Lesson 1 — Turning it on, and the three settings it reveals
Nothing in this course exists until one switch is on. Turn it on first, then read the rest of the lesson with the screen in front of you.
The obligation. From your phase's go-live date, an in-scope invoice has to leave your system as a structured PINT AE document rather than as a PDF someone emails. Which phase you are in and on what date is course 3.1, and none of it is repeated here. What matters now is that the obligation attaches to your company on a date you already know, which makes this switch something you schedule rather than something you discover.
The mental model. PINT AE is the UAE country specialisation of Peppol, built on UBL 2.1. This module is the ERP-side connector: it produces that document at corner 1 and takes inbound ones into your books at corner 4. It is not, and cannot legally be, the accredited access point. Because it changes what happens when somebody presses a familiar button, the whole feature ships switched off behind one master toggle. Off means the tab and the buttons do not exist on any invoice. On means they appear on every posted one.
The click path. Settings → Accounting → General Settings → the UAE E-Invoicing section → turn on UAE E-Invoicing (PINT AE). Three settings appear underneath it, and each answers a different question.
| Setting | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Environment | Sandbox, which is the default, or Production |
| Default ASP Account | The ASP account used to transmit invoices |
| Establishment ID | Branch or establishment identifier, where the Data Dictionary requires one |
Sandbox is the default, and the default is the point. A first document produced in Sandbox costs nothing if it is wrong. The same document produced in Production is a real submission through a real provider. You move the Environment to Production once, deliberately, on a date you chose — not on the afternoon you happened to be configuring. Establishment ID stays empty for most companies; fill it only where the Data Dictionary requires a branch or establishment identifier for your situation.
The worked example. Marina Ridge Trading LLC, the Dubai trading company used across these courses, ticked E-Invoicing (PINT AE) on its UAE feature list months ago and went no further. On 18 August 2026 the finance manager opens the accounting settings, turns the master toggle on, leaves Environment at Sandbox, leaves Establishment ID empty because the company trades from one premises, and stops there. Default ASP Account is still blank, which is Lesson 2. One thing has already changed: every posted invoice now carries a UAE E-Invoicing tab that was not there an hour ago.
The failure mode. The most common opening complaint is that the UAE E-Invoicing tab and its buttons do not appear on posted invoices at all. That is the feature toggle being off, not a defect. Enable it at Settings → Accounting → General Settings → the UAE E-Invoicing section, then reload the invoice form — an already-open form was drawn before the setting changed and will keep showing you the old layout until it is refreshed.