How to Get IRD Approval for Billing Software in Nepal: The Complete 2026 Process

Last updated: 20 September 2026  ·  Reflects the IRD CBMS notice of Baishakh 2083 and the FY 2083/84 budget announcement.

Almost every guide on this topic tells you to "gather your documents and submit them to the IRD." None of them tell you that there are two entirely different approvals with the same name, that applying for the wrong one is the single most common reason applications bounce back, or that the turnover threshold everyone is still quoting was lowered twice in 2026.

This guide fixes that. It covers the exact electronic billing procedure laid out in the Vidyutiya Bijak Sambandhi Karyavidhi 2074, the real taxpayer portal navigation path, the document list that actually gets accepted, the current CBMS thresholds as of Ashwin 2083 (September 2026), what integration looks like on the technical side, and the specific mistakes that cost applicants three to six extra weeks.

The Two IRD Approvals Nobody Separates Properly

This is the part that derails most applications, so it goes first.

When Nepali business owners say "IRD approval for billing software," they could mean one of two completely different things. They have different applicants, different forms, different annexures under the procedure, and different outcomes.

The reverse trap also exists. A company gets custom software built by a local development shop, applies only for user permission, and is told their software is not on the enlisted list — because the developer never filed for enlistment. If you commissioned bespoke billing software, somebody has to file both, and it is worth writing into the development contract who that is.

Who Actually Needs IRD Approval in 2026 (Thresholds Have Changed Twice)

Here is where most published guides on e-billing in Nepal are now simply out of date. Search this topic today and you will find articles confidently stating that the CBMS requirement kicks in at NPR 25 crore of annual turnover. That figure was correct for the FY 2080/81 budget cycle. It has been superseded twice since.

The current position

The practical read: if your annual turnover is above NPR 20 crore and you issue electronic invoices, CBMS enrolment is already mandatory. If you are between NPR 10 crore and NPR 20 crore, you are in the next wave and should be planning integration now rather than waiting for a notice.

Sector-specific rules and exemptions

• Hospitality — hotels, restaurants, bars and canteens have historically faced a lower computerised-billing trigger than general trade, so check your category rather than assuming the general threshold applies.
• Banks and financial institutions — BFIs that do not directly invoice consumers are currently outside the CBMS integration mandate, given their separate reporting regime with Nepal Rastra Bank.
• Voluntary adopters — businesses well below the threshold can opt in, and the IRD has signalled incentives for early SME adoption.

Computerised billing vs CBMS integration — not the same obligation

Another distinction competitors blur. You can be required to bill through IRD-approved software without being required to sync in real time to CBMS. Approval to issue computerised invoices is the baseline. Live CBMS transmission is the additional layer that attaches above the turnover threshold. Your software should be capable of both even if only one currently applies to you, because the second one arrives with a notice and a deadline, not a grace period.

The Electronic Billing Procedure, Explained Plainly

The governing instrument is the Vidyutiya Bijak Sambandhi Karyavidhi, 2074 (Electronic Billing Procedure, 2017), which has been amended several times — the fourth amendment was published in 2021. It sits underneath the Value Added Tax Act 2052 and the VAT Rules 2053, which supply the invoice format and record-retention rules.

The procedure is organised around three questions:

1. Is the software fit to be used for tax invoicing? — the enlistment chapter, covering billing equipment and software listing.
2. Is this specific taxpayer allowed to use it? — the approval chapter, which produces the user permission.
3. Can it report to the state? — the requirements covering software behaviour and cloud computing, including CBMS connectivity.

Applications are built around numbered annexures (Anusuchi). You will encounter, among others, the application schedule, the taxpayer's undertaking, and the agreement schedule between the taxpayer and the software provider. Your IRD office will tell you which annexure numbers apply to your case — they have shifted with amendments, which is exactly why you should not copy annexure numbers from a blog post, including this one.

Exact Document Checklist

This list is assembled from what IRD offices consistently ask for. Treat it as your preparation baseline, then confirm specifics with your office.

Core business documents

• Company or firm registration certificate (photocopy)
• PAN certificate, and VAT registration certificate if VAT-registered (photocopy)
• Latest tax clearance certificate
• Application letter addressed to the IRD on your letterhead

Software documents

• User manual — signed by an authorised company representative and stamped on every page. Not the first page. Every page. This is the single most common physical rejection.
• Architectural documentation — how the system is built, what the front end and back end are, database engine and version, where data sits.
• Data-integrity undertaking — a written guarantee that issued bills cannot be edited or deleted within the software, and a description of the method by which you ensure this.
• Backup and data-recovery description — what is backed up, how often, where it is stored, and how it is restored.
• Sample invoice formats — printed samples plus the digital format file.
• Software configuration file
• Data-centre agreement — required if the system is cloud-hosted.
• Agreement with the software provider — the vendor-taxpayer agreement schedule.
• Purchase invoice for the software

For CBMS-bound applicants

• CBMS API credentials request — the API details are obtained from the service branch of the IRD, not downloaded from a public page
• Evidence of successful test-mode transmission

Step-by-Step: Applying Through the Taxpayer Portal

Every competing article on this keyword says "submit your application to the IRD." Here is the actual navigation path.

1. Prepare and complete the document set first Do not start the online form until the signed, stamped manual and the undertakings are physically ready. The form asks for details that come straight out of those documents, and a half-finished submission is worse than none.
2. Open ird.gov.np and go to the Taxpayer Portal Use Chrome, Edge or Firefox. The portal is also reachable directly at taxpayerportal.ird.gov.np. Avoid mobile — several of the forms do not behave on small screens.
3. Expand the Electronic Billing section In the portal's left navigation, find the Electronic Billing group. This is where both the software-listing and the user-permission routes live.
4. Select "Electronic Billing User Permission" This is the business-side application — the one covered in section one above. If you are the software vendor seeking enlistment, you want the listing option instead.
5. Complete the registration form You will set a username and password for this submission and enter your PAN, business details, and software details. Record these credentials somewhere durable; you will need them to check status and to make later amendments.
6. Submit, then print After submission, use the Print button. The printed form goes to your Inland Revenue Office together with the physical document bundle. Online submission alone does not complete the application — this is the step people most often stop short at.
7. Physical submission and verification Deliver the printed application and documents to your servicing office. The IRD then independently verifies that what you submitted matches what the software actually does. Expect questions. Expect to demonstrate the system.
8. Demonstration and approval An officer will typically want to see a bill issued, a bill corrected via credit note, and the reports generated. Once satisfied that the software meets the data-protection and integrity requirements, approval is issued and — for vendor enlistment — the product is added to the IRD's published list.

CBMS IRD Login: What It Is and What You See Inside

Once your business is enrolled, CBMS IRD login becomes part of your monthly routine. A few clarifications that come up constantly:

You do not have a separate CBMS account

CBMS access is tied to your existing IRD taxpayer login. The same user ID and password your accountant uses for VAT returns is what authenticates your billing data submissions. This has a consequence worth flagging: if someone changes the taxpayer portal password, live CBMS transmission from your billing software breaks immediately, because the software authenticates with those same credentials against the CBMS endpoint.

What syncs — and what does not

When a bill is issued in a connected system, the transmission carries the seller PAN, buyer details where applicable, the invoice number and date, the taxable value and VAT split, and a flag indicating a live real-time submission. Credit notes go across too, recorded as bill returns.

What does not go across is equally important for peace of mind: payment details, your inventory positions, supplier pricing, and margin data stay in your system. CBMS is a billing monitor, not a full accounts feed.

Reconciliation is the point

Log in and compare what CBMS holds against your own sales register before you file each VAT return. If the two disagree, you want to find out in your office, not during an assessment. The sales register in a compliant system is designed to be the same view the tax office works from, so a line-by-line match should be achievable.

Technical Requirements Your Software Must Meet

If you are a developer building for this market, or a business evaluating vendors, these are the non-negotiables. Every one of them is a reason applications get rejected.

Immutability

Issued invoices cannot be edited or hard-deleted. There is no exception for typos, no "admin override," no soft-delete flag that hides a row. Corrections happen by issuing a credit note that references the original bill and records a reason. The original stays on the record permanently. If your software has a delete button on an issued invoice, it will not pass.

Audit trail

Every modification attempt, user action and configuration change must be logged with user identity, timestamp and reason. The officer reviewing your application will look for this.

Fiscal-year invoice numbering

Numbering runs in an unbroken sequence within the Bikram Sambat fiscal year (Shrawan to Ashadh) and restarts each year. Gaps in the sequence are a red flag. Dates typically need to be recorded in both Bikram Sambat and the Gregorian calendar.

Reprint labelling

Reprints of an already-issued bill must be visibly marked as copies — "Copy of Original – 2", "Copy of Original – 3" and so on. The first printed instance is the original; everything after it is labelled.

Mandatory invoice fields

Seller name, address and PAN/VAT number; buyer details where required; sequential invoice number; date; itemised description; taxable amount; VAT at 13% shown separately; total payable. The VAT Rules 2053 also govern abbreviated retail invoices, which carry a per-transaction ceiling.

Data localisation

For cloud-based systems, the server holding the data is expected to be located in Nepal, or at minimum to maintain a local backup that the IRD can access. This rules out a straightforward deployment on an overseas-only cloud region — something worth establishing with a SaaS vendor before you sign.

Offline resilience

This one matters more in Nepal than almost anywhere, and no competitor guide addresses it. Internet drops. A compliant system does not fail the sale — it records the bill locally, keeps the sequence intact, and queues the submission for CBMS until connectivity returns. If a vendor demo has never been run with the network cable pulled out, run it yourself before you buy.

Reporting

Daily, monthly and annual sales reports, purchase and sales registers, and the IRD-prescribed annexures including Annexure 13. Support for VAT rebate reporting on digital payments is increasingly relevant given the digital-payment incentives in the FY 2083/84 budget.

Record retention

VAT records are retained for six years; income tax records for five. Your backup strategy needs to survive that horizon, not just last quarter.

Realistic Timeline, Costs and Why Applications Get Rejected

Timeline

Published estimates for billing software certification sit in the 15–30 working day range for the IRD-side review alone. Add your own preparation time and any round of corrections, and eight weeks is a safer planning assumption than four.

What it costs

There is no headline government fee published for electronic billing user permission in the way there is for some services — PAN and VAT registration, for instance, are free. Budget instead for the real costs:

• Tax clearance certificate procurement
• Documentation preparation and notarisation
• Software licence or subscription (locally, IRD-compliant packages commonly sit in the low thousands of rupees per month for SME tiers)
• CBMS integration development, if you are on custom software
• Consultant or accountant time, if you outsource the filing

Confirm any applicable charge with your Inland Revenue Office rather than relying on a figure quoted online.

The seven reasons applications come back

1. Applied for the wrong approval type — the section-one problem.
2. User manual not stamped on every page.
3. Online form submitted, physical bundle never delivered.
4. Software has an edit or delete path on issued invoices — an automatic fail on demonstration.
5. Tax clearance certificate expired between preparation and submission.
6. Invoice sample missing a mandatory field, most often the buyer PAN field or a separated VAT line.
7. Cloud hosting outside Nepal with no local backup arrangement documented.

What non-compliance actually costs

Under the VAT Act 2052, failure to issue an invoice attracts the tax payable plus a fixed penalty, and false or fabricated invoicing can attract a fine of up to twice the tax amount, imprisonment of up to six months, or both. Administrative fines reported in practice run to five figures per incident for non-issuance and materially higher for fraud, and enforcement escalates to sealing and blacklisting for persistent non-compliance. The financial exposure is real, but in my experience the operational exposure hurts sooner — a sealed counter on a trading day costs more than the fine.

Choosing Easy Billing Software in Nepal (Without Getting Burned)

Plenty of articles give you a generic feature checklist. Here is what actually separates a smooth approval from a painful one, based on where things go wrong.

Verify the enlistment yourself

The IRD publishes a register of certified electronic billing software. Do not take a vendor's website badge as proof. Ask for the enlistment number, then confirm the product name and version appear on the published list. Version matters — material changes to billing logic require re-submission, so a vendor enlisted for v3 who has shipped you v5 may have a gap.

Questions to ask before you sign

• What is your IRD enlistment number, and which product version does it cover?
• Where is the database hosted, and is there a Nepal-based backup?
• Show me a bill being issued with the internet disconnected. What happens when it reconnects?
• Show me how a wrong bill gets corrected. (If the answer involves editing it, walk away.)
• Who updates the CBMS credentials when our IRD portal password changes?
• Does the licence include support for the user-permission application itself, or is that extra?
• What happens to our data if we leave? Can we export the full sales register?

Cloud, on-premise, or offline-first

Most comparisons present this as cloud versus on-premise. For Nepali retail specifically there is a third and often better answer: offline-first. The billing runs locally so the counter never stops, while syncing to the server and to CBMS happens in the background whenever connectivity allows. In a market where a shop in Bhaktapur can lose internet for two hours on a Saturday afternoon, an architecture that treats connectivity as optional rather than assumed is not a luxury.

After Approval: Staying Compliant

Approval is a starting line, not a finish line. The obligations that follow:

• Use the approved system for everything. A parallel book of handwritten bills for "quick sales" undoes the entire compliance position.
• Re-submit after material changes. Substantial changes to billing logic, tax calculation or the invoice format require the updated version to be re-evaluated. Cosmetic UI changes generally do not; anything touching how a bill is computed or numbered does.
• Reconcile monthly. CBMS records against your sales register, before the VAT return on the 25th.
• Keep the tax clearance current. It is referenced in renewals and in most subsequent dealings.
• Watch for threshold notices. With the NPR 10 crore threshold announced in the FY 2083/84 budget, businesses currently outside CBMS should assume the requirement is coming and build the capability before the deadline rather than after.
• Train counter staff. With the taxpayer incentive programme encouraging consumers to collect and register bills, a refused or illegible bill is now a customer-complaint risk as well as a penalty risk. Bills need to print clearly, with PAN and date legible.

Frequently Asked Questions

The Short Version

IRD approval for billing software in Nepal is not difficult, but it is unforgiving of assumptions. The three that cost people the most time:

• Assuming a vendor's approval covers your business. It does not.
• Assuming the online form completes the application. It does not — the printed bundle has to reach your office.
• Assuming the threshold you read about last year still applies. It has moved twice in 2026, and it is moving again.

Get the document set right, verify your vendor's enlistment number against the published register yourself, test the offline behaviour before you sign, and put the CBMS credential dependency on your password-rotation checklist. Do those four things and the rest of the electronic billing procedure is administrative rather than difficult.