Official receipt vs sales invoice: which one you issue, and when

In the Philippines the two documents stopped being interchangeable in 2024, and the difference is the moment each one is issued. The Invoice is the primary evidence for recording a sale of goods or services, and you issue it when you sell or when you bill. The Official Receipt became a supplementary document, and you issue it when the money actually arrives. Revenue Regulations No. 7-2024 is explicit on the order: sellers cannot issue an invoice upon receipt of payment, but an Official Receipt or Payment Receipt or Acknowledgement Receipt may be issued upon subsequent collection or receipt of payment. So the question is not which document is correct. It is which half of the transaction you are documenting.

What follows was written with three issuances read on November 9, 2026 on the Bureau of Internal Revenue site: Revenue Regulations No. 7-2024, issued April 11, 2024, which implements Sections 113, 235, 236, 237, 238, 242 and 243 of the Tax Code as amended by Republic Act No. 11976, the Ease of Paying Taxes Act; Revenue Memorandum Circular No. 77-2024, issued July 11, 2024, which clarifies the invoicing requirements; and Revenue Regulations No. 006-2026, dated August 25, 2026. This is not tax or legal advice, and your own registration with the BIR decides several of the answers below.

The two moments, and the document each one needs

A sale and a collection are two events. They happen on the same day in a cash sale and weeks apart in a sale on credit, and the regulation attaches a different document to each. The invoice records that the sale happened and what was sold. The receipt records that the money came in.

The naming freedom in that last note is wider than most businesses use. RMC No. 77-2024 lists Invoice, Sales Invoice, Cash Invoice, Charge Invoice, Credit Invoice, Billing Invoice, Service Invoice and Commercial Invoice, and allows any other term that accurately describes the transaction. The one condition is that the word Invoice is prominently printed. A business that sells both goods and services can run two series with two names, each with its own serial numbers starting from one.

The change that catches service providers

If you bill for services, the document you send at billing time is a Billing Invoice. RMC No. 77-2024 says service providers who billed their customers shall now issue a Billing Invoice upon billing instead of a Billing Statement or a Statement of Account. The Billing Invoice has to carry the information RR No. 7-2024 requires, including quantity, unit cost and the description or nature of the service. A statement of account that only summarizes charges is not that document any more.

What happens to the official receipts you already paid to print

They are not wasted, and there are two options. You can keep using them as supplementary documents until the booklets run out, or you can convert them into invoices. The two paths have different stamps, and the stamp is the whole difference.

1. 1Keep as supplementary: every page of the unused official receipt must be stamped THIS DOCUMENT IS NOT VALID FOR CLAIM OF INPUT TAX. RMC No. 77-2024 is blunt about the consequence of skipping it, which is that the document is not a valid replacement for the invoice and the seller may be treated as not having issued one
2. 2Convert to invoice: strike out the words Official Receipt on the face of the document and stamp Invoice, or Cash Invoice, Charge Invoice, Credit Invoice or Service Invoice, and make sure the required information is there, including quantity, unit cost and the description or nature of the service
3. 3Report the conversion: unused manual and loose leaf official receipts converted to invoice are reported to the BIR with an inventory report listing booklets and serial numbers
4. 4Get new printed invoices with an Authority to Print before the converted booklets are fully consumed

For machines the path is shorter. RMC No. 77-2024 says taxpayers using cash register machines, point of sale machines, e-receipting or e-invoicing software can replace the words Official Receipt with a more descriptive term for their invoices without approval from the Revenue District Office, provided the serial number continues from the last issued official receipt and a notice of the renaming is submitted.

When an invoice is required at all

This part splits by your registration. A VAT-registered person issues a VAT invoice for every sale, barter, exchange or lease of goods or properties and for every sale of services, regardless of the amount. A person who is not VAT-registered issues an invoice for a sale valued at five hundred pesos or more, and also whenever the buyer asks for one at any amount.

One field left the invoice in this round. Under the Ease of Paying Taxes Act, business style is no longer mandatory information. RMC No. 77-2024 notes the seller may still print its business name for trade or branding reasons, which is a different thing from the old requirement to state the buyer's business style.

The newest change: withholding tax on the face of the invoice

Revenue Regulations No. 006-2026, dated August 25, 2026, amends Section 6(B) of RR No. 07-2024 and adds one item to the mandatory information on an invoice: the amount of creditable withholding tax, if applicable, shown as a separate item. The transitory provision is generous. Unused or unissued invoices existing as of the effectivity date may continue to be used until fully consumed, provided the phrase Less: Withholding Tax is stamped conspicuously on the face of the invoice. After that, newly printed invoices have to carry the same phrase.

What this means for chasing payment

The documents changed and the collection work did not. You still bill on a date, wait, follow up, take partial payments and reconcile. What changed is which document each step produces, and that the receipt now sits at the end of the chain instead of standing in for the invoice.

• Send the reminder against the invoice, with its number and date, because that is the primary record of the sale
• Issue the official receipt or acknowledgement receipt on collection, not before, and keep it tied to the invoice it settles
• Keep the withholding line visible in your own ledger so a net payment does not read as a partial one
• For a billed service, point the follow up at the Billing Invoice and not at a statement of account

Makatea does the chasing half: it sends each reminder on its due date over WhatsApp and email, records the payment when you mark it received, stops writing to anyone who has already paid, keeps the promised date when a customer asks for time, and reconciles what came in against what was billed. Makatea does not move money, does not hold funds and is not a collection agency, so issuing the invoice and the official receipt stays with your own BIR-registered system. Makatea is the better choice when the same amount is due from a known list of customers every month, because the reminder goes out on its date without anyone opening a spreadsheet. The price is public at 119, 219 and 349 dollars a month, with 14 days free and no card.

If what you need is the document itself, the official receipt and the sales invoice template are both on the site, along with the billing statement, the acknowledgement receipt and the payment receipt. For the wording of the follow up itself, how to ask a client for payment politely covers the message.