A Bulgarian invoice is a fixed-format document. The Value Added Tax Act (ЗДДС) lists exactly what it must contain, and a document that misses one of those elements is not an invoice in the eyes of the tax authority: the recipient cannot deduct the VAT on it, and the supplier can be fined. If you run a Bulgarian company from abroad, or receive invoices from Bulgarian suppliers, this is the list to check against. You can also let our Bulgarian invoice checker walk through it with you.
Who must issue one, and when
Every taxable person who supplies goods or services has to issue an invoice, whether or not they are VAT-registered (чл. 113, ал. 1 ЗДДС). The deadline is five days from the tax event, that is the delivery, the completion of the service or the receipt of an advance payment (чл. 113, ал. 4). An invoice is not required when the customer is a private individual who is not a taxable person, although one may still be issued (чл. 113, ал. 3).
Corrections are not made on the document itself. A wrong invoice is annulled and a new one issued (чл. 116), and a change to the amount after the fact takes a credit or debit note (чл. 115).
The fifteen mandatory elements
Article 114, paragraph 1 of the VAT Act lists the content. Point 6 was repealed in 2010, so the numbering runs to 15 with a gap. In the order the law gives them:
- The name of the document. “Фактура” for an invoice, “Кредитно известие” or “Дебитно известие” for a note. Many suppliers add “Invoice” beneath it.
- A sequential ten-digit number made only of Arabic numerals, unique to the invoice. Leading zeros count, so the first invoice a company ever issues is 0000000001.
- The date of issue.
- The supplier’s name and address.
- The supplier’s identifier. For a VAT-registered supplier this is the VAT number, “BG” followed by nine or ten digits, printed as “ИН по ЗДДС” or “ДДС номер”. A supplier who is not VAT-registered shows the company number instead, the nine-digit ЕИК (or БУЛСТАТ).
- Repealed.
- The recipient’s name and address.
- The recipient’s identifier. A Bulgarian recipient’s VAT number or ЕИК, or, for a customer registered in another member state, that customer’s VAT identification number. This is where a German customer’s USt-IdNr. belongs.
- The quantity and nature of the goods, or the nature of the service.
- The date of the tax event or of the advance payment. Often printed as “дата на данъчното събитие” next to the issue date.
- The unit price without VAT and the tax base, plus any discounts not already in the unit price.
- The VAT rate, and, where the rate is zero or no VAT is charged, the legal ground for that.
- The amount of VAT.
- The amount payable, where it differs from tax base plus VAT.
- For an intra-Community supply of a new vehicle, the particulars that make it a new vehicle.
In Bulgarian the key labels read: доставчик (supplier), получател (recipient), данъчна основа (tax base), ставка (rate), ДДС (VAT), сума за плащане (amount payable), основание (legal ground).
What is not required
Bulgarian invoice templates carry a lot of ballast, and foreign bookkeepers sometimes reject an invoice for missing something the law never asked for. None of the following is mandatory: a company stamp, a signature, the amount in words, the “МОЛ” line (the materially responsible person), a bank account, or the payment method. Their absence is not a defect. The signature and stamp requirement was removed from the Act in 2010.
Three variants you will meet
Reverse charge to a business customer in another member state
When a Bulgarian supplier invoices a business in Germany, Austria or any other member state for a service, the tax is due from the customer. The invoice then shows no rate and no VAT amount. Instead it must carry the words “обратно начисляване” (reverse charge) and the ground, normally “чл. 21, ал. 2 ЗДДС”, which corresponds to Article 44 of the VAT Directive (чл. 114, ал. 4). Both parties’ VAT numbers must appear, and the customer’s number must be valid in VIES on the day of the supply; otherwise the supplier has to charge 20 % Bulgarian VAT. Check the number first with our VIES tool.
On the German side the recipient books the invoice under §13b UStG and both declares and deducts the VAT. A missing reverse-charge note makes the invoice formally defective even though the tax outcome is the same, so insist on the wording.
A supplier who is not VAT-registered
Most newly founded Bulgarian companies start below the registration threshold. Their invoices carry all the same elements, but no VAT rate or amount, the ЕИК instead of a VAT number, and the ground “чл. 113, ал. 9 ЗДДС” on the line where the rate would be. A supplier who is not registered may not charge VAT at all, and if one does, you cannot deduct it and the supplier faces a fine of at least the VAT shown (чл. 183).
Since 1 January 2026 the small-enterprise regimes of chapter 21b let some suppliers omit the rate, the amount payable and the vehicle particulars as well, and a purely domestic document of no more than 100 euro including VAT may omit them too (чл. 114, ал. 7).
Credit and debit notes
A note carries every element of an invoice plus the number and date of the invoice it corrects and the reason for the correction (чл. 115, ал. 4). It is due within five days of the change. In German usage note that “Gutschrift” also means a self-billed invoice; a Bulgarian кредитно известие is a credit note in the narrower sense.
Euro, not leva
Bulgaria adopted the euro on 1 January 2026, and invoices dated from that day are drawn up in euro. An invoice may state its amounts in any currency, but the tax base and the VAT amount must also be shown in euro (чл. 114, ал. 5). The dual-display period that applied to prices never applied to invoices and ended for prices on 8 August 2026, so a 2026 invoice in leva alone is defective. A leva figure printed beside the euro one is harmless.
Why it matters to you as the recipient
Input VAT can be deducted only on a document that meets the requirements of articles 114 and 115 (чл. 71, т. 1). The Supreme Administrative Court has upheld denials of deduction over a single missing element, and the tax authority’s own rulings prescribe reissue as the remedy. So a defective invoice is not a formality: it is money. Ask the supplier for an annulment and a fresh invoice while they are still willing to issue one.
There is no mandatory business-to-business e-invoicing in Bulgaria yet. The SAF-T reporting obligation began for the largest enterprises in 2026 and reaches small companies only by 2030, but it is one more reason to get every field right from the first invoice.
Our invoice checker turns this list into a form: copy the particulars in and it tells you which elements are in order, which are defective and which need a closer look, with a printable record. And if you would rather not read Bulgarian invoices at all, ask us and we will keep your books.