Does the customer wait at the counter while SUNAT responds?

No. The receipt prints and the customer leaves; SUNAT acceptance comes back afterwards as the CDR. This surprises people who assume an electronic receipt means a live round trip to the tax authority on every sale — in Peru it does not, and a queue at a supermarket till would be impossible if it did. What matters operationally is that something is watching for rejected documents, because a rejection is silent at the counter and only becomes a problem at month end.

Do boletas have to go to SUNAT one at a time?

No — consumer boletas are consolidated into the Resumen Diario de Boletas, and you have up to seven calendar days from the date of issue to send it. Most shops send the previous day's summary each morning and leave it at that. Facturas are different: those go individually. A shop that issues both is running two rhythms at once, which is the single most common source of confusion when someone moves from paper to electronic here.

We sell items that are exonerado from IGV alongside normal ones. Can one receipt carry both?

Yes, and getting this right at the catalogue level is more important than it looks. The difficulty in a supermarket is never what the rate is — it is that an exonerado line and an 18% line land on the same receipt, in the same basket, twenty times an hour. Each product carries its own tax treatment, so the receipt splits the amounts and the totals come out right without the cashier deciding anything. The work is in classifying the catalogue once, properly, rather than in the checkout.

Do we need a separate invoicing program alongside the POS?

That is exactly what the integration is there to avoid. The alternative — sell in one system, then re-enter the same sale in an invoicing application — is where the evening's missing documents and the transposed amounts come from, and it gets worse as the shop gets busier. The sale, the stock movement and the electronic document should be one event, not three records of the same event that have to be reconciled later.

SUNAT e-invoicing at a shop counter in Peru

A factura goes to SUNAT on its own. A consumer boleta goes up in the daily summary. Both come out of the sale you already rang up, which is the part that decides whether your evenings are spent re-typing the day into a second program.

The POS side Zambia / ZRA

18%IGV on most goods

S/ 700above this a boleta carries the buyer ID

7 daysmaximum to send the daily boleta summary

CDRwhat makes a document valid

Boleta or factura — the counter has to get this right first

This is not a software question, but the software decides how easy it is to get wrong.

A boleta de venta electrónica is for a final consumer. The buyer cannot use it to claim IGV or deduct a cost. A factura electrónica is for a buyer with a RUC who will do exactly that. When a customer with a business asks for a factura after the boleta has already been issued, you are into credit notes and a reissue — recoverable, but tedious, and it happens most often on the busiest afternoon of the month. The practical fix is at the counter: make the common case the default, and make switching to a factura a deliberate action with the RUC entered at the point of sale rather than a correction later.

Two rhythms in the same shop

Facturas

Sent individually

Each one is generated, signed and sent, and what makes it valid is the CDR that comes back accepting it. A rejected factura is a real problem with a real counterparty waiting for it, so these are worth watching rather than assuming.

Boletas

Consolidated into the daily summary

Consumer sales are high volume and low value, so they go up in the Resumen Diario de Boletas — up to seven calendar days from the date of issue, though there is no advantage in waiting. Send yesterday's each morning and the window never becomes an issue.

At the till

Neither rhythm is visible to the customer

The receipt prints as the money is taken, with its series, number and QR block. SUNAT's acceptance arrives afterwards. Cashiers do not need to understand any of the above — but whoever runs the shop does, because rejections are silent at the counter.

The S/ 700 rule, and the queue it creates

Above S/ 700 a boleta has to carry the buyer's identification details. On top of that, the SUNAT consumer draw has customers asking to have their DNI on the receipt for purchases far below that threshold — which is a queue problem long before it is a compliance problem, and it lands squarely on your cashiers in the evening rush.

The thing that keeps a line moving is capturing the DNI as part of ringing up rather than as a separate lookup afterwards, and keeping regulars on file so the second visit does not need it typed again. It is a small detail and it is the one your staff will actually notice.

What gets configured, and where it stops

Yours to obtain, before any software matters: An active RUC, your Clave SOL, and a digital certificate. These are issued to you, not to us — we configure the system around them. If any of the three is missing or expired, nothing downstream works, and the error you see will not say so clearly.
Series per document type and per till: Boletas and facturas run their own series, and in a shop with several counters the numbering has to be laid out so two tills can never produce the same number. Worth getting right on day one — it is awkward to unpick later.
IGV treatment per product: 18%, exonerado or inafecto is a property of the product, set once in the catalogue rather than chosen at the checkout. The system reports exactly what you classified, so this is worth doing with your accountant rather than in a hurry.
Which channel you send through: Whether your shop sends from its own system or through an OSE depends on how you are set up today. Tell us what you have and we will confirm what the installation looks like in your case — we would rather answer that in two minutes than have you assume it.
Filing is still your accountant's work: The system issues the documents and holds the data behind them. It does not submit your returns and it does not decide how something ought to be treated.

Tell us how your shop issues today

How many tills, whether you issue facturas as well as boletas, and what you are using to send today — that is enough for us to say what changing over involves. Message us on WeChat and ask; support is 08:00-23:00 china standard time (utc+8) - 00:00-15:00 utc, seven days a week, and 24/7 response for critical incidents.

Being straight about the time difference, because it is the honest weak point for customers in the Americas: Lima is thirteen hours behind us, so our window lands on roughly 19:00 the previous evening through 10:00 in Lima. Mornings before ten and evenings from seven are comfortable; the middle of a Peruvian afternoon falls outside it, and outside it you are relying on the critical-incident route rather than a normal conversation. Worth knowing before you need it.

Hotline / WeChat: 18588769116 (same number)
Licensing: Perpetual license or subscription — details

Common questions

Does the customer wait at the counter while SUNAT responds?: No. The receipt prints and the customer leaves; SUNAT acceptance comes back afterwards as the CDR. This surprises people who assume an electronic receipt means a live round trip to the tax authority on every sale — in Peru it does not, and a queue at a supermarket till would be impossible if it did. What matters operationally is that something is watching for rejected documents, because a rejection is silent at the counter and only becomes a problem at month end.
Do boletas have to go to SUNAT one at a time?: No — consumer boletas are consolidated into the Resumen Diario de Boletas, and you have up to seven calendar days from the date of issue to send it. Most shops send the previous day's summary each morning and leave it at that. Facturas are different: those go individually. A shop that issues both is running two rhythms at once, which is the single most common source of confusion when someone moves from paper to electronic here.
We sell items that are exonerado from IGV alongside normal ones. Can one receipt carry both?: Yes, and getting this right at the catalogue level is more important than it looks. The difficulty in a supermarket is never what the rate is — it is that an exonerado line and an 18% line land on the same receipt, in the same basket, twenty times an hour. Each product carries its own tax treatment, so the receipt splits the amounts and the totals come out right without the cashier deciding anything. The work is in classifying the catalogue once, properly, rather than in the checkout.
Do we need a separate invoicing program alongside the POS?: That is exactly what the integration is there to avoid. The alternative — sell in one system, then re-enter the same sale in an invoicing application — is where the evening's missing documents and the transposed amounts come from, and it gets worse as the shop gets busier. The sale, the stock movement and the electronic document should be one event, not three records of the same event that have to be reconciled later.

How the system behaves day to day: Answers. Trading in Zambia as well? Smart Invoice sends every sale in real time — a different rhythm from this one.