E-document glossary for hotels: what each e-belge is and when a hotel meets it

An e-belge (e-document) is the electronic record that carries the information of a document the Tax Procedure Law requires, whatever the rules on its paper form say. The e-document types in Türkiye run in two directions: some a hotel issues (e-Fatura, e-Arşiv, e-Adisyon), some it receives (e-İrsaliye, e-Serbest Meslek Makbuzu, e-Dekont).

A hotel's back office does not meet one e-document. It meets a delivery note at the loading bay, a consultant's receipt in the mail, a bank receipt in the accounting folder and a restaurant order in the outlet. Each has a different name, a different issuer and a different rule about who keeps it. After reading this glossary you will be able to name each document, say whether your hotel issues it or receives it, and know where in the building it should be caught. For the guest-facing words, start with the hotel compliance glossary for Türkiye.

What is an e-belge, and how should a hotel read this glossary?#

An e-belge is the electronic record holding the information in a document the Tax Procedure Law requires, regardless of the rules on that document's form. Before you learn any single name, learn to ask three questions of it.

Question one: does the hotel issue this document or receive it? The duty, the signature and the archive all follow from that answer. Question two: is it a document or a book? A document goes to a counterparty; a book stays in the hotel's own statutory records. Question three: which channel carries it, the Revenue Administration's own portal or a private integrator? That decides who you call when something fails.

The definitions here come from Section II of VUK General Communiqué No. 509 in its consolidated form (opens in a new tab), as amended by Communiqués 515, 526, 535, 550 and 573 (GİB, November 2026). Section II defines the documents it covers. It does not tell you which of them your facility must use: that depends on taxpayer type, turnover and activity, and it is a question for your accountant.

Two names people expect to find in that list are missing. e-Adisyon is described elsewhere in the Communiqué (Section IV.12), and e-Defter is not defined in the list at all. This glossary defines words. It does not replace the communiqué text, and it does not decide your scope.

Which e-documents does a hotel issue?#

A hotel issues three e-documents in ordinary trading: e-Fatura, e-Arşiv Fatura and, in its food and beverage outlets, e-Adisyon. Which invoice applies is decided by the definition, not by preference.

e-Fatura is an invoice that meets the Communiqué's conditions and is created as an electronic document. e-Arşiv Fatura is an electronic invoice created under the same conditions that is not an e-Fatura. The two definitions cannot both be true of the same document. In practice the split follows the counterparty: whether the guest or the agency can receive an e-Fatura decides which of the two the hotel creates, and your accountant maps your own counterparties. We cover that split in detail in e-Fatura vs e-Arşiv when invoicing guests and agencies.

An accepted offer, a minibar charge or a restaurant bill ends up on the guest's account; the fiscal document for it is still an invoice, and the e-Arşiv route is the common one for a departing guest who is not a registered e-Fatura user.

e-Adisyon covers the order taken at the table in a food and beverage outlet. It is not in the Section II definitions list; the Communiqué describes it in Section IV.12, so read that section rather than a summary. Our separate piece on e-Adisyon in hotel restaurants goes deeper.

A hotel that also sells tickets, for example for a shuttle it operates itself, may meet e-Bilet: a ticket created as an electronic document, delivered, signed, kept and presented electronically. Every issued document needs a person to look at it before it leaves. An automated send with no review step is a design choice, and a risky one.

Which e-documents does a hotel receive, and what does each one prove?#

A hotel receives e-İrsaliye with goods, e-Serbest Meslek Makbuzu from self-employed professionals and e-Dekont from its bank. Each proves something different, and none of them substitutes for the others.

e-İrsaliye is a dispatch note (sevk irsaliyesi) created as an electronic document. It proves movement of goods, not a sale: the invoice is a separate document and arrives separately. Match the e-İrsaliye against the purchase order and the receiving record before anyone signs. A signed delivery note for goods nobody counted is the most expensive signature in the building.

e-Serbest Meslek Makbuzu is the self-employment receipt created electronically. It is what a doctor, a consultant, a lawyer or an accountant issues for their own professional service, and it is the document the hotel books, not a supplier invoice. e-Dekont is a bank receipt created as an electronic document by banks and by the institutions listed in Section 2 of VUK General Communiqué No. 435. It evidences a payment; it does not evidence a cost.

e-Sigorta Poliçesi and e-Sigorta Komisyon Gider Belgesi are the electronic forms of insurance policies and insurance commission expense documents, the two an insurer sends a hotel. The receiving side is where documents go missing, because no one is waiting for them. Give one person the job of checking that every delivery, every professional service and every bank movement has its document in the folder. A full hotel purchasing and receiving procedure from order to storeroom closes this gap.

When does a hotel issue e-Müstahsil Makbuzu or e-Gider Pusulası itself?#

In both, the seller is not issuing an invoice, and the hotel is the party that creates the document; confirm with your accountant that a given purchase falls here. e-Müstahsil Makbuzu is for buying from a producer; e-Gider Pusulası is for buying from a person or business outside the invoice system.

e-Müstahsil Makbuzu is the producer receipt (müstahsil makbuzu) created as an electronic document. A hotel meets it when it buys agricultural produce directly from the producer, for example a kitchen buying from a nearby farm rather than through a wholesaler. e-Gider Pusulası is the expense voucher created as an electronic document, and a hotel meets it when the seller is not a taxpayer who issues invoices, for example a small local supplier or a person selling used equipment to the hotel.

The direction is what surprises people: in both cases the hotel is the one creating the document, so the hotel carries the record-keeping duty: who sold, what was bought, at what price, on what date, with which identity details. The signature and record fields should be confirmed with your accountant. These two are the classic gap in a hotel's purchasing file, because the transaction often happens at the back door with cash and no paperwork. Build the step into the receiving procedure, not into a month-end cleanup.

Whether a particular purchase falls under one of these documents or needs an invoice is a scope question. Ask before the goods arrive, not after.

Is e-Defter an e-document a hotel issues to someone?#

No. e-Defter is the electronic form of the statutory books a business keeps, not a document handed to a counterparty, and it is not in the Section II definitions list of Communiqué 509.

The distinction is structural: documents travel between parties, books stay with the taxpayer and are produced for inspection. That is why e-Defter does not appear among the definitions in Section II: it belongs to the bookkeeping rules, not to the document rules. Whether a hotel keeps its books electronically depends on its taxpayer status and on the communiqués that govern e-Defter, a different set of texts from the ones in this glossary; we treat that question separately in whether hotels must keep e-Defter under the communiqués.

For the reader's purposes the practical consequence is simple: you do not send an e-Defter to a guest, an agency or a supplier, so it never appears in a receiving checklist. Keep the two vocabularies apart in your own procedures. Mixing books and documents in one folder is how an audit request turns into a week of work.

Portal, special integrator, integrator: which route is the hotel on?#

They are three different routes for creating, signing and sending e-documents. The portal is the Revenue Administration's own; special integration and private integrators put a company's system in the middle.

The Revenue Administration's e-document site (opens in a new tab) describes special integration (özel entegrasyon) as a method by which taxpayers send and receive e-invoices through the IT system of a technically competent private integrator that has obtained special integration permission from the Revenue Administration (GİB, November 2026). Section II of Communiqué 509 defines a private integrator (özel entegratör) as an integration company technically qualified to serve taxpayers in creating, signing and sending the Communiqué's electronic documents, which receives the Revenue Administration's permission after testing and evaluation.

So the two words are not synonyms: special integration is the method a taxpayer uses, and the private integrator is the company that has been permitted to provide it. The practical differences are worth asking about before signing anything: who holds the document archive, who is called at month-end, what happens to documents already sent if you change provider, and how a failed transmission is retried. A hotel group with several legal entities should ask the same questions per entity, because the route can differ between them.

None of this decides your scope. It decides your operations, and operations is where the daily cost sits.

What to do next#

Take the table from the first section to your accountant and mark, line by line, which documents your facility issues, which it receives and which of them you have never actually seen arrive. That single marked page is the next step: it turns a glossary into your own compliance checklist, and it shows you where the receiving side is leaking. The rest of the vocabulary can wait until a document with that name lands on your desk.

If you want the same duty handled inside one system: in the AI Otel hotel operating system, KBS, KVKK, e-Fatura and e-Arşiv are built into the core, and e-invoices wait for a person's review before sending. It is built and working, ahead of launch. You can request a briefing.