Validate & Submit

Validation checks your invoices against FBR’s schema before submission. After validation passes, you can submit invoices to PRAL through TaxConnect’s queue-based submission system.

Before you validate

Before you can run validation or submit invoices, your organization must be fully configured. The following prerequisites must be met:

• Organization must be configured — your NTN, provinces, and addresses must be set up in the Tenant Settings page. Without a valid NTN and province selection, FBR will reject every invoice.
• Tax mappings must be configured — every tax rate used in your invoices needs a corresponding mapping that tells TaxConnect which FBR scenario code applies. Go to the Tax Mappings page and verify that each sales tax rate, VAT, or withholding tax entry in your accounting system is mapped.
• Invoices must be imported or fetched — see the Connect Accounting guide for instructions on importing from Xero, QuickBooks, or a CSV file. Invoices must appear in the invoice list before you can select them.

Validate invoices

Validation is the step where TaxConnect sends each invoice to FBR’s schema validation endpoint. FBR checks whether the invoice structure, fields, and values conform to the PRAL requirements.

1. Open the invoice list for the organization you want to work with.
2. Select one or more invoices using the checkbox column on the left of each row.
3. Click the Validate button in the action bar above the list.
4. TaxConnect sends each selected invoice to FBR for schema validation. The results appear in the Validation errors column within a few seconds.
5. A green indicator with the message “Validation successful” means the invoice passed all checks and is ready for submission.
6. If validation fails, specific error messages describe what needs to be fixed — for example, a missing buyer province or an invalid NTN format.

Validation does not submit invoices to PRAL. It only checks the schema. You can validate as many times as you like at no cost. Use validation iteratively: fix errors, re-validate, and repeat until every invoice passes.

Common validation rules

FBR enforces strict formatting and content rules. Here are the most common validation failures and how to avoid them:

• NTN must be 7 digits, CNIC must be 13 digits — use digits only with no dashes, spaces, or separators. A NTN like 1234567 is valid; 123-4567 is not. A CNIC like 4220123456789 is valid; 42201-2345678-9 is not.
• Buyer and seller provinces are required — every invoice must include a province for both the buyer and the seller. Select the correct province from the predefined list in Tenant Settings.
• Addresses must use supported characters — FBR expects addresses to use standard Latin characters. Avoid special symbols, excessive punctuation, or unsupported Unicode ranges.
• Line items must have valid tax type mappings — each line item’s tax rate must correspond to an active tax mapping in your configuration. If a line item uses a tax rate that has no mapping, validation will return an error for that line.

Submit invoices

Once invoices pass validation (or you have reviewed them and are confident they are correct), you can submit them to PRAL through TaxConnect’s background queue system.

1. Select the validated invoices you want to submit. You can also select invoices that have not been validated yet, but we strongly recommend validating first.
2. Click the Submit to FBR button in the action bar.
3. TaxConnect queues the accepted invoices for background processing. Already submitted, queued, or processing invoices are skipped automatically.
4. Monitor the submission queue panel to track each invoice’s progress from queued to done or failed.

Submission limits

TaxConnect enforces a few limits to ensure fair usage and system stability:

• Maximum 25 invoices per submission batch. If you need to submit more than 25 invoices, split them into multiple batches. The system will show a warning if your selection exceeds the batch limit.
• Maximum 100 invoices per rolling hour — this is a safety limit, not a subscription limit. It prevents accidental mass submissions and protects the queue from overload. The counter resets automatically after one hour.
• Production submissions require an active license with available credits. If your subscription has expired or you have used all your monthly credits, production submissions will be blocked until you renew or upgrade. Sandbox submissions are not affected by these limits.

Monitor queue and history

TaxConnect provides two ways to track your submissions: the live queue panel and the submitted invoices history.

Queue panel

The queue panel shows real-time status for every invoice in the submission pipeline. You can open it by clicking the Queue button in the action bar. The panel auto-refreshes every 5 seconds so you always see the latest state.

• Queued items can be cancelled — if you submitted a batch by mistake, open the queue panel and cancel the queued items before they start processing.
• Stuck processing items can be marked as failed — if an invoice stays in processing status for an unusually long time, you can manually mark it as failed and retry.

Submitted Invoices History

The Submitted Invoices History page shows all completed submissions, including those that succeeded and those that failed. Each entry records the submission timestamp, the invoice number, the status, and the FBR response. For successful submissions, you can download the FBR-accepted PDF receipt directly from the history table.

Status definitions

Every invoice in the submission pipeline moves through a set of statuses. Understanding these statuses helps you know what action to take:

• Queued — the invoice is waiting in line for the background processor. It will be picked up automatically. You can cancel it from this state.
• Processing — the invoice is being sent to FBR. Do not cancel or retry while in this state unless it is stuck for an extended period.
• Done — the invoice was successfully submitted to FBR and accepted. You can view and download the PDF receipt from the history page.
• Failed — the submission encountered an error. Check the error details in the queue panel or history page, fix the underlying issue, and retry.
• Cancelled — the submission was manually cancelled before processing began. No action is needed.