store the receipt number and verification link, and handle advances and refunds. Below are the rules from the law and a list of questions for whoever builds your store.

Who has to fiscalize online sales

A fiscalization obligor is an entrepreneur paying tax on self-employment income and any legal entity paying corporate income tax, if it makes retail sales (Article 4 of the Law on Fiscalization). Retail sales are all sales of goods and services to private individuals, plus sales in retail premises (Article 3).

The law states that the registered seat of a seller trading over the internet by distance selling counts as a retail premises. In other words, having no physical shop is not an exemption: a webshop selling to consumers falls under the law.

Sales outside a retail premises to a legal entity or entrepreneur are not counted as retail sales. The line for a company buying through your webshop is not simple, because the law calls the seat of an online seller a retail premises. Before you exclude business buyers from fiscalization, confirm the procedure with your accountant or the Tax Administration.

By a Government Decree (Official Gazette of the Republic of Serbia no. 32/2021 and later amendments, the latest 110/2025) the Government has listed activities with no duty to record sales through a fiscal device (Article 4, paragraph 3 of the law). The list includes, for example, taxi transport, telecommunications, financial services and part of education. Retail trade over the internet is not on the list we read. Check the code of your own activity in the Decree, not in a blog post.

What the Tax Administration says about online sales

In its explanation on selling goods over the internet, the Tax Administration states that retail trade over the internet is not exempt from recording sales. The seller issues a fiscal receipt and sends it with the goods, or electronically with the buyer consent.

The answers to frequently asked questions set a stricter rule for sellers working exclusively online: they issue the fiscal receipt in electronic form, with a verification hyperlink that opens on any device with internet access. The buyer can verify a receipt for 10 years after it is issued. Article 13 of the Rulebook on types of fiscal receipts contains the same rule.

Delivery costs: if delivery is included in the price the buyer pays, everything appears on one fiscal receipt. If the price covers only the goods, the company carrying out the delivery issues a separate fiscal receipt for the delivery cost.

Which fiscal solution a webshop uses

An electronic fiscal device does not have to be a cash register. Under Article 2 it is a hardware and/or software solution made up of a fiscal receipt processor, an electronic invoicing system and a security element issued by the Tax Administration. The Tax Administration says it can be a computer, tablet or phone running an approved solution.

In a webshop the electronic invoicing system is the software that builds a receipt from the order, and the processor is what signs it and sends it to the Tax Administration. The virtual processor is free software on the Tax Administration server, and according to its answers only sellers in online sales can use it on their own. Its security element is a file obtained through the ePorezi portal.

If you also have a physical shop, each premises needs at least one local processor, because the virtual one works only with a constant internet connection. When the shop and the webshop share an address, the Tax Administration allows all sales to go through one device and one registered premises.

The obligor must check before starting that the device elements are in the register of approved elements kept by the Tax Administration (Article 6). A legal entity that supplies an unapproved device as a supplier pays a fine of 300,000 dinars (Article 18).

Registering the premises before the first receipt

Before issuing the first fiscal receipt you send the Tax Administration electronic data about each business premises separately, and it generates a unique premises code (Article 9). Registration goes through the PGJO form, and the Rulebook on premises data (Article 3) says that for electronic or other distance trade the type entered is distance selling.

Every change must be reported at the latest 24 hours in advance, or at the latest 24 hours after it happens when it is beyond the obligor control. Missing that duty is an offence under Article 17, with a fine of 200,000 dinars for a legal entity.

What a receipt must contain and what that means for the site

Article 5 lists the mandatory receipt data. Most of it a webshop already has, but it has to exist in a form the fiscal solution can accept. This is what every order line and every order must carry.

• For each item: name, quantity, unit of measure, price per unit, tax rate label and value. If an item has no unit of measure or tax rate in the database, the receipt lacks mandatory data.
• For the whole order: tax rate breakdown, tax amount per rate, total, payment method, amount paid and any change due back to the buyer.
• Seller data: name, tax ID (PIB) and the unique premises code.
• Buyer data only when the buyer is a legal entity or entrepreneur: their PIB. The checkout form has to know when to ask for it.
• Issue time down to the second, the receipt serial number, and a QR code or verification hyperlink. In a webshop the hyperlink is the part the buyer receives by email.
• Language and copies: the data on the receipt must be in Serbian, in Cyrillic or Latin script, and the buyer is issued one copy (Article 13 of the Rulebook). The receipt is in Serbian even when the webshop is in another language.

Prepayment, cash on delivery and refunds

An advance is subject to fiscalization (Articles 3, 5 and 6 of the law). The Rulebook on types of fiscal receipts says an advance receipt is issued for a received advance for future retail sales, and a sale receipt for a completed sale (Article 2). A proforma issued by the fiscal device is not a fiscal receipt and must carry the notes "PREDRAČUN" and "OVO NIJE FISKALNI RAČUN" (this is not a fiscal receipt).

For a bank transfer before delivery the Rulebook is precise: the advance receipt shows the date the funds were transferred and can be issued at the latest on the next working day after the payment is received (Article 11). When a sale receipt is later issued for a sale paid by advance, it references the number of the advance receipt, and if it came from a proforma, the number of the proforma.

The Tax Administration answers also say that when a private individual pays the full amount of a proforma, a final sale receipt can be issued at the moment of the sale. That answer does not fully match the bank transfer rule in the previous paragraph, so agree with your accountant how an earlier payment is recorded and write it into the shop procedures. For a card payment before shipping, the sources we read have no special rule.

A refund has its own receipt type. A refund is the return of a payment or part of a payment, the return of an advance, and the return and exchange of delivered goods, and it is issued as a fiscal receipt of the refund type that references the number of the sale receipt (Articles 3 and 11 of the Rulebook). Cancellation is a separate transaction for correcting an error after a receipt was issued. According to the Tax Administration answer, a refund carries the buyer identification, and the buyer signs a copy of the refund. How that works when the buyer is not present, ask the developer and your accountant, because the sources we read do not describe a special procedure for online sales.

For cash on delivery there is no special rule in the law, the Rulebook or the Tax Administration answers we read. The Tax Administration says only that the seller issues the receipt and sends it with the goods, and that for a delivery cost not included in the price of the goods the company carrying out the delivery issues a separate receipt. When the receipt is issued for cash on delivery, agree it with your accountant and write it into the shop procedures.

Fines and bans on trading

Anyone who does not record every individual retail sale, issues a receipt without the mandatory data or fails to issue a receipt at the moment of sale commits an offence under Article 15. A legal entity pays from 300,000 to 2,000,000 dinars, the responsible person from 20,000 to 150,000, and an entrepreneur from 50,000 to 500,000 dinars.

The bigger threat for a small webshop is the ban on trading in Article 12. The inspector imposes it when sales are not recorded: 15 days the first time, 90 days the second, one year the third, for irregularities within 24 months of the first one found.

The amendment to the law (Official Gazette of the Republic of Serbia no. 80/2026) changes Article 12 so that a receipt with a QR code that was not generated in the electronic fiscalization system of the Tax Administration, or that leads to a different receipt, amount, date, item or obligor, brings a one-year ban, imposed immediately. According to the explanatory memorandum of the proposal, the cause was an obligor who used a second, unregistered system with copied QR codes in the same premises alongside a registered device. The practical lesson for a webshop is that receipts are never built by hand or copied, only issued by the approved solution.

What to ask the webshop developer

These are questions we recommend asking before signing, derived from the rules above. They are not part of the law, but each one maps to one of its duties.

• Which fiscal solution will be connected, and is it in the register of approved elements of the Tax Administration?
• Whose name is the security element under, and where is the file kept? It should be in your name, handed over like a domain.
• Where does the order store the receipt number and verification link, and does the buyer get it in the confirmation email?
• What does the shop do when the virtual processor is unavailable: does checkout stop, or does the receipt wait in a queue? For the virtual processor the law provides for issuing receipts only with a constant internet connection (Article 6), so this has to be agreed.
• How are advances, refunds and partial item returns handled?
• Where does the shop get its tax rates, and what happens when a rate changes?
• Where is the buyer PIB entered when a company orders?
• How is it tested before the first sale? The Rulebook knows a training receipt, a fiscal document for testing the device that does not record a sale, so test orders must not produce real receipts.
• Is the data on the receipt in Serbian even when the webshop is in English?

Related guides

Sources

Key takeaways

• A webshop selling to private individuals must issue a fiscal receipt for every sale, and a seller working only online issues it electronically with a verification link.
• The fiscal solution must be in the register of approved elements of the Tax Administration, and the virtual processor is free and allowed on its own only for online sales.
• Advances and refunds are separate fiscal receipts, so the shop order flow has to support them.
• Fines reach 2,000,000 dinars and a ban on trading up to one year, so fiscalization should be agreed before the shop is built.

Conclusion

The most common gap is not the choice of fiscal solution but an order flow that does not know about it. A webshop that cannot issue an advance or a refund receipt pushes the owner into issuing them by hand, outside the system, which is exactly the behaviour the law punishes. So write fiscalization into the shop specification as a feature, with a test environment, and not as an extra added before launch. This text is not legal advice and reflects the regulation we read on 6 October 2026.