Building in Portugal? How to check Portuguese supplier paperwork on every job site

Under the goods-in-circulation regime (Decreto-Lei 147/2003), goods moved in Portugal by VAT taxpayers must travel with a transport document: a fatura, a guia de remessa, a nota de devolução, a guia de transporte or an equivalent (Portal das Finanças FAQ, checked 2026-09-29). That is why every concrete load and steel delivery arrives with paper, and why that paper is a tax document, not just a courtesy note. Details in guia de remessa explained.

Suppliers with turnover above €100,000 must communicate the transport document to the tax authority (AT) before the goods leave, and receive an identification code in return. Since 1 January 2023 invoices, credit notes and transport documents carry the ATCUD, a unique code built from an AT-issued series code and the document number (see ATCUD explained).

Portugal applies a VAT reverse charge to civil construction services (CIVA art. 2(1)(j)): a Portuguese taxable buyer with deduction rights accounts for the VAT, and the invoice is issued without VAT with the mention “IVA – Autoliquidação”. Decreto-Lei 97/2026 widened it, and AT guidance Ofício-Circulado 25117/2026 (24 June 2026) applies where VAT becomes due from 1 July 2026. That guidance ties the reverse charge to services by entities holding a contractor licence (alvará or certificado de empreiteiro) and revokes earlier AT guidance that conflicts with it.

For checking supplier paperwork, the practical split is this: plain deliveries of materials such as concrete, steel and aggregates are sales of goods with normal VAT; the reverse charge shows up on subcontractor and supply-and-install invoices. The full explanation, with examples, is in Portugal construction reverse charge, including the link to the temporary 6% VAT rate on housing works.

Portugal has no general B2B e-invoicing mandate. Under the 2026 State Budget (Lei 73-A/2025), PDF invoices are accepted as electronic invoices until 31 December 2026, and the exemption for small and medium enterprises from structured e-invoicing in public contracts runs until the same date. What applies to PDF invoices from 2027 has been postponed before, and should be re-checked against the 2027 State Budget proposal expected in October 2026 (as at 29 September 2026). See Portugal e-invoicing 2027.

1. 01Your site team photographs each guia de remessa in the chat group they already use; the office uploads faturas as PDFs or forwards the suppliers’ emails.
2. 02Two AI models read each document independently: every line, with item, quantity, unit and price. Portuguese layouts are read as they are.
3. 03Each line is matched to the obra’s contract price list by meaning — useful when the Portuguese description on the guia doesn’t match the wording of your contract.
4. 04Ten deterministic checks run, including contract price × quantity, totals, units, item identity, the supplier’s NIF and the contract reference.
5. 05What matches is approved automatically; differences go to review with the exact amount. Duplicates are caught by document number or ATCUD plus supplier.
6. 06Each obra gets a dashboard: contracted vs invoiced, pending exposure, alerts, monthly breakdown, returnable pallets, and CSV export for your group’s ERP or reporting.

Audiree is not an ERP, an accounting system or AP payment software. It does not pay suppliers, does not issue delivery notes or invoices, is not a certified tax archive and does not submit anything to the Portuguese tax authority (AT). It does not validate ATCUD codes, QR codes or signatures with the AT — the document number and ATCUD are used to catch duplicates. It gives no tax advice: VAT rates and reverse-charge treatment stay with your accountant. There are no ready-made connectors to specific ERPs; checked data exports to CSV for Excel or for posting in the system you already use.

We run the demo in English, with your own Portuguese contracts and documents. The wider set of documents an obra generates is covered in construction paperwork in Portugal.

The first step is a 30-minute demo with your own documents: bring two supply contracts and a month of delivery notes and invoices from one job site. We run the reading and checking live, and you see line by line what would go through on its own and what would go to review. After that, the platform is adapted to how your company is run (job sites, cost centres, who approves what); setting up the first job site is included in the pilot. Pricing is quoted on request, based on your volume of documents and job sites.