An e-waybill in Turkey (e-İrsaliye) is the electronic dispatch note that travels with goods, in the Revenue Administration's (GİB) format, sent to the recipient and archived electronically. Moving to it is more than signing up with a provider: the document is born when goods leave the warehouse, so a clean transition prepares your shipping flow, ERP and stock records together.
This guide is for companies operating in Türkiye whose e-İrsaliye obligation has arrived or is approaching, including foreign-owned subsidiaries whose group systems were never built for it. We explain why it is a different project from e-invoicing, where transitions go wrong and how to plan one. If you are mainly interested in sending invoices from your ERP, start with our e-invoice integration guide.
What is the e-waybill in Turkey (e-İrsaliye) and who has to use it?
According to GİB's e-İrsaliye application page, the scheme covers issuing, transmitting and archiving the dispatch note (sevk irsaliyesi) electronically, and its legal basis is Tax Procedure Law General Communiqué No. 509. The obligation is defined by a turnover threshold set by GİB and by specific sectors, such as fuel and LPG operators licensed by the energy regulator (EPDK), mining licence holders, sugar producers, iron and steel, fertiliser, and fruit and vegetable producers and traders registered in the wholesale market registration system (Hal Kayıt Sistemi). Thresholds are revised from time to time, so check GİB's current transition calendar and confirm your position with your local accountant (mali müşavir).
Three things set the e-waybill apart from the e-invoice:
- Timing: an invoice can be issued after delivery, but the dispatch note is tied to goods physically moving. If the document is late, the lorry waits at the gate.
- Data source: the invoice comes from finance; the dispatch note comes from the warehouse. Which items, how many and which batch were loaded is information generated on the floor.
- The recipient's response: the buyer can send an e-waybill response for the goods received, reporting accepted, short, excess or rejected lines. Your ERP has to be able to act on it.
That is why e-İrsaliye is less an accounting project and more a warehouse and shipping process project.
The cost of a late or badly planned transition
Adoption is growing quickly. According to GİB's 2025 Annual Activity Report, the number of taxpayers using e-İrsaliye rose from 402,985 in 2024 to 632,288 at the end of 2025. A large share of your customers and suppliers now expect, or send, dispatch notes electronically. For the freelance side of the e-document family, see our guide to the e-SMM freelance receipt.
Of those 632,288 users, 579,170 issue documents through private integrators and 52,183 through the GİB Portal, while only 935 connect their own systems directly. (GİB 2025 Annual Activity Report)
Tens of thousands of portal users are, in effect, retyping shipment details into a web form instead of taking them automatically from the ERP or warehouse. Accuracy suffers as much as speed: in a 2018 study by GS1 US and the Auburn University RFID Lab, 69% of orders shipped and received between brands and their retail partners contained data errors when RFID was not used. When shipping data is carried by hand, errors are routine rather than exceptional.
A wrong dispatch note is not just a paperwork issue. The buyer returns a short-delivery response, the invoice no longer matches, stock differs between systems and month-end reconciliation drags on. Data quality expert Thomas C. Redman estimates the cost of bad data at 15% to 25% of revenue for most companies (MIT Sloan Management Review, 2017); it is an expert estimate, but it explains why dispatch errors ripple through to invoicing and collections.
Choosing a route: portal, private integrator or direct integration
| Criterion | GİB Portal | Private integrator + ERP/WMS link | Direct integration |
|---|---|---|---|
| How is the document created? | Typed into a web form | Automatically from the ERP or WMS shipment | Your own system submits to GİB |
| Shipping volume | Very low volumes only | Wide range, low to high | Very high volumes |
| Link to warehouse data | None; details are re-entered | Fed by scanned lines | Fed by scanned lines |
| Handling buyer responses | Checked one by one on screen | Can be written back to the ERP | Can be written back to the ERP |
| Technical burden | Lowest | Moderate; the connection needs maintenance | High; GİB approval and ongoing IT effort |
For most businesses a licensed private integrator is the sensible route. A contract alone does not automate anything, though: exporting a file from the ERP and uploading it to the integrator's portal is barely better than the GİB Portal. The real gain comes from an API integration that creates the document the moment a shipment is confirmed and brings the buyer's response back into the ERP.
An eight-step e-waybill transition plan
- List your shipment types. Sales deliveries, inter-warehouse transfers, subcontractor shipments, returns, samples and consignment each need their own line, with a note of who creates the document and on which screen.
- Validate customer records. If a recipient's e-İrsaliye registration, tax number or delivery address is wrong, the document goes astray. Our guide to cleaning duplicate master data covers the method.
- Standardise product data. Units, item codes, barcodes and batch or serial fields must match between ERP and warehouse. Without defined case-to-unit conversions, quantities on the dispatch note and invoice will disagree.
- Trigger the document at source. Issue it from the WMS when load scanning completes, or from the ERP on shipment approval. Every field someone retypes is a chance for error.
- Build transport details into the flow. Decide who records vehicle registration, driver and carrier, and when. If that information is hunted down at the last minute, the vehicle waits. For container shipments moving through a port, the same vehicle and carrier data meets the bill of lading and gate paperwork; see port logistics document digitalisation.
- Plan for buyer responses. Define how stock, order and invoice are corrected after a partial acceptance or rejection, and which role is alerted.
- Write an outage procedure. Agree with your accountant how goods can move lawfully if the integrator or internet connection is unavailable.
- Pilot first. Start with one warehouse and a limited set of customers, run every shipment type in the integrator's test environment, then roll out in stages.
Quick readiness check
| Check | If yes | If no |
|---|---|---|
| Are stock movements recorded by scanning? | The dispatch note can be fed from scans | Set up barcode-based movement recording first |
| Do ERP and warehouse show the same stock? | Proceed to the integration build | Count and reconcile first |
| Is each recipient's registration status on the customer record? | Document type is chosen automatically | Customer data clean-up is needed |
| Are returns and transfers documented? | Scenarios can be tested quickly | Process design comes first |
If stock accuracy is weak, the quickest fix before go-live is a disciplined handheld terminal stock count with batch tracking. For goods with a shelf life, the dispatch rules in FIFO and FEFO inventory methods belong in the same design.
Treat e-İrsaliye as one link in the e-document chain
The dispatch note never stands alone: the order creates it, it creates the invoice, and the invoice creates the ledger entry. We explain when an invoice goes out as e-Fatura or e-Arşiv in our e-Archive invoice guide, and electronic bookkeeping in the e-Ledger guide. Wherever one link is manual, errors pass on to the next.
In sectors such as automotive, the same shipment is also announced to the customer through an EDI despatch advice (DESADV); producing both from one source is covered in automotive EDI integration. Because shipping documents also travel by email, add the checks from our logistics email fraud article to guard against fake delivery and transport instructions.
If you are deciding where e-İrsaliye sits among other projects, our digital transformation roadmap offers a useful frame. Related guides are collected under Digital Transformation.
How Digital Bridge handles an e-waybill transition
We start with your shipping flow, not with the integrator set-up:
- Discovery and requirements analysis. We follow a shipment through the warehouse from start to finish, map shipment types, where documents are retyped and where ERP and warehouse drift apart. The outcome is a written proposal with scope, phases and cost; we do not sell off-the-shelf packages.
- The warehouse side. Where stock is still tracked on paper, our warehouse management system (WMS) records every movement from goods-in to dispatch with handheld scanning, including exit-check scans and dispatch note creation. The same team selects and installs suitable handheld and industrial data terminals.
- ERP and integrator connection. Through API and system integration we connect Logo, SAP Business One, Mikro, Netsis and bespoke ERPs to your private integrator in both directions; failed documents raise an alert and corrected ones are resent. If the ERP has no API, we build a secure database-level transfer.
- Filling process gaps. When transfers, subcontracting or returns are not covered by your current software, we add them through bespoke ERP development, and bring carriers and marketplaces into the same data flow with system integrations.
- Pilot and roll-out. We begin with one warehouse and a small customer group in the test environment, and extend to other sites once every shipment type runs cleanly.
Next step
Whether or not your deadline is fixed, the first task is the same: count last month's shipments by type and note who wrote each dispatch note and on which screen. That list shows the real scope of the transition. Then contact us, and we will review your shipping flow with you and set out in writing what needs preparing on the warehouse, ERP and integrator side.