In short: Registration comes down to a few steps: ask your accountant about your status, sign in to the official portal with your business's details, get your connection details, enter them in your cashier app, and confirm with a small real invoice that the QR prints and the invoice appears on the portal.
In this guide
- Before you start: three questions for your accountant
- What to have ready before you sign in
- The general steps
- How do I activate JoFotara for my shop?
- How do I check a JoFotara registration?
- Where do I find a JoFotara registration certificate?
- Creating a JoFotara account
- Protect your connection details
- Common first-week mistakes
- After linking: a simple weekly check
- If you are starting with Ghalleh
Registering on JoFotara, Jordan's national e-invoicing system, means signing your business in to the official portal, portal.jofotara.gov.jo, with its Income and Sales Tax Department details, checking its information, and choosing how you will issue invoices. It looks complicated from a distance, but at its core it is a handful of steps. This guide gives you the overall picture so you know what to expect. Exact steps and screen names change over time, so follow them on the official portal and with your accountant.
Already registered and looking for the login or the Client ID and Secret Key? They have their own guide: JoFotara login and connection details. This page is for starting registration from the beginning.
Before you start: three questions for your accountant
These answers shape everything that follows. The technical connection itself is quick. A wrong setup is what costs days of corrections later.
- What do the current e-invoicing instructions ask of my shop, and from when?
- How am I registered: do I issue an income invoice or a sales tax invoice?
- What tax rate applies to my items, and do my prices include tax or have it added?
What to have ready before you sign in
- Your business's tax number.
- The username and password of your business's account, or whatever sign-in method the portal specifies.
- Details of your activities and branches, if you have more than one of either.
- The cashier app you will link, installed on your sales device, with your products entered and their tax set correctly.
- Time with your accountant, or a way to reach them the same day, because some questions only come up halfway through.
The general steps
- Sign in to the portal
Type portal.jofotara.gov.jo yourself and sign in with your business's tax number, username and password. - Review your business details
Check the name, tax number, address and activity, and fill in anything missing. - Choose how you will issue invoices
By hand on the portal, or through a connected sales or accounting system. For a shop selling all day, connecting is the practical choice. - Get your connection details
The portal issues credentials specific to your business, the Client ID and Secret Key, and you may also be asked for the income source sequence, the activity number. - Enter them in your cashier app
Once, on the settings screen meant for it. - Make a first real invoice
A small genuine sale, then confirm the receipt printed with a QR code and the invoice appears in your portal account.
How do I activate JoFotara for my shop?
In practice, activation is the steps above: signing your business in to the portal, checking its details and choosing how to issue invoices. If you issue by hand on the portal, you are ready for your first invoice there. If you connect a cashier app, activation is complete once the connection details are in the app and your first real invoice appears in your portal account.
If your account does not let you sign in or connect, ask the Income and Sales Tax Department or your accountant before trying anything else.
How do I check a JoFotara registration?
The Income and Sales Tax Department has a page for checking registration in the national e-invoicing system on its e-services site: es.istd.gov.jo/query/FawtraQuery. Inside your portal account you see your own business's invoices.
Type the address yourself, and never enter your business details on a page reached from a link in a message.
Where do I find a JoFotara registration certificate?
If someone asks for proof that your business is registered, start with the registration check page above, then your portal account. If you need an official certificate, ask the Income and Sales Tax Department or go through your accountant, because the department alone decides its form and how it is issued.
Creating a JoFotara account
Do not look for a public sign-up page with a username you pick yourself. Your business's portal account is tied to its record and tax number at the tax department. If you do not have your sign-in details yet, the department or your accountant will tell you the right way to get them.
Protect your connection details
The Client ID and Secret Key allow invoices to be issued in your business's name. Treat them like your online banking password. Do not post them in a WhatsApp group, do not leave them on a note by the till, and only give them to people who genuinely need them. If you suspect someone has seen them who should not have, check with the portal and your accountant on the right way to change them.
In your cashier app, make sure only the owner or a manager can enter or edit these details, not every employee at the counter.
Common first-week mistakes
- Wrong invoice type: a shop registered for sales tax issuing income invoices, or the other way round.
- Wrong tax on some items: products imported from an Excel file without checking each one's tax.
- A test invoice for a large amount or a made-up customer, which then needs a return invoice to undo. Make your first invoice a small, real sale.
- Forgetting the other devices: you linked the PC and never checked the phone your evening cashier sells on.
- No follow-up: nobody opens the portal to compare its invoice count with the shop's.
After linking: a simple weekly check
For the first few weeks, open the portal once a week and compare the number and total of invoices with what your cashier app shows for the same period. If they match, the connection is doing its job. If they do not, find the invoices that never arrived before they pile up, and go through the cause with your accountant.
If you later change cashier apps, or add a branch or a new activity, review your connection details again before you start selling.
If you are starting with Ghalleh
In Ghalleh you enter your shop's connection details once in settings. From then on Ghalleh sends every invoice to JoFotara at the moment of sale and the QR prints on the receipt. If the device is offline, Ghalleh keeps the invoices and resends them automatically when the connection returns.
Ghalleh does not register your shop on the portal for you, and it does not decide your registration type or your taxes. Registration is for you and your accountant. Sending every invoice after that is Ghalleh's job. Ghalleh is on Google Play now, the Windows version is on the download page, and the trial is 14 days free with every feature and no card. So you can connect and make your first invoice before you pay.
Everything about JoFotara on one page: the JoFotara e-invoicing guide.
Common questions
What is the JoFotara portal address?
The official portal for Jordan's national e-invoicing system is portal.jofotara.gov.jo, run by the Income and Sales Tax Department. Type the address yourself rather than following links sent to you in messages.
How do I check whether a business is registered on JoFotara?
On the registration check page of the Income and Sales Tax Department's e-services site: es.istd.gov.jo/query/FawtraQuery.
What are the Client ID and Secret Key in JoFotara?
Connection credentials the portal issues to your business. Your cashier or accounting app uses them to send invoices in your name. You enter them once in the app and keep them strictly private.
Can I register and connect without an accountant?
Most shop owners can handle the technical steps. But your invoice type, your tax rates and what the instructions ask of your shop are questions for an accountant, and mistakes there are harder to fix than the connection itself.