Does a fiscal register work without internet, and what the law says

This is a question that gets asked only when it is too late, usually on a Saturday night, when the network drops and there is a queue at the counter. The short answer, as we understand the law: a shop with premises must have an L-PFR precisely for that moment, and it issues receipts without the network. Only a V-PFR stops without a connection, and a V-PFR without an L-PFR is allowed only to a seller who sells exclusively over the internet or sells only its own used movable assets.

Two things that get confused constantly

In fiscalization there are two separate things the internet can interrupt, and they do not have the same consequences:

1. Signing the receipt. A receipt becomes fiscal when the processor signs it with the security element. No signature, no receipt.
2. Delivering the data to the Tax Administration. A signed receipt is sent on to the fiscalization management system, as a rule immediately. Only when there is no internet connection can that wait, at most five days from issuing the receipt.

Article 8 of the Law on Fiscalization requires a taxpayer to process every receipt through a fiscal receipt processor at the moment of sale, and to deliver the data over a permanent internet connection in real time. It then adds that, if the internet connection is interrupted or not available at the place of sale, the data is delivered "immediately upon restoration of the internet connection, and at the latest within five days of the day the individual fiscal receipt was issued".

Those five days apply to the second item, to delivery. Not to signing. That is the whole difference.

With an L-PFR: the receipt comes out without the network

A local fiscal receipt processor runs on your own equipment, and its security element is a smart card in a reader next to the register. Both the processor and the card are right there on the premises.

So signing does not depend on anything outside. The register sends the data to the L-PFR over the local network, it signs the receipt, returns the journal and remembers what it still has to send. When the connection comes back, it sends.

The customer receives a fully valid fiscal receipt at that moment, with a PFR number, a counter and a QR code. The customer can verify it straight away, even before the data reaches the Tax Administration (Rulebook on verifying reported fiscal receipts, article 2).

With a V-PFR: no network means no receipt

A virtual processor runs on Tax Administration infrastructure. Your security element is a certificate file, but the signing itself is done by the processor on the far side of the connection.

If there is no connection, the request never arrives, there is no signature and there is no receipt. No setting changes that, and no register works around it. Anyone claiming otherwise is asking you to trade without a fiscal receipt.

That is why the Law, as we understand article 6 paragraph 4, does not let a shop with premises rely on a V-PFR alone: a taxpayer using a V-PFR must keep at least one L-PFR working in every business premises. The only exceptions are sellers who sell exclusively over the internet and those who sell only their own used movable assets. The Tax Administration says the same in its answers to frequent questions.

The local queue: what it is and what it is not

Many web registers, Otkucaj included, hold a receipt in a local queue when the line drops at the exact moment of issuing. It is worth understanding precisely what that means.

A receipt in the queue is not an issued receipt. It has not been through the processor yet, it has no PFR number, no counter and no signature. It does not count as turnover and it is not shown as a receipt. The application holds it so the entry is not lost and issues it automatically as soon as the connection returns.

A queue helps with a thirty second outage, and only if the customer waits for the receipt to come out: as we understand the Law, the receipt is issued at the moment of sale, not afterwards. It does not solve a network fault lasting all day, and it does not turn a V-PFR into an L-PFR.

Five days is a deadline, not an open-ended delay

The five day deadline is not permission for the data to be later than that. The Law, as we understand it, also covers a place with no internet at all, but even then the data must reach the Tax Administration within five days of each receipt, through the Tax Administration portal (a local audit, articles 3 and 7 of the Rulebook on delivering data). If you are without internet for weeks, you have no legal cover for sending the data weeks late.

Under article 8 paragraph 2 the deadline runs from the day each individual receipt was issued, not from when the line comes back, and the data goes as soon as there is a connection. An L-PFR sends on its own, as soon as it can, and that is what keeps you inside the deadline.

What to actually do if your network keeps dropping

What helps, alongside the L-PFR that a shop with premises, as we understand the law, as a rule must have anyway:

1. Mobile internet as a backup. A router with a SIM card, or a phone as a hotspot. Cheap, solves most outages, no help when the power goes.
2. A UPS for the router and the register. A small UPS keeps the network gear and a tablet alive for a few tens of minutes. Together with point 1 it covers the vast majority of failures.
3. An L-PFR. As we understand article 6 paragraph 4 of the Law, this is not a choice but a duty in every business premises where you use a V-PFR, unless you sell exclusively over the internet or only your own used movable assets. It needs a reader, a device and a local installation of the register, because a server on the internet cannot reach a device on your network.

A mobile backup and a UPS do not replace the L-PFR, but they reduce how often you need it. Many of the outages people remember as "the internet was down" are actually a few minutes long, and a mobile backup swallows them unnoticed.

A register that opens offline is not offline fiscalization

One more distinction worth keeping apart. A web register installed as an app (a PWA) keeps the screen and the item catalogue cached locally, so it opens without a network. That is useful: the cashier can type, see the items and prepare the receipt.

But opening the app is not fiscalization. If the processor is a V-PFR, that prepared receipt waits. If it is an L-PFR, it comes out immediately.

In Otkucaj you see this on screen directly: when the line drops, the register marks the state as offline and shows how many receipts are waiting in the queue, and each one is clearly marked as not yet fiscalized.