e-Adisyon: Türkiye's Digital Tab Rules for Restaurants (2026)

Short answer: no, it is not mandatory. As of August 2026 there is no published general mandate for e-Adisyon; the application is voluntary. One sentence of context first: these rules are specific to Türkiye, where restaurants that serve at the table and serve alcoholic drinks must keep a numbered tab ("adisyon") per table, and e-Adisyon is the digital version of that document. The picture is not permanent, though: the Revenue Administration (GİB) holds the authority to make e-Adisyon mandatory based on sales revenue, provided it gives at least 3 months' transition time, through a single announcement or written notification. What is voluntary today can be put on a deadline with one announcement.

This guide reflects the legislation in force as of August 2026.

What is an e-Adisyon and how does it differ from the paper tab?

e-Adisyon is the electronic version of the tab that table-service businesses in Türkiye have long kept on printed, serial-numbered pads. It was added to General Communiqué No. 509 of the Tax Procedure Law (VUK) by Communiqué No. 526 (Official Gazette 09.02.2021, no. 31390). It is not a new document type; it carries the same legal status as the paper tab. What changes is not the document itself but how it is issued, stored and reported.

Who must issue tabs in Türkiye?

The audience for e-Adisyon is the set of businesses already required to issue paper tabs. Section IV.12.1 of Communiqué No. 509 describes that audience as "service businesses that serve at the table and are taxed under the standard regime (balance-sheet or operating-account basis), such as restaurants, cafeterias, patisseries, casinos, bars and pavilions" and, critically, prefaces it with the words "pursuant to General Communiqués No. 185, 200, 298 and 299". No. 509 does not redraw the scope; it points back to those four communiqués. The scope itself is written in No. 298 and No. 299.

Communiqué No. 298 (Official Gazette 05.08.2001, no. 24484) sets the base list: night clubs, discotheques, bars, pavilions, casinos, taverns, restaurants, cafeterias and patisseries that keep books on the balance-sheet or operating-account basis must use tabs. The same communiqué lists the exclusions; no tab is required in:

• restaurants and cafeterias run on a self-service basis,
• tea houses, tea stalls and tea gardens selling only tea, coffee and soft drinks,
• service businesses taxed under the simplified regime,
• holiday villages, hotels and similar accommodation businesses where services are tracked with tokens or a dedicated in-house card.

Communiqué No. 299 (Official Gazette 18.08.2001, no. 24497) adds one more condition, and in practice this is the decisive one. The whole communiqué runs to a few sentences: the service businesses identified in No. 298 "are obliged to issue tabs where they serve alcoholic drinks. Service businesses that do not serve alcoholic drinks have no obligation to issue tabs." Both communiqués entered into force on the same day, 20.08.2001; No. 299 is not a later relaxation but the companion piece to No. 298.

So three conditions apply together:

1. Business type. Being one of the service businesses listed in No. 298.
2. Standard regime and table service. Keeping books on the balance-sheet or operating-account basis and not falling into the exclusions above.
3. Serving alcoholic drinks. No alcohol service, no tab obligation.

GİB tax rulings show where the line falls in practice. In a ruling issued to a bar that serves alcohol (dated 20.10.2011), no tab was required for drinks paid for at the counter and carried by the customer; but the ruling states that a tab would be required where food and drinks are served to the tables. Even within a single venue, the distinction turns on the mode of service.

The edge cases sit here too: an alcohol-free venue that serves at the table, a business licensed for alcohol that does not actually serve it, or a venue where alcohol is served only in one part of the floor. All of these are judged against the "serving alcoholic drinks" test in No. 299. Where alcohol is served with table service, the obligation is beyond argument; for anything borderline, consult your certified accountant and, if needed, request a ruling from GİB.

Is e-Adisyon mandatory in 2026?

No. As of August 2026 there is no published general mandate for e-Adisyon; the application is voluntary. GİB's e-document announcement archive was reviewed on 20.08.2026: the announcements concerning e-Adisyon consist only of the private integrator list, application guides and maintenance notices. No general "switch by this date" announcement has ever been published.

How a mandate would arrive is written into the communiqué. Under the e-Adisyon section of Communiqué No. 509, GİB is authorized to impose the obligation on tab-issuing service businesses by reference to their annual or monthly sales revenue. Two conditions apply:

• A transition period of at least 3 months must be granted,
• The mandate must be communicated via an announcement on ebelge.gib.gov.tr or a written notification to the taxpayer.

There is no ready-made revenue threshold in the communiqué; GİB will set the threshold and the timeline at the moment of the announcement. One more nuance: the written-notification channel is not publicly visible. Whether GİB has imposed the obligation on individual businesses by notification cannot be tracked from outside; the "no general mandate" finding rests on the absence of any published announcement.

Transition requirements, step by step

Voluntary adoption proceeds in three steps:

1. Become an e-Fatura and e-Arşiv Fatura user. Both are prerequisites. Even below the revenue thresholds you can join voluntarily. Which e-document becomes mandatory at which revenue level is covered in detail in our e-document thresholds guide for restaurants.
2. Complete the preparations for issuing, storing, submitting and transmitting to GİB. In practice this means the software running your tab flow can produce the e-Adisyon format, and the storage and reporting pipeline is in place.
3. Apply via the private integrator or direct integration method. There is no GİB Portal method for e-Adisyon; the free portal route familiar from e-Fatura does not exist here. A small or mid-sized business in practice works with a GİB-authorized private integrator; the list of authorized e-Adisyon integrators is published on ebelge.gib.gov.tr. Your POS software connects to that integrator.

How e-Adisyon works

The workflow changes the document regime without disturbing floor habits:

1. Opening: The tab is opened electronically when the order is taken.
2. Adding items: New orders are added to the tab throughout service.
3. Closing: When service ends, an e-Fatura, an e-Arşiv Fatura or a retail receipt from a new-generation fiscal cash register (ÖKC) is issued simultaneously. The closing document carries the e-Adisyon's ETTN (universal unique identifier); the link between the tab and the payment document is established through that number.

The mandatory fields include the business's details, the date of issue with hour and minute, the ETTN, the document number, the type and quantity of the goods or services, and the total amount both excluding and including taxes. The hour-and-minute detail may look trivial; it is not. Consistency between the tab's opening time and the closing document is GİB's cross-audit hook. Communiqué No. 573 (Official Gazette 12.11.2024) also simplified the regime: the requirement to show the related invoice's ETTN or the ÖKC registration number on the tab was removed; the link now runs one way, with the closing document carrying the tab's ETTN.

Two more practical consequences: with e-Adisyon there is no obligation to keep a paper printout on the table. And since 1 September 2023, like all e-documents, every e-Adisyon carries a QR code.

The overlooked risk of staying on paper

For a business that is required to issue tabs and does not adopt e-Adisyon, the rule stays as it was: the tab is issued on paper and sits on the customer's table. Here there is a serious gap between common floor practice and the legislation. Many businesses track orders on the POS screen and never open a paper tab. GİB answered this question years ago: per a tax ruling (dated 09.08.2012, no. B.07.1.GİB.4.35.18.02-010.01-742, İzmir Tax Office Directorate), tracking the tab purely electronically without placing it on the table is not permissible; under the paper regime the tab must be on the table.

The only legal route to tableless, screen-based tracking is joining the e-Adisyon application. So a business that says "everything is already recorded in the system" faces two options: either place the paper tab on the table as required, or formalize that record through e-Adisyon.

Penalties in brief

The tab falls under VUK Article 353/2, the group of "documents whose issuance has been made mandatory". At 2026 amounts (Communiqué No. 588): failing to issue a tab, or failing to switch to e-Adisyon once mandated, is penalized at a minimum of 17,000 TL per document on the first detection.

That amount is not flat. Under the tiered detection system introduced by Law No. 7524, the minimum rises with each repeat detection for the same document type within the same calendar year: 35,000 TL on the second detection, then 53,000, 70,000 and 87,000 TL, and 170,000 TL from the sixth detection onward. The cap per document type per detection is 1,700,000 TL and the calendar-year cap is 17,000,000 TL. For the full list of fiscal cash register and document penalties, including the tier table, see the 2026 penalty amounts article.

Common misconceptions

Many guides on the internet either describe the old rules or mix up the document types. The ones we see most often:

1. "e-Adisyon became mandatory for all restaurants." False. As of August 2026 no general mandate announcement has been published; the application is voluntary. But GİB's authority to impose it with a single announcement and at least 3 months' notice is ready; a revenue-based announcement can come at any time.
2. "An e-Adisyon replaces the receipt or the invoice." False. A tab, paper or electronic, is not the document that closes the bill. Every tab must be closed with an e-Fatura, an e-Arşiv Fatura or a new-generation ÖKC receipt.
3. "We track orders on the POS screen, no need for a paper tab." Risky. Under the paper regime the tab must sit on the table; a GİB tax ruling holds that screen-only tracking is not sufficient. The only legal route to tableless electronic tracking is e-Adisyon.
4. "We can sign up for e-Adisyon for free through the GİB portal." False. There is no GİB Portal method for e-Adisyon; a private integrator or direct integration is required.
5. "The e-Arşiv invoice threshold is 5,000/30,000 TL." Outdated. Communiqué No. 573 (Official Gazette 12.11.2024) removed both thresholds and introduced a single 3,000 TL threshold for 2025; from 1.1.2026, for businesses on the balance-sheet basis, the threshold is gone entirely and every invoice is an e-Arşiv Fatura. Guides still quoting 5,000/30,000 TL are two communiqués behind.
6. "Every restaurant with table service must issue a tab." Incomplete. The table-service description in Communiqué No. 509 refers back to Communiqués No. 298 and No. 299, which set the actual scope. Under No. 299, service businesses that do not serve alcoholic drinks have no obligation to issue tabs. Where alcohol is served the obligation is beyond argument; where it is not, the text of No. 299 is explicit.

How POS software prepares you for e-Adisyon

On the software side, the transition comes down to one sentence: the system that already manages your tabs electronically must be able to turn that same flow into documents in GİB's format. In dojofood POS the e-Adisyon integration is live; opening the tab, adding items and closing it with a receipt or invoice run in a single flow, and the Pavo fiscal cash register integration connects the closing-document side on the same line. When a mandate announcement lands, the business whose infrastructure is already in place spends the 3-month window running its restaurant, not scrambling through setup. Details on the payment integrations page.

Official sources

• Tax Procedure Law General Communiqué No. 509, current consolidated text with footnotes (e-Adisyon: section IV.12): ebelge.gib.gov.tr
• Tax Procedure Law General Communiqué No. 526, the communiqué that introduced e-Adisyon (Official Gazette 09.02.2021, no. 31390): ebelge.gib.gov.tr
• Tax Procedure Law General Communiqué No. 588, 2026 thresholds and amounts (Official Gazette 31.12.2025, no. 33124, 5th bis): resmigazete.gov.tr
• GİB e-document announcement archive (integrator list, guides, QR code announcement): ebelge.gib.gov.tr/duyurular.html
• GİB e-document legislation index: ebelge.gib.gov.tr/efaturamevzuat.html
• Tax Procedure Law General Communiqué No. 298, the service businesses required to use tabs (Official Gazette 05.08.2001, no. 24484, in Turkish): resmigazete.gov.tr
• Tax Procedure Law General Communiqué No. 299, the alcohol-service condition (Official Gazette 18.08.2001, no. 24497, in Turkish): resmigazete.gov.tr
• GİB tax ruling, dated 19.07.2019, no. E.244196, summarizing the 185/200/298/299 chain and the alcohol condition: gib.gov.tr
• GİB tax ruling, 20.10.2011, B.07.1.GİB.4.48.15.02-48.15.02/VUK17-100, self-service versus table service: gib.gov.tr
• GİB tax ruling, 09.08.2012, B.07.1.GİB.4.35.18.02-010.01-742, the requirement to keep the tab on the table: gib.gov.tr

This content is for informational purposes; consult your tax advisor or certified accountant for circumstances specific to your business.