PRA eIMS in Punjab (2026): Who Must Install It, the Rs 6 Million Rule and the Rs 1 Million Fine
Punjab banned handwritten receipts in August 2026. Fines run Rs 400,000 to Rs 1 million. Who must install PRA eIMS, and how it differs from FBR.
What this guide tells you, in plain words
If you run a restaurant, hotel, coffee shop or marriage hall in Punjab, you are no longer allowed to give customers a handwritten bill. In August 2026 the Punjab Revenue Authority banned it.
Every customer receipt must now come out of eIMS — the Electronic Invoice Monitoring System, the Punjab tax department's own real-time receipt system. A receipt that is not from eIMS can cost you between Rs 400,000 and Rs 1 million, and repeat offenders can be sealed for up to one month.
This guide explains what eIMS is, who has to install it, what a legal receipt must show, and the point that confuses most owners: eIMS is a Punjab system, and it is not the same thing as FBR Digital Invoicing.
What PRA eIMS is, and why it exists
PRA stands for Punjab Revenue Authority. It is the Punjab government's tax office for sales tax on services, working under the Punjab Sales Tax on Services Act 2012. It is a provincial body — separate from FBR, which is the federal tax office.
eIMS (Electronic Invoice Monitoring System) is PRA's live receipt system. Your billing machine or POS (Point of Sale — the till or software you punch a customer's order into) sends each bill to PRA's server at the moment you print it. PRA stamps it and returns a receipt number and a QR code (a square barcode a phone camera can read).
The purpose is simple. Before eIMS, PRA only saw the sales figure a business chose to report at the end of the month. With eIMS it sees each sale as it happens, so a hall that ran forty functions cannot later report twelve.
This is the same idea FBR uses for goods, applied to services inside Punjab. PRA Chairman Moazzam Iqbal Sipra told field officers in July 2026 to investigate every complaint about fake, unauthorised or QR-code-less invoices and to impose heavy penalties, and PRA has since described its position on eIMS as zero tolerance.
Who must install eIMS: the Rs 6 million rule
The threshold was lowered in 2026. A service business in Punjab with annual turnover of Rs 6 million or more must install an eIMS-connected POS and issue a fiscal receipt for every customer. Before the change, the rule only bit at Rs 10 million, so a whole band of mid-size businesses was pulled in at once.
The August 2026 notification names four categories directly: hotels, restaurants, coffee shops and marriage halls. These are the businesses PRA field officers are visiting first.
Rs 6 million a year works out at roughly Rs 500,000 a month. A single-branch restaurant doing about Rs 17,000 of sales a day is already over the line. Many owners assume the rule is meant for big chains — it is not, and that assumption is what is producing most of the fines.
One more point that catches people out: your Punjab Sales Tax on Services rate and your eIMS duty are two different things. Restaurants in Punjab pay a reduced rate of around 5% to 8% instead of the standard 16%, and that reduced rate usually depends on taking payment digitally and billing through the approved system. Skipping eIMS can therefore cost you the reduced rate as well as the fine.
What a legal receipt must show — and what is now banned
Under the notification, a customer receipt must carry the business name, the business address, the receipt number and the PRA QR code. If any of those is missing, it is not a valid tax receipt.
PRA has also banned the workarounds. You may not hand the customer a kitchen order slip, an unpaid bill, an estimate, or any similar paper in place of a proper receipt. Several restaurants had been printing an eIMS receipt only when a customer asked for one and giving everyone else an order slip — that practice is what the notification names and shuts down.
The penalty band is Rs 400,000 to Rs 1 million for failing to issue an eIMS receipt. Repeat violations can bring sealing of the premises for up to one month. PRA has additionally warned of legal action where officials are obstructed, sales records are tampered with, or required records are not produced.
For a customer, the check is easy: scan the QR code and see whether PRA recognises the receipt. That is the same habit FBR is building on the federal side — see How to Verify an FBR Digital Invoice for the FBR version of the same check.
eIMS is not FBR Digital Invoicing — and some businesses need both
This is the question we are asked most, so here is the short answer. Pakistan splits sales tax by what you sell. Sales tax on goods is federal and goes to FBR. Sales tax on services is provincial and goes to your province's authority — PRA in Punjab, SRB in Sindh, KPRA in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, BRA in Balochistan.
So a pure services business in Punjab reports to PRA through eIMS. A business selling goods reports to FBR through FBR Digital Invoicing. Neither system replaces the other, and a PRA receipt number is not an FBR IRN (Invoice Reference Number — the unique number FBR gives every accepted invoice).
The overlap is real, though. A hotel that serves food (a service, PRA) and also sells packaged items from a shop counter (goods, FBR) sits in both systems. So does a marriage hall that separately supplies goods. FBR's SRO 288(I)/2026 pulled many service enterprises into federal online integration as well, which is exactly why owners started asking whether they now had two obligations. Often the honest answer is yes, for different parts of the same business.
The practical rule: sort your sales into goods and services first, then work out which authority each stream answers to. FBR vs Provincial (SRB/PRA/KPRA) E-Invoicing: Which System Do Service Businesses Report To? (2026) walks through that split in detail, and FBR Digital Invoicing for Marriage Halls, Hotels, Transport & Salons (2026) covers the federal side for these same trades.
If it is the FBR side you still have to set up, How to Register for FBR Digital Invoicing (Step by Step) is the starting point, and you can open a Digi Invoice account and post your first FBR invoice the same day.
Difficult words in this guide
PRA — Punjab Revenue Authority, the Punjab government's tax office for sales tax on services.
eIMS — Electronic Invoice Monitoring System, PRA's live system that stamps every customer receipt as it is printed.
POS — Point of Sale, the till or billing software you enter a customer's order into.
Fiscal receipt — a receipt that has been registered with the tax authority, carrying its receipt number and QR code.
IRN — Invoice Reference Number, the unique number FBR gives every accepted digital invoice. PRA receipt numbers are separate from it.