Till receipt or invoice: why half of documents never come back as money

A driver fuels up in Poland, takes the receipt, puts it in the folder, and drives on. Everything looks fine. There's a receipt, VAT is itemised on it, the supplier's tax number is printed.

Nine months later it turns out that receipt will never come back as money. And no invoice can replace it now.

Why a receipt isn't always enough

A VAT refund claim needs a document that shows not only who sold, but also to whom.

The supplier's VAT number is almost always on a receipt — it's a cash register requirement. Buyer details usually aren't there, unless you have an agreement with the supplier or specifically ask for them.

And that's exactly where the difference that decides whether the money comes back appears.

Document type	What it contains	Does it qualify
Full VAT invoice	Supplier and buyer details, VAT numbers, VAT by rate	Qualifies everywhere
Simplified invoice with buyer identifier	Supplier code and buyer tax number	Qualifies in many countries, below certain amounts
Till receipt without buyer details	Supplier code only	Usually doesn't qualify
Receipt without VAT itemised	—	Doesn't qualify

The line between the second and third rows differs by country, which is one reason this topic seems more confusing than it is. The general rule is simple: if your company isn't on the document, it isn't your expense for refund purposes.

The Polish case that can't be fixed

In Poland, a till receipt without the buyer's tax number (NIP) can never later be converted into an invoice. If the NIP wasn't entered at the point of sale, it's never entered.

This differs from most other situations, where a document can be corrected, supplemented, or reissued. Here the decision is made at the till in five seconds, and it's final.

For the driver this means one extra sentence: ask for the NIP to be entered before the receipt prints. For the company it means the driver needs to know that sentence — and that's the one piece of training in this whole topic that actually pays off.

Where the money disappears

Purchases not made by card. With a fuel card you get a consolidated monthly invoice with full details — automatically a valid document. The problem starts where the card isn't accepted or isn't used: cash at a remote stop, roadside repairs, ferries, car washes, AdBlue, parking.

So one of the most useful numbers a company can have is: what share of road expenses is bought without a card. That's exactly where all the document risk concentrates.

Receipts that never reach accounting. A folder in the cab, faded thermal paper, a lost slip. These losses don't even show up, because the document simply no longer exists.

Documents that arrive but don't qualify. This is the worst category, because everyone assumes everything's fine. The amount is in the books, the receipt exists, and the refund claim will reject it.

What can be done

One sentence to the driver. Ask for an invoice, or ask for the company's tax number to be entered. It costs five seconds, and only applies where a card isn't used.

The thermal-paper problem. Receipts fade within months, and up to twenty months can pass before 30 September. A phone photo the same day solves this more cheaply than anything else.

Check at upload, not at year-end. This is the only point in the chain where a mistake can still be fixed. At year-end, all you can do is count the loss.

That's exactly what Demurrit's VAT refund detection add-on does: it classifies every uploaded document by eligibility and flags the ones that are likely to be rejected in a claim — while a valid one can still be requested. The module doesn't assess whether a specific expense is refundable under a given country's rules, and doesn't file the claim; that's left to you or your agent.

What this article doesn't say

It doesn't say every receipt without buyer details is lost money — in some countries simplified documents below certain amounts are accepted. And it doesn't say which expenses are refundable in which country, because that list differs and changes.

It says only this: the difference between a valid and an invalid document is decided at the moment of purchase, and noticed nine months later. That gap is the whole difficulty of this topic.