# NRA Bulgaria for online stores: registration, receipts and filings What the NRA in Bulgaria expects from an online store: e-shop registration under Ordinance N-18, sales documents, the monthly XML file and VAT returns. Source: https://cloudcart.com/en/blog/nra-bulgaria-online-store · CloudCart · 2026-11-06 In short: the NRA (National Revenue Agency) is Bulgaria's tax authority, and it expects four things from an online store. You register the e-shop on the NRA portal before the first sale, issue a document for every sale according to how the customer pays, upload a monthly XML audit file by the 15th if you take cards without a cash register, and, once VAT-registered, file a VAT return by the 14th. This guide is written by the team behind CloudCart, the Bulgarian ecommerce platform, for foreign founders, expats and companies that sell online in Bulgaria or ship from Bulgaria across the EU. The rules come from [Ordinance N-18 on lex.bg (in Bulgarian)](https://lex.bg/laws/ldoc/2135540645), in its consolidated text with the amendments of State Gazette No. 42 of 2025, the VAT Act as amended from Jan 1, 2026, and the Corporate Income Tax Act. It is not tax advice: your accountant confirms what applies to your company. ## What is the NRA in Bulgaria? The NRA (Natsionalna agentsiya za prihodite, in Bulgarian NAP) is the state agency that collects taxes and social security contributions in Bulgaria. For an online store it is the authority for VAT, corporate tax, sales reporting under Ordinance N-18 and the public list of registered e-shops. In Bulgarian it is "NAP", so you will see both names. Most of the work with the NRA happens online, on the [NRA e-services portal](https://portal.nra.bg/). To file there you need a qualified electronic signature (QES), a digital signature with the legal force of a handwritten one. Ordinance N-18 requires the QES for the e-shop registration itself (Art. 52m(1)). Your company's number for the NRA is the UIC (EIK, the unified identification code) it receives in the Commercial Register. The same number becomes your VAT number with the BG prefix once you register for VAT. Setting up the company is covered in the guide to [company registration in Bulgaria](https://cloudcart.com/en/blog/company-registration-online-store). ## What does the NRA expect from an online store? The NRA expects an online store to be registered, to document each sale and to report on fixed deadlines. The table puts every regular obligation of an online store with the NRA in one place, with its legal basis. | Obligation | Deadline | Who | Legal basis | | Register the e-shop on the NRA portal (Annex 33) | Before the first sale | Every online store | Ordinance N-18, Art. 52m(1) | | Update the e-shop details (domain, payment methods, accounts) | Within 7 days of the change | Every online store | Art. 52m(3) | | Report that the e-shop has stopped selling | Within 7 days | Every online store | Art. 52m(4) | | Sales document for each card payment | At the time of payment, sent electronically | Stores using the alternative regime | Art. 52o | | Monthly audit file in XML (Annex 38) | By the 15th of the following month | Stores using the alternative regime | Art. 52t(2) | | VAT return with purchase and sales ledgers | By the 14th of the following month, also with no sales | VAT-registered stores | VAT Act, Art. 125(4) and (5) | | Annual corporate tax return | From March 1 to June 30 of the following year | Companies (EOOD, OOD) | Corporate Income Tax Act, Art. 92(2) | Important: the "alternative regime" is the part of Ordinance N-18 (Chapter Seven "g", Art. 52o to 52u) that lets an online store accept card payments without a cash register. You choose it. If you issue fiscal receipts from a cash register for card payments instead, the sales document and the monthly XML file do not apply to you. ## How do you register an online store with the NRA? You register an online store with the NRA by filing the e-shop details on the NRA e-services portal with a QES before you start selling. Art. 52m(1) of Ordinance N-18 applies to every online store, whether it runs on your own domain, a rented domain or a platform, and whatever payment methods you accept. Each store is registered separately (Art. 52m(2)), and the registered stores appear in the NRA's public list (Art. 52m(5)). If you accept cards under the alternative regime, the registration also lists the payment methods, the payment service providers and the payment accounts the money goes to (Art. 52r). The NRA then assigns the store a unique e-shop number (Art. 52t(1)), sent in the confirmation message. That number goes into the QR code on every sales document and into every monthly file. - Get your QES ready. The filing is signed with the QES of the company's representative or of the person filing for the company. - Open the NRA portal. On portal.nra.bg, the e-services for fiscal devices, sales software and e-shops include the service for filing e-shop information under Annex 33. - Describe the store. Name, domain, address of the business, store software, hosting, who maintains the site, type of goods and start date. - Describe the payments. Payment methods, payment service providers you have contracts with, the receiving accounts and virtual POS terminal numbers, if any. With CloudCart Pay these details are in Settings → Payment methods → CloudCart Pay → Onboarding → Status, on the card "NRA declaration information", with a PDF to download for you or your accountant. - Sign and keep the unique number. You declare that the store meets the requirements for the payments you chose, sign with the QES and save the unique e-shop number from the confirmation. If the NRA finds gaps in the filing, it notifies you electronically and gives you 7 days to fix them; otherwise the store is removed from the public list (Art. 52m(6)). A common reason to update the filing is moving a store from WooCommerce or OpenCart: the domain stays, while the card payment provider and often the account change. With a [migration to CloudCart](https://cloudcart.com/en/migration), the orders from the old platform are carried over and kept separately, so the sales history stays at hand. > CloudCart Pay The NRA details for your card payments, ready as a PDF The provider, merchant ID, virtual POS ID and receiving account you need for Annex 33 are prepared on the CloudCart Pay status step for Bulgarian accounts. Card payments have a 0% transaction fee through Dec 31, 2026. How CloudCart Pay works → ## Which sales documents does the NRA require? The NRA requires a document for every sale, and its type depends on how the customer pays. Under Art. 3(1) of Ordinance N-18, every sale is recorded with a fiscal receipt from a cash register, unless the customer pays by bank transfer or by postal money order through a licensed postal operator. Card payments in the store have their own route through the alternative regime. | How the customer pays | Document for the customer | Cash register | | Card on the website (CloudCart Pay or another provider) | Sales document under Art. 52o, or an invoice with the same details | No, under the alternative regime | | Cash on delivery collected as a postal money order by a licensed courier such as Econt or Speedy | A document with the main details of the sale, under the courier contract | No | | Bank transfer to your account | Invoice, if the customer asks for one | No | | Cash handed to you in person, at a warehouse or in your own shop | Fiscal receipt | Yes | Econt and Speedy are the two largest courier companies in Bulgaria, and cash on delivery (COD) is still a mass payment method here. Econt offers an "online sales without a cash register" contract, under which the courier issues the receipt to the recipient at delivery and a packing list or the invoice number travels with each parcel. In CloudCart, the Econt app has a switch for the packing list and a separate switch for that contract. The costs of each option are compared in the guide to [cash on delivery or card payments](https://cloudcart.com/en/blog/cash-on-delivery-vs-card-payments). ### What the sales document for a card payment contains The sales document under Art. 52o(1) has a 10-digit number that grows by 1 with every sale and is unique for the whole store. It shows the seller's details, the order number, the transaction reference, each item with tax group, quantity and price, the total, the payment method and a QR code with the unique e-shop number. The customer receives it electronically. When you issue an invoice with these details, a separate sales document is not needed. The money from cards has to arrive in a payment account held by your company (Art. 52p(1)). Payments may pass first through an account of the payment service provider, as long as they are then transferred to yours (Art. 52p(2)). > Invoices and Ordinance N-18 Documents come from the order, in every plan Invoices, credit notes and the sales document are issued from the order itself, and the N18 Audit app builds the monthly XML file from the same orders. You only upload it to the NRA portal. How invoices and N-18 work → ## What is the NRA monthly audit file? The NRA monthly audit file is one XML file per calendar month, built to Annex 38 of Ordinance N-18, with the orders delivered during the month and the reversed orders. Art. 52t(2) sets the deadline: by the 15th of the month after the reporting month, so the file for October is due by November 15. It is filed electronically on the NRA portal. From Jan 1, 2026 the amounts in the file are in euro, after Bulgaria adopted the euro at the [fixed rate of 1.95583 leva per euro set by the ECB](https://www.ecb.europa.eu/euro/changeover/bulgaria/html/index.en.html). For each order the file lists its number and date, the sales document number, the amounts without VAT and with VAT, the payment method code and the transaction reference. Refunds and cancellations are listed separately with negative amounts. ### How CloudCart prepares the file - Turn on invoicing. Settings → Invoicing: activate invoicing and fill in the company details. The document number in the XML file comes from invoicing, so it has to be on during every month you report. - Install the N18 Audit app. Apps → N18 Audit. The app has no on or off switch: it works once you save the unique e-shop number. - Enter the NRA details. In the app's settings: the unique e-shop number, the domain (by default the store's main address) and the payment provider mapping. - Generate the month. In the app's list, add the period (a whole month), wait for the file to be generated and download the XML. - Upload it to the NRA portal between the 1st and the 15th, signed with your QES. An order lands in the month it became paid, completed or fulfilled, so an order placed on April 28 and paid on May 2 goes into the May file. A refund or cancellation lands in the month it happened. Each order is reported in only one monthly file. The file is in Windows-1251 encoding, as the NRA validator expects. CloudCart does not submit the file for you: the filing is signed with your QES. Important: generating the same month twice creates a second file next to the first one. Upload the correct one and delete the other in the app, so you do not mix them up next month. Every field of the file and the payment codes are explained in the guide to [Ordinance N-18 for online stores](https://cloudcart.com/en/blog/n18-online-store-nap). How invoices and credit notes are issued from orders is covered in the guide to [invoices and credit notes in CloudCart](https://cloudcart.com/en/blog/invoices-n18). > A store run with an AI assistant Check the month's orders before you upload the file Connect Claude Code or ChatGPT Codex to the store with a read-only PAT token and write: "List the orders from October with number, date, total, payment method and payment status". You compare that list with the XML file in minutes. How to connect the AI assistant → ## When do you file VAT returns with the NRA? A VAT-registered online store files a VAT return with the NRA every month, by the 14th of the following month, together with the purchase and sales ledgers (VAT Act, Art. 125(3) and (5)). The return is due also in months with no sales and nothing to pay (Art. 125(4)), and it is filed electronically (Art. 125(7)). A store established in Bulgaria registers for VAT once its turnover for the calendar year exceeds €51,130, and files the application within 7 days, under the rules in force since Jan 1, 2026. Below that threshold, registration is voluntary. A foreign company that sells in Bulgaria has no threshold and registers before its first taxable sale here. The threshold, the steps and the VIES check are covered in the guide to [VAT registration in Bulgaria](https://cloudcart.com/en/blog/vat-registration-online-store). If you sell to businesses in other EU countries, you also file a VIES return with the monthly VAT return (Art. 125(2)). If you sell to consumers in other EU countries above the EU-wide €10,000 threshold for distance sales, VAT is due at the rate of the customer's country, usually declared through OSS (One Stop Shop, the EU's single VAT return for cross-border sales to consumers). How OSS works is explained in the guide to [OSS and VAT on EU cross-border sales](https://cloudcart.com/en/blog/oss-eu-vat-cross-border-sales). A VAT-registered store that takes cards under the alternative regime has two NRA deadlines a month, one day apart: the VAT return by the 14th and the audit file by the 15th, both built from the same orders. ## What does the NRA expect once a year? Once a year, a company that sells online files an annual corporate tax return with the NRA between March 1 and June 30 of the following year, under Art. 92(2) of the [Corporate Income Tax Act (in Bulgarian)](https://lex.bg/laws/ldoc/2135540562). The corporate tax rate in Bulgaria is 10% of taxable profit (Art. 20). The annual activity report is filed with the return (Art. 92(3)). A sole trader (ET) is taxed under personal income tax rules instead, with its own forms and deadlines. Choose the setup with an accountant before launch. ## What happens if you ignore the NRA rules? Ignoring the NRA rules costs you the right to sell by card without a cash register, and fines. If a store stops meeting any requirement of Art. 52o to 52t, Art. 52u of Ordinance N-18 removes its right to issue sales documents in place of fiscal receipts. Under Art. 185(1) of the [VAT Act (in Bulgarian)](https://lex.bg/laws/ldoc/2135533201), a company or sole trader that does not issue a sales document faces a penalty of €511.29 to €2,045.17, and €1,022.58 to €4,090.34 for a repeated violation (Art. 185(4)). Important: the amounts in Art. 185 are still in leva in the text of the law (BGN 1,000 to 4,000 and BGN 2,000 to 8,000). The euro amounts are converted at the fixed rate of 1.95583 and rounded to the cent. ## A monthly NRA checklist for an online store - On the 1st, close the month. Check that all paid orders have a document and that refunds are recorded. - Check the payment methods. Every method in checkout should match what is registered with the NRA; a change is reported within 7 days. - Generate the audit file in Apps → N18 Audit and compare the number of sales and reversals with your orders. - Send the numbers to your accountant for the VAT return and the ledgers, due by the 14th. - Upload the XML file to the NRA portal by the 15th. For help with the store settings, write to [support@cloudcart.com](https://cloudcart.commailto:support@cloudcart.com). Card payments, cash on delivery and bank transfer are all set up on the [payment methods](https://cloudcart.com/en/payments) page, and courier integrations with Econt, Speedy and BOX NOW (a parcel locker network in Bulgaria) are on the [shipping](https://cloudcart.com/en/shipping) page. Choosing a courier is covered in the guide to [couriers in Bulgaria](https://cloudcart.com/en/blog/couriers-in-bulgaria). > €1 for 3 months A store ready for the NRA from the first order Invoices, the sales document and the N18 Audit app are built into the platform. New stores through Dec 31, 2026 pay €1/month for the first 3 months, and CloudCart takes 0% commission on your sales . What the €1 store includes → ## Frequently asked questions **What is the NRA in Bulgaria?** The NRA (National Revenue Agency, NAP in Bulgarian) is Bulgaria's tax authority. It collects taxes and social security contributions, registers businesses for VAT and keeps the public list of registered online stores under Ordinance N-18. Most filings are made on its e-services portal with a qualified electronic signature. **Do I need to register my online store with the NRA?** Yes. Under Art. 52m(1) of Ordinance N-18, every online store files its details on the NRA portal with a QES before the first sale, whatever payment methods it accepts. Changes are reported within 7 days. If you accept cards under the alternative regime, the NRA assigns the store a unique e-shop number. **Does an online store in Bulgaria need a cash register?** Usually not. Card payments are documented with a sales document under the alternative regime, cash on delivery collected as a postal money order is documented under the courier contract, and bank transfers need no receipt. You need a cash register when customers pay you in cash in person. **When is the NRA audit file due?** By the 15th of the month after the reporting month (Art. 52t(2) of Ordinance N-18). It is one XML file per month to Annex 38, filed on the NRA portal, with amounts in euro since Jan 1, 2026. In CloudCart the N18 Audit app generates it from the orders. **Does CloudCart submit the files to the NRA for me?** No. Filings with the NRA are signed with your own QES. CloudCart issues the documents from orders, generates the monthly XML file in the N18 Audit app and keeps it for download, and you upload it to the NRA portal. **Can a foreign company deal with the NRA without speaking Bulgarian?** The e-shop form under Annex 33 and the legal texts are in Bulgarian, so foreign owners usually work with a local accountant who files on their behalf. The data for the filings, such as orders, documents and the monthly file, comes from the store admin. [Create a store for €1](https://cloudcart.com/en/offer/online-store-for-1-euro) and have invoices, sales documents and the NRA audit file ready from the first order.