URA commodity codes
EFRIS refuses an invoice line that has no commodity code. Not the invoice — the line. One uncoded product stops the whole invoice being fiscalised.
This is the part of setting up EFRIS that takes real time, and it is data entry rather than anything technical. It is worth doing carefully once.
What a commodity code is
URA classifies everything sold in Uganda under a numeric code, so that a sale of sugar is reported the same way whoever sells it. The taxonomy comes from the international UNSPSC standard, and codes are typically eight digits:
50202301 Sugar
50131600 Cheese
43211500 Computers
The code says what the thing is. It is not your SKU, not your own category, and not the price band. Two shops selling the same sugar use the same code.
Finding the right code
In the EFRIS portal: Commodity Category — search by name and read off the code. Your URA-accredited supplier or your accountant will also have a list, and for a small catalogue that is usually faster than searching one by one.
Get the category right, not the leaf perfect
Codes are hierarchical, and the level URA expects is the specific commodity rather than a broad heading. If you sell several kinds of the same thing, they often share a code — a catalogue of eighty products rarely needs eighty different codes.
If you genuinely cannot classify something, ask URA rather than guessing. A wrong code files the sale under the wrong category, which is worse than an invoice you have not fiscalised yet.
Setting them in Smart Business Book
Go to Products, open a product, and fill in the URA EFRIS section:
| Field | What to put |
|---|---|
| Commodity code | URA's code for this item |
| Tax treatment | Standard rated (18%), zero rated, or exempt |
Leave Tax treatment as Use the business default unless this particular product is treated differently. Most businesses are uniformly standard rated, and setting the default once on the EFRIS page beats setting it on every product.
These fields only appear once EFRIS is switched on
If you do not see them, EFRIS is off for this business. That is the correct state for anybody not fiscalising, and nothing about your products changes because of it.
The EFRIS page counts your progress — "12 of 40 products coded" — so you can see the job shrinking without checking each item.
What happens to an invoice line
The code and the tax are written onto the line when the invoice is raised, and they stay as they were.
That is deliberate. A catalogue you re-code in March must not change what an invoice said in January: what you declared to URA is a record of that sale, not a view of today's product list. It is the same reason an exchange rate is frozen onto a transaction.
Two consequences worth knowing:
A line for something not in your catalogue carries no code. Plenty of invoices bill for a one-off — a delivery charge, a repair — that was never a product. That is not an error, but such a line cannot be fiscalised. If it needs to be, add it to the catalogue with a code and raise the invoice again.
Coding a product does not fix invoices already raised. They keep what they had. Correct the product, then raise the invoice again.
When an invoice will not fiscalise
Smart Business Book tells you everything that is wrong at once, naming the products:
No URA commodity code on: Sugar 1kg, Bread. Set one on the product, then raise the invoice again.
It does not invent a code to get past this. Inventing one would file the sale under the wrong category and be much harder to unpick than a submission you can see has not happened.
Unit of measure
Alongside the code, each product carries a unit of measure — URA's code, not free text. Leave it blank for NMB, which is right for services and anything counted.
| Code | Means |
|---|---|
NMB | Number |
PCE | Piece |
SET | Set |
PK | Package |
BX | Box 21 to |
KGM | Kilogram |
GRM | Gram |
TNE | Metric ton (1000 kg) |
LTR | Litre (1 dm3) |
MTR | Metre |
CMT | Centimetre |
MTK | Square metre |
MTQ | Cubic metre |
PR | Receptable, plastic |
DZN | Dozen |
URA recognises 464 codes in all, none longer than three characters. The box in Smart Business Book offers the common ones as you type and refuses anything URA does not list — an unrecognised unit is otherwise not discovered until a submission fails, long after somebody typed it.
A commodity code is not a unit
They sit next to each other and are easy to confuse. A commodity code is eight digits; a unit is two or three letters. Each box refuses the other's value and says which one it belongs in.
Related
Codes for IT & software — a worked list
EFRIS setup — switching it on, keys, and the connection test
Products — the rest of the catalogue