Everything About Brazilian E-Invoicing

The Brazilian electronic invoice (Nota Fiscal Eletrônica, or NF-e) is an e-invoicing system jointly implemented by Brazil's Receita Federal and the individual state tax authorities (SEFAZ). All goods movement and service transactions in Brazil must issue a compliant electronic invoice, which only becomes valid after real-time authorization by the tax authority. It is not just an invoice document but the core data carrier for tax filing and audits across all of Brazil.

NF-e (goods movement invoice): used for B2B sales of goods, involving ICMS (state tax), IPI (federal industrial tax) and others, administered by the state SEFAZ.
NFS-e (service invoice): used for service transactions, involving ISS (municipal service tax), administered by individual municipalities, with no unified model.
NFC-e (consumer invoice): used for in-person physical retail scenarios (PDV point of sale, food service, convenience stores, etc.), a simplified version of NF-e. Remote sales such as cross-border e-commerce cannot use NFC-e and must issue an NF-e (modelo 55).
TF Fiscal supports all three types.

SEFAZ (Secretaria da Fazenda) is the tax authority of each Brazilian state. Each state operates its own NF-e interface independently — 27 states plus the Federal District. Interface rules, message formats and stability vary considerably between states, and some states have frequent maintenance windows and rate-limiting policies. This is why building your own integration is costly and unstable — TF Fiscal has already abstracted away the differences across all state interfaces.

A1 is a software-based digital certificate recognized by the Brazilian tax authority (distinct from the A3 USB hardware certificate), used to digitally sign the invoice XML. Issuing any NF-e / NFS-e / NFC-e requires signing with an A1 or A3 certificate. TF Fiscal supports hosting uploaded A1 certificates and completes the signing process automatically.

CNPJ (Cadastro Nacional da Pessoa Jurídica) is the Brazilian corporate tax registration number, equivalent to China's Unified Social Credit Code. One company can hold multiple CNPJs (one headquarters plus multiple branches, or Filial), with each CNPJ invoicing and being taxed separately. The TF Fiscal Pro plan supports centralized management of up to 10 CNPJs, and the Enterprise plan is unlimited.

Brazilian Constitutional Amendment EC 132/2023 launched a sweeping tax reform:
• CBS (Contribuição sobre Bens e Serviços, federal contribution) will gradually replace the existing PIS / COFINS;
• IBS (Imposto sobre Bens e Serviços, goods and services tax) will gradually replace ICMS / ISS.
The new tax fields must be filled in correctly in NF-e / NFS-e documents, with old and new fields coexisting during the transition period. The TF Fiscal rules engine is already adapted, so customers do not need to modify anything themselves.

ICMS (Imposto sobre Circulação de Mercadorias e Serviços) is Brazil's state-level goods movement tax, legislated independently by each state. Common rates range from 7% to 25%, and inter-state trade also involves ICMS-ST (tax substitution) and the rate differential (DIFAL). This is the most complex part of Brazil's tax system, and TF Fiscal has a built-in nationwide library of rates and rules.

Under Brazilian tax regulations, invoice XML and tax authority receipts must be retained for at least 5 years. TF Fiscal provides compliant archiving, with XML + PDF (DANFE) stored encrypted long-term, supporting download and audit export at any time.

The tax authority returns a rejection code and reason description, but the descriptions are often vague. TF Fiscal has translated and mapped over 200 common rejection codes into clear explanations and solutions — for example, "Rejeição 539: Duplicidade de NF-e" is explained as "duplicate invoice number, please check the nNF sequence number," along with specific correction suggestions.

Yes. NF-e cancellation (Cancelamento) generally must be submitted within 24 hours of issuance, with some states allowing an extension. The TF Fiscal API provides a cancelamento endpoint supporting manual cancellation from the back office and programmatic batch cancellation. After the time limit, you can only correct via a "carta de correção" or handle it through the NF-e return process.

There are two levels:

(A) Contracting the TF Fiscal service itself: no Brazilian credentials required

• Chinese customers can sign directly with Tongfu International Network Technology (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd., receive RMB VAT invoices, and operate under Chinese contract law
• Overseas customers can sign directly with TF Software Ltda (the Brazilian entity) and receive Brazilian NFS-e (service invoices)
• The technical capabilities are identical for both contracting paths; only the financial settlement route differs

(B) The compliance elements your business needs to actually issue invoices in Brazil (held by your operating entity, not a prerequisite for contracting with TF Fiscal):

1. A Brazilian CNPJ entity (the operating company that actually issues invoices; if the customer has not yet obtained one, TF Software can assist or recommend partners)
2. State tax registration (Inscrição Estadual, or IE)
3. An A1 digital certificate (which can be obtained remotely via TF Assessor)
4. Your ERP / e-commerce system being able to call HTTPS RESTful APIs
5. A clearly defined business scenario (issuing entity, product categories, estimated monthly invoice volume)

In short: the barrier to contracting is zero; the compliance requirements for issuing invoices in Brazil are borne by your business entity, and we provide one-stop assistance.

The standard process has 5 steps: ① submit a partnership application → ② activate the Sandbox test environment (1 business day) → ③ integration interface testing (1–2 weeks) → ④ switch to and launch the production environment → ⑤ 7×24 monitoring and operations. Typical customers can complete integration in 1–3 weeks.

TF Fiscal provides a RESTful API with JSON data, abstracting away the complexity of the underlying SEFAZ SOAP / XML. Developers do not need to understand Brazil's native XSD schemas — simply populate the JSON fields.

Yes. The Pro plan and above support Webhook callbacks, pushing invoice status changes (authorized / rejected / cancelled) in real time to your configured URL, with support for signature verification, automatic retries and failure alerts.

Yes. The Starter plan allows 10 QPS, the Pro plan 50 QPS, and the Enterprise plan offers a customizable dedicated resource pool. All plans include built-in idempotency and automatic retries to prevent duplicate invoicing.

The standard API documentation supports any language calling over HTTP. We provide official sample code for Java, Python, Node.js and PHP. Custom SDK packages can be built for Enterprise customers.

The Sandbox uses the tax authority's matching test environment (Homologação), where invoice data is not recorded in real tax records and can be tested repeatedly; the production environment (Produção) connects directly to the live tax authority, and issued invoices are legally valid. All endpoints are identical — you only need to switch the API address and credentials.

Three tiers: Starter (R$ 399 / month) for ≤100 invoices per month; Pro (R$ 1,999 / month) for ≤5,000 invoices per month; Enterprise (custom quote) for large corporate groups. See Pricing for details.

Both settlement methods are supported: (a) RMB VAT invoices issued by the Chinese entity Tongfu International Network Technology (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd.; (b) Brazilian NFS-e (service invoices) issued by the Brazilian entity TF Software Ltda. Businesses expanding into Brazil typically choose (a).

A free Sandbox test environment can be requested before signing for any plan, including the full API and simulated tax authority receipts, for integration and development. There is currently no free quota in the production environment, so we recommend starting with Starter.

Yes. Annual plans offer a significant discount over monthly billing (typically 10%–15%), with the exact discount varying by tier and confirmed by sales at signing.

The overage is billed at an excess unit rate, which varies by tier. If your volume consistently exceeds the plan, we recommend upgrading to a higher tier for a better unit rate.

TF Software (Brazilian entity TF Software Ltda, CNPJ 40.673.067/0001-34, São Paulo) was founded in 2020 and offers products including TF ERP, TF WMS, TFShop and TF Fiscal. TF Fiscal is the e-invoicing and tax compliance API brand created by the TF Fiscal team at TF Software for businesses expanding into Brazil, drawing on TF Fiscal's local tax-technology expertise in Brazil to provide localized integration services for Chinese customers. See About Us for details.

Tongfu International Network Technology (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd. (TF Software's domestic entity in China), which can issue Chinese VAT special / general invoices and sign standard contracts. If a customer needs to contract directly with the Brazilian entity (e.g. for cross-border procurement), TF Software Ltda can also sign and issue Brazilian NFS-e (service invoices).

We offer bilingual technical support in both Chinese and Portuguese. Chinese support is handled by the R&D center in Shenzhen (tickets, WeCom, email, phone); Portuguese support is handled by the local Brazilian team. The tax-technology team works on Brasília time (BRT), and complex cross-border tax issues can be handed off between the two teams to ensure each issue is fully resolved.

You're welcome to. If you have plans to travel to Brazil, contact sales in advance to arrange a visit to the São Paulo office and learn about the local team's size, technical architecture and tax-compliance capabilities.

All invoice data is stored with a compliant cloud provider within Brazil (Tencent Cloud São Paulo Region), in line with Brazil's General Data Protection Law (LGPD, Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados). A synchronized replica may be kept within China for real-time queries.

A1 certificates are protected by client-side encryption plus transport-layer TLS during upload, and stored in a KMS-encrypted hardware security module (HSM), decrypted only briefly when issuing an invoice. All operations are auditable.

All plans include automatic daily full backups plus incremental backups, with a 7-day rolling retention and monthly long-term archiving. The Enterprise plan provides off-site disaster recovery with an RTO < 1h guarantee.

Within 30 days of contract termination, you can request to export all historical XML / PDF; after export is confirmed or the 30-day grace period ends, data destruction and a destruction certificate are provided per the customer's written request. Invoice data within Brazil's statutory 5-year retention period is retained as required by law for potential tax audits.