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What is purchase management?

When a ZRA-registered supplier sells goods to your restaurant, that transaction is recorded in ZRA’s Smart Invoice system under your TPIN. ZRA requires you to formally acknowledge these purchases — either approving or rejecting them. Acknowledging purchases serves two purposes:
  1. Input VAT credit — When you approve a purchase from a VAT-registered supplier, you can claim back the 16% VAT you paid on those goods, reducing your VAT liability
  2. Audit compliance — ZRA tracks the flow of goods between registered businesses. Unacknowledged purchases can raise flags during tax audits
Only purchases from ZRA-registered suppliers appear automatically. If your supplier is not on Smart Invoice (e.g. a local market vendor), you enter the purchase manually.

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The purchases tab

Go to ZRA Smart Invoice → Purchases. From here you can:
  • Sync the latest supplier invoices from ZRA
  • Approve purchases you received
  • Reject purchases that are incorrect
  • Manually enter purchases from non-registered suppliers
  • View the full history of all purchases

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Fetching purchases from ZRA

Click Sync from ZRA to pull the latest supplier invoices. DishInk calls ZRA’s API using your device credentials and retrieves all purchase invoices issued to your TPIN since the last sync. New purchases appear with Pending status.
You need at least one active, initialized ZRA device before you can sync purchases. The device credentials authenticate the request to ZRA.

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Approving a purchase

When you receive goods from a ZRA-registered supplier and the invoice is correct:
  1. Find the purchase in the list (status: Pending)
  2. Click the row to expand it
  3. Verify the supplier name, invoice number, and total amount
  4. Click Approve
DishInk sends the approval to ZRA. The purchase status changes to Approved and ZRA records your input VAT credit.
Approve purchases promptly. ZRA may set time limits on how long you have to acknowledge supplier invoices. Check with your accountant for the current rules.

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Rejecting a purchase

If a supplier invoice is incorrect, duplicated, or you did not receive the goods:
  1. Find the purchase in the list
  2. Click the row to expand it
  3. Click Reject
  4. Enter a reason (required)
  5. Confirm
The rejection is sent to ZRA with your reason. The supplier will see that you rejected their invoice and can investigate.
Only reject a purchase if you genuinely did not receive the goods or the invoice is incorrect. False rejections can create compliance issues with ZRA.

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Manual purchase entry

For suppliers who are not registered on ZRA Smart Invoice (e.g. small local vendors, market suppliers), their invoices will never appear automatically. You can record these manually. Click Manual in the top right of the Purchases tab and fill in:
Manual purchases from non-registered suppliers do not generate input VAT credits because those suppliers did not charge you ZRA-compliant VAT. The record is kept for your own audit trail only.

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Purchase statuses

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Purchase details

Clicking a purchase row shows:
  • Supplier TPIN — the supplier’s ZRA identifier
  • ZRA Invoice No — the reference number in ZRA’s system
  • Total amount — what you owe or paid
  • VAT amount — the tax portion you can potentially reclaim
  • Invoice date — when the supplier issued the invoice
  • Item list — what goods were included (if provided by the supplier)

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Linking purchases to inventory

After approving a purchase, you may want to update your stock levels to reflect the received goods. Currently this is a separate step:
  1. Go to Inventory → Stock tab
  2. Find the relevant ingredient
  3. Click Restock
  4. Enter the quantity received and unit cost
DishInk is working on automatic inventory linking — when you approve a ZRA purchase, you will be able to update stock levels in the same step. This will be available in a future update.

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Who can manage purchases

Only owners and managers can approve, reject, or manually enter purchases. Regular staff (waiters, cashiers) can view purchases but cannot take action. This matches ZRA’s requirement that compliance actions are performed by authorised personnel.
Last modified on August 17, 2026