A till receipt is not a courtesy slip. For a sale of goods to a private customer, article 145-III of the Moroccan tax code allows the receipt to stand in for an invoice, provided it carries at least the date, the seller’s identification, the product designation, the quantity, the sale price and, where applicable, the VAT. And the duplicate has to be kept for ten years. Here is the full list, what each line actually proves, and where it is set once in the software.
In short
- The receipt can stand in for an invoice on a sale of goods to a private customer, if it carries what article 145-III asks for.
- A business customer means an invoice, with their ICE. A receipt is no longer enough.
- Itemised detail is required: nature, quantity, unit price. A total on its own proves nothing.
- One continuous number series. No counter reset every morning.
- The thermal roll is not an archive. It fades long before ten years; the software’s history is the real retention.
What the receipt must carry, line by line
The third column is what makes this article useful: every field is set in one specific place, once, and every receipt after that complies.
| Field | What it is for | Where it is set |
|---|---|---|
| The seller’s identity | Proving who sold. Full legal name and complete address. | The receipt header, in the software settings. |
| Your tax identifiers and ICE | Tying the sale to your business for the tax administration. | The header, with the identity. Set once. |
| The date, and the time | Placing the transaction. The time also helps you find the sale. | Automatic, but check the machine’s clock. |
| The product designation | Saying what was sold. “Item 1” is not a designation. | The name in the product record, not at the moment of sale. |
| Quantity and unit price | Letting anyone redo the arithmetic. This is what makes it checkable. | The product record and the entry at the till. |
| VAT, where you are registered for it | Showing the net amount, the rate and the tax separately. | The rate in the product record, the layout in the receipt template. |
| The total paid and the payment method | Proving settlement, and the split if the customer paid twice over. | Automatic, provided you declared your payment methods. |
| A number in a continuous series | Guaranteeing no sale was removed from the middle of the series. | The receipt counter. One series, never reset. |
The business customer is the one exception that matters: if they ask for an invoice for their accounts, this is no longer a receipt and their ICE becomes mandatory. The full list is in our article on mandatory invoice fields.
Four receipts in five have one of these faults
None is hard to fix, and all of them are fixed once.
- An empty or incomplete header: The software was installed on a busy day and the header stayed on the template name or a partial address. The receipt then fails to identify the seller, which is the first thing asked of it.
- Unreadable designations: “ART12”, “misc”, “promo”. They come from the product record and show up everywhere: on the receipt, in the reports and in the stock count. Renaming properly once helps all three.
- A tax-inclusive total with no breakdown: If you are VAT registered, the net amount and the tax have to appear separately. A customer who has to justify a deduction can do nothing with a single total.
- A reset numbering series: A counter that goes back to 1 every morning, or two tills numbering independently, produce duplicates. One continuous series, across all tills.
Set it once, in six steps
Fifteen minutes, once, and the subject is closed for the year.
- Enter the full header: legal name, address, telephone, tax identifier, professional tax and ICE. Proofread it on a printed receipt, not on screen.
- Check the machine’s clock. A till printing summer time in winter makes every reconciliation painful.
- Rename your products so a customer understands the receipt without you. It is the same work that makes your reports readable.
- Set the VAT rates in the product records and check that the receipt prints net, rate and tax.
- Fix a single number series and never reset it, not even at a new financial year.
- Print a test receipt and read all of it. It is the only step that verifies the five before it.
Do step 6 in Arabic too if you serve in Arabic: on a thermal printer, Arabic is not a given, and one test receipt settles it in a minute rather than a month later in front of a customer. If the printer refuses to cooperate, our thermal printer diagnosis takes the causes in order.
A useful clarification
This article is an information note written in July 2026 from published texts and the official announcements available. It is not tax advice. For your own situation, and above all before any purchase decision, talk to your accountant or check with the tax administration.
Retention, and what e-invoicing will change
The duplicate has to be kept for ten years. A thermal roll does not last ten years: it fades and becomes unreadable long before, especially in a drawer next to a sunlit window. The real retention is your till’s digital history, provided it is backed up somewhere other than the machine’s own disk. An offline till like ours keeps everything locally, which is an advantage for availability and a responsibility for backup: copying the file is on you.
As for what is coming, the e-invoicing obligation already exists in law, at article 145-IX of the tax code introduced by the 2024 finance act, but its timetable depends on an implementing decree that had not been published in the Bulletin officiel at the time of writing. What it will change for a small shop’s receipt is not yet written down: what is settled and what is not is set out in our article on whether a DGI-compliant till is mandatory.
One last thing, often overlooked: the receipt is your evidence too. An exchange, a warranty claim or an argument about a displayed price is settled in ten seconds when the sale can be found by its number, and in half an hour of discussion when it cannot.
Not required, but useful
Four additions that cost nothing and earn their place daily.
- The user’s name or code: essential as soon as two people share a till.
- Your exchange policy, one line at the foot of the receipt. It avoids half the arguments.
- The shop’s telephone number: a customer who calls back is a customer who comes back.
- A readable sale number, big enough to be dictated over the phone without repeating it three times.
Mistakes to avoid
- Leaving the default header. The receipt then fails to identify the seller.
- Coded designations. Neither the customer nor your reports can use them.
- Resetting the counter. The continuous series is exactly what gets checked.
- Relying on the roll as the archive. It fades; back up the database.
- Handing a receipt to a business that asked for an invoice. Ask for their ICE and issue an invoice.
Frequently asked questions
Does a till receipt replace an invoice in Morocco?
For sales of products or goods to private individuals, article 145-III of the tax code provides that the till receipt may stand in for an invoice. It must then carry at least the date, the seller’s identification, the product designation, the quantity, the sale price and, where applicable, the VAT. For a business customer you need an invoice carrying their ICE.
What has to be printed on a till receipt?
The seller’s identification, the date, the product designation, the quantity, the sale price and VAT where applicable. In practice, add your tax identifiers and ICE in the header, the total, the payment method and a number in a continuous series: that is what makes a sale findable again.
How long must till receipts be kept?
The duplicate has to be kept ten years. A thermal roll does not survive ten years, it fades: the useful retention is the till’s digital history, backed up somewhere other than the point-of-sale machine’s own disk.
Does the customer’s ICE go on a till receipt?
Not for a private customer. As soon as the customer is a business or a public body and asks for an invoice, their ICE becomes mandatory on that document. It is the most common omission we are shown.
Does the till have to print the receipt in Arabic?
No rule imposes a printing language, but a receipt your customer cannot read does not do its job. Test Arabic printing on your thermal printer before committing: it is not a given on every model.
What to take away
The receipt is the one document you produce hundreds of times a week, and the one nobody touches after installation. Take fifteen minutes: a complete header with your ICE, readable designations, VAT broken out, one continuous number series, then a test receipt read end to end, in Arabic too. And back up the database, because that, not the roll in the drawer, is what will still be readable in ten years.
Sources
The figures and rules quoted above come from these pages, read on the date given in the article.
A compliant receipt, set once
BelloPOS prints an itemised receipt with your header, your identifiers, VAT broken out and continuous numbering, and keeps the full sales history locally. Lite licence free for life.
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