`BR-DEC-12`Tax-exclusive total is written with more than two decimal places

Mutabiq checks Saudi ZATCA Phase 2 e-invoice XML before you submit it: pre-validation against published ZATCA requirements, not an approval by the authority. This page explains one rule, BR-DEC-12.

Validate 5 invoices free

Five checks a month on the Free plan. The file is checked in memory and is never stored.

The message ZATCA prints

[BR-DEC-12]-The allowed maximum number of decimals for the Invoice total amount without VAT (BT-109) is 2.

What Mutabiq reports

One entry for each way this rule can be reported.

Reported as: What kind of value was found — empty, not_15_digits and the like — never the value itself.

Tax-exclusive total is written with more than two decimal places

Reported asmore_than_two_decimalsmore than two decimal places

What is wrong

The cbc:TaxExclusiveAmount in the document totals block - BT-109, the invoice total before VAT - carries more than two characters after its first full stop, and ZATCA flags it under EN 16931 rule BR-DEC-12 as a warning, which does not by itself reject the document. The rule counts the characters after the first full stop in the element's text rather than judging the value, so a third digit fails even when it is a nought, and a value written with no full stop at all passes however large it is. An absent or empty element passes as well. This figure matters more than the other totals because two things are built on it: BR-CO-13 requires it to be the line sum plus document charges less document allowances, and it is also the base the VAT is computed from, so a fraction that survives into it spreads into the VAT amounts and into the total with VAT and will draw further findings there.

What to check in your ERP

Round once, here, and do it before the VAT is calculated rather than after. The order that keeps every rule satisfied at the same time is: round each line net, sum the rounded line nets into BT-106, round each document allowance and charge, compute this total from those rounded figures, then compute VAT on this rounded base. A system that carries full precision all the way through and formats only at the end will produce a set of totals that are individually plausible and that fail both this rule and the arithmetic rules. Check as well for a tax-exclusive total taken from a different subsystem than the lines - an order header or a shipment total - which is a common way for a figure with its own rounding history to reach this element.

The clause that runs

Quoted from the validation-rule stylesheet ZATCA publishes, at the file and line named below. The executed guard is what the check runs; the reported test is what it prints when it fails, and the two are not always the same.

Executed guard

not(string-length(substring-after(cbc:TaxExclusiveAmount,'.'))<=2)

Reported test

string-length(substring-after(cbc:TaxExclusiveAmount,'.'))<=2

Evaluated against: cac:LegalMonetaryTotal
Source: vendor/zatca/schematron/CEN-EN16931-UBL.xsl:524
As shipped in ZATCA SDK 3.4.8: the copy quoted here is, byte for byte, the file that release ships. The date in the file name is the name ZATCA gives the file; the rules in it are those of SDK 3.4.8.

A worked example

A synthetic document from the measured test corpus that trips this rule, shown where it differs from one that passed. Mutabiq's report names the class of the value, never the value itself.

Document: bad-89-tax-exclusive-decimals.xml
Mutabiq's verdict: Passed
Reported as: more_than_two_decimalsmore than two decimal places

Download this example (.xml)Check it in Mutabiq

This page's example, checked by the same rules your own upload goes through. No upload and no sign-in.

Rules evaluated against the same part of the document. One wrong value often reports several of them at once.

Check an invoice

Check your own invoice