Turkey e-Waybill (e-İrsaliye): What It Is, How to Issue It
Turkey's e-İrsaliye is the electronic dispatch note, issued before the goods leave. Steps: profile, recipient, goods, carrier and plate, preview, sending.
What is an e-Waybill (e-İrsaliye)?
The e-Waybill (e-İrsaliye) is the electronic counterpart of the paper dispatch note (sevk irsaliyesi) that is issued in Turkey when goods are shipped. It has the same legal standing as the paper dispatch note; like e-Invoice (e-Fatura), it is delivered to the recipient through the closed system of GİB, the Turkish Revenue Administration. The difference lies in what each document records: the e-Waybill records the goods setting off, the e-Invoice records the financial side of the sale. They are two separate documents; neither replaces the other.
When is an e-Waybill issued?
Before the goods are actually dispatched. When the vehicle sets off, the document must already have been issued and sent to the recipient. Throughout the shipment, a printout or an electronic image of the e-Waybill is kept in the vehicle and shown at inspections; the original of the document is electronic.
How to issue an e-Waybill: six steps
- Open a new document. Create Document > e-Waybill.
- Choose the profile. For ordinary shipments the Basic (Temel) profile is used. For fruit and vegetable shipments subject to the Hal Kayıt Sistemi (HKS, Turkey's wholesale produce registration system), the HKS profile is chosen; for iron and steel shipments covered by İDİS, the İDİS profile.
- Enter the recipient. The recipient is chosen from those registered with their tax number; the address and tax office come from the record.
- List the goods being shipped. The name of the goods or service, the quantity and the unit are entered line by line.
- Fill in the transport details. Carrier company, vehicle plate, driver and actual dispatch date. The plate and the driver must match the vehicle and the person actually carrying the goods.
- Preview and send. Once the document has reached the recipient, its status is tracked from the list; it shows "Awaiting Approval" until the recipient responds.
What is an e-Waybill response?
After taking delivery of the goods, the recipient responds to the waybill: it accepts all of the goods, accepts part and rejects the rest, or rejects all of them. The response also arrives through the system and records how the shipment actually ended. For waybills sent to you, the same response is given, viewed and downloaded from the Incoming Waybills list.
Issuing the invoice after the response arrives keeps a quantity the recipient did not accept off the invoice.
Who must use e-Waybill?
You must first be registered for e-Invoice; e-Waybill is enabled on top of it. Who is obliged is set by GİB communiqués; the scope depends both on the sector (such as fuel, fertiliser, iron and steel, fruit and vegetables) and on turnover. Confirm your own position from the announcements on GİB's e-document website or with your financial advisor; we track GİB announcements in date order in the e-document regulation calendar. A business that is not obliged may also switch voluntarily.
Through the GİB portal or an integrator?
As with e-Invoice, there are three ways: GİB's free portal, connecting your own system to GİB, or a private integrator. For a business that makes a few shipments a day, the portal is enough. If the shipment record is already created in the ERP or the warehouse software, a private integrator turns the same data into the document without it being keyed in a second time. For the difference between the methods, see the article what is a private integrator; for the same steps on the invoice side, see the guide how to issue an e-Invoice.
ELPO has been on GİB's list of private integrators since 2015; e-Waybill runs in the same account as e-Invoice. e-Waybill software