Selling to consumers in Vietnam: cash-register e-invoices, online orders and buyers without a tax code

A consumer brand in Vietnam — a café chain, a fashion label, a cosmetics retailer, an online shop — issues e-invoices for its sales like any other business. The differences are volume and the buyer: thousands of small invoices a day, most of them to people with no business tax code. For many retail sales, the invoice is generated from a cash register connected to the tax authority, and online orders follow a different path from sales at the till.

For a foreign brand arriving with a global point-of-sale (POS) system, the questions are practical: can our tills produce Vietnamese e-invoices, what does the cashier do when a customer asks for a company invoice, how are online orders and returns invoiced, and how do head office and each store reconcile? This guide works through those in the order a new store network meets them.

Which rules apply to retail sales

Retail invoicing sits in the same framework as every other e-invoice: Decree 123/2020/ND-CP, amended by Decree 70/2025/ND-CP, with guidance in Circular 78/2021/TT-BTC. The 2025 amendment gave more weight to e-invoices generated from cash registers for businesses selling directly to consumers. Decree 254/2026/ND-CP and Circular 91/2026/TT-BTC on e-invoices and electronic documents took effect on 1 July 2026; we do not summarise them, and a retailer should confirm with its POS and e-invoice providers that the store set-up already follows them.

The practical point is that a cash-register e-invoice is still an e-invoice: its data reaches the tax authority, it has a number and a code, and it must be kept. A till receipt printed from a POS that is not connected is not a substitute.

The till: cash-register e-invoices

A POS set up to generate cash-register e-invoices sends each sale's data to the tax authority through a connected solution, and the customer receives a receipt with the information needed to look the invoice up. For a retailer, that means:

• The POS must be connected before the store opens. Plan it with the store fit-out, not after; an imported global POS usually needs a local connector or a local partner.
• Item names must be Vietnamese. A menu or product list maintained only in English will print English receipts. Maintain a Vietnamese name for every item in the POS master.
• Each store must be mapped to the right legal entity and tax code. Where stores in other provinces are registered as branches or business locations with their own tax arrangements, the POS has to know which one each till belongs to.
• Day-end totals should match. Sales per till on the POS, invoices sent to the tax authority, and cash plus card settlements should agree every day.

In some sectors the rules have allowed invoices for retail sales to consumers who do not ask for one to be issued on an aggregated basis. Whether your business qualifies, and how, is something to check in the current rules with your provider before designing store procedures around it.

When the customer is a person, and when they want a company invoice

Most customers are individuals who do not ask for anything beyond a receipt. The rules allow an invoice to an individual consumer to be issued without the buyer's name, address or tax code. Since 1 July 2025, an individual's personal identification number is used in place of a personal tax code, so an individual who does want an invoice in their own name can be identified that way.

The harder case is the customer who pays for a team lunch and asks for a company invoice. The cashier needs a simple routine:

1. take the company name, address and tax code — ideally by scanning a code or reading it from the customer's phone, not by copying a business card;
2. issue the invoice for that sale to the company, at the time of sale;
3. never issue a company invoice later for a sale already documented to a consumer, and never combine several customers' receipts into one company invoice.

The third point is not a formality. Combining receipts to create a larger company invoice is a request some customers make, and it misstates who bought what. Staff should be trained to refuse it politely.

Online orders and delivery

Online sales follow the ordinary invoicing moment for goods: the invoice is issued when ownership or the right to use passes to the buyer, whether or not payment has been received. For an online shop that means deciding, per sales channel, which event counts — dispatch, delivery, or the customer's confirmation — and writing it down. Common complications:

• Cash on delivery. Payment arrives through the courier days later. The invoice follows the transfer of goods, not the courier's remittance.
• Marketplaces. When the brand sells on a third-party platform, the brand is usually the seller and issues the invoice to the consumer; the platform invoices the brand for its fees. Check each platform agreement to confirm who the seller of record is.
• Failed deliveries. A parcel that comes back undelivered should not leave behind an invoice for a sale that never happened. Decide the invoicing event so that this is handled cleanly.

For brands selling across stores, their own website and marketplaces, the hardest part is often reconciling revenue from each channel with invoices and bank receipts. A fixed monthly routine per channel is worth more than any single tool.

Returns, exchanges, vouchers and loyalty points

Consumer businesses meet these daily, and each needs a standard answer agreed with an adviser before opening:

We deliberately do not give answers in the table: they depend on how each scheme is designed and on the current rules, including the 2026 decree and circular. The risk is not getting one case wrong once; it is building a wrong answer into every till in the country.

Before the first store opens

Store openings run on fixed dates, and invoicing is rarely on the critical path until the week before. A short list that avoids most opening-day problems:

1. Entity and location. Confirm which legal entity operates the store and whether the location needs to be registered as a branch or business location with the tax authority. Check the result on the taxpayer information lookup.
2. Connection tested in the store itself. A POS that worked in the head-office test room may fail on the store's network. Test a sale, a refund and a company invoice on site.
3. Item master in Vietnamese, reviewed by someone who reads it as a customer would — including units, sizes and product variants.
4. Staff trained on three scripts: an ordinary sale, a request for a company invoice, and a refund. Most errors at new stores come from the second and third.
5. Day-end procedure agreed between the store manager and head-office finance, with a named person to call when the numbers do not match.

For a franchise model, the same list applies to each franchisee as a separate taxpayer. The brand owner does not issue invoices for a franchisee's sales, but a franchise manual that ignores local invoicing leaves every franchisee to solve it alone — and some will solve it badly under the brand's name.

Controls for a store network, and where to check

• Daily store close: POS sales, invoices transmitted, and payment settlements agree before the manager closes the day.
• Voids and refunds above a set amount need a second person's approval at the store.
• Weekly head-office review of voids, refunds and manual invoices by store; a store with many voids is worth a visit.
• Cash banked in full, daily, and matched to the POS cash total.

Check your own position through the tax authority's e-invoice portal (invoices issued per entity and location), the taxpayer information lookup (status and managing tax office of each branch or business location), and the company's e-tax account (VAT returns filed against the invoice data). Keep invoice data and store close records for at least 10 years, the minimum retention for accounting documents under the Law on Accounting.