What a cash receipt must contain in Latvia: the fields Cabinet Regulation No. 95 requires

A receipt looks like a small thing until a customer brings it back because their accountant will not accept it. Usually one line is missing, and a sale that has already happened has no valid supporting document.

What a receipt must contain is not up to each shop. It is set by point 23 of Cabinet of Ministers Regulation No. 95 of 11 February 2014 on the technical requirements for electronic devices and equipment that register taxes and other payments.

What point 23 requires on the receipt

In short, the receipt must show:

• The user’s name (for a natural person, given name and surname), registration code or VAT number, and legal address
• The word “čeks”, the receipt’s serial number, the fiscal memory module’s unique identification code, and the date and time
• On each line, the name of the goods or service (or its department), the VAT mark, the quantity (including “1”) and the price
• The VAT rates applied
• The sum without VAT and the VAT amount, each shown separately for every rate
• The total, and any discounts
• The payment method, the money received and the change given
• The full chassis number of the cash register or till system, and the Hash SHA-1 checksum of this receipt and of the previous one

These points are shortened. The text of the regulation is what counts, and it has been amended several times, so open the current version on likumi.lv before you change your receipt layout.

What goes missing most often

Three fields are left out more often than the rest, and all three are in point 23.

First, the name of the goods. “Item” or “Service” is not a name: the receipt has to say what was bought. Second, the VAT mark on each line. Third, the sums by rate: if one receipt has lines at 21% and lines without VAT, the sum without VAT and the VAT amount are shown for each rate, not as one figure.

A fourth case is a lost receipt. If the customer asks, you issue a supporting document in its place with the fields from points 23.1, 23.2, 23.4 to 23.9 and 23.13 (Regulation No. 96, point 65¹).

When a numbered receipt may be used instead

In some cases set out in Cabinet Regulation No. 96 on the procedure for using these devices, a numbered receipt (kvīts) registered with VID, the State Revenue Service, may be used instead of a cash register. Point 71 of that regulation lists its fields: a series of two Latin letters and a number, the date VID registered the number (unless the receipts are bound in booklets), the date of issue with the month in words, the seller’s and the buyer’s details, the goods or services with quantity, price and value, discounts, the VAT rate and amount, the total in figures and in words, and the seller’s signature.

One more rule applies to cash receipts. If a receipt lacks details that accounting and VAT law require of a supporting document, then at the business partner’s request you must issue a properly drawn-up supporting document or add the missing entry to the receipt (Regulation No. 96, point 65).

Why the receipt carries a checksum

The checksum lets anyone check whether a receipt was changed after it was printed. Each receipt shows its own SHA-1 checksum and the one of the receipt before it, so if one receipt is altered, it no longer matches the next.

How ReactDesk handles this

Every sale recorded in ReactDesk gets a SHA-256 checksum calculated from its contents. If you register a till as a fiscal device, each sale is also written to a fiscal journal in which every entry contains the hash of the previous one, so an entry changed later no longer fits the chain.

Whether your business needs a registered cash register or till system at all is for VID and your accountant to decide, not for software. This article is about what the document must contain, not about when you may do without one.

Regulation No. 96 also has amendments that take effect on 1 January 2027. Before you change your receipt layout, read both regulations on likumi.lv or ask VID.