New Saudi Commercial Registration Law: Unified Number 7 + Checklist

Saudi Arabia's new Commercial Registration Law and Trade Names Law took effect on 3 April 2025 (5 Shawwal 1446H), together with their implementing regulations. Both were approved by Royal Decree M/83 of 19/3/1446H and published in the Official Gazette on 4 October 2024; the full Arabic text is on the Bureau of Experts portal.

What changed, in plain words:

• One CR for the whole Kingdom, no longer tied to a city, and able to hold unrelated activities.
• No expiry date. Renewal is replaced by an electronic annual confirmation of your data, every 12 months from the CR's issue date.
• Your CR number is your unified number. The Ministry of Commerce's spokesman said the CR number serves as the establishment's unified number, which starts with 7. The 7-number is not new: Council of Ministers Resolution 225 adopted it as the unified ID for non-government establishments.
• No new branch (sub) CRs. Existing ones have five years to correct their status.
• Changes within 15 days. Article 10 requires you to record any change to your registered data within 15 days.
• Bank account and licences. The ministry says the law requires bank accounts linked to the business, and licences for the registered activity within 90 days unless the licensing body allows longer.
• Penalties. Article 21 sets fines of up to SAR 50,000, which may double for a repeat within three years; Article 24 adds alternatives such as a warning or an order to correct your data.

The Trade Names Law now accepts Arabic, Arabized or English words, letters or numbers, lets you dispose of a trade name separately from the business, and bars names similar to an existing one even in a different activity. Names registered earlier are not affected, as the ministry determines. The Saudi Press Agency's report on the laws taking effect summarises the ministry's announcement.

Under Article 11, every trader must confirm the data in its CR once a year. The ministry's FAQ says the due date depends on the CR's issue date, the confirmation is filed electronically, and it carries a fee. The service runs on the Saudi Business Center platform, where you review your activities, licence data, e-commerce data, national address and contact details before you pay.

Fees listed on the annual confirmation service page and its sister pages, as of November 2026:

• Sole proprietorship: SAR 500.
• Limited liability company: SAR 1,200.
• Joint stock or simplified joint stock company: SAR 1,600.
• General or limited partnership: SAR 1,000.

The line that matters is 90 days. If you have not confirmed within 90 days of the due date, the registrar suspends your CR after warning you 14 days ahead (Article 15), and the ministry's FAQ adds text-message reminders and a fine. Suspension lasts one year and suspends every licence issued under the CR, and a suspended CR cannot be amended. To lift it, you file the confirmation and pay the fee plus the fine.

If the year passes without that, a sole proprietorship's CR is struck off, and the ministry says a struck-off CR cannot be restored. A company or a foreign company's branch loses the right to ask for the suspension to be lifted, and the ministry may ask the partners to dissolve the company or ask the court to do so.

A worked example: a CR issued on 15 March is due every 15 March. Confirm in the first week; waiting past about 13 June, 90 days later, puts the CR at risk of suspension. Put the date in the same calendar as your VAT returns and give one person the job.

The new law ends branch (sub) CRs. The ministry's FAQ says sub-registers can no longer be issued, and the Royal Decree gives existing holders five years from the law's effective date, 3 April 2025, to correct the status of their sub-CRs. When the period ends, in 2030, all remaining sub-CRs are struck off under a mechanism the ministry will set.

Until then, each sub-CR still needs its own annual confirmation; for a company's sub-CR, the ministry lists the same fee scale as for its main CR. The ministry's e-services offer three paths:

• Keep it for now and confirm it every year until you decide.
• Strike it off with the sub-CR cancellation service (free as of November 2026), after moving its activities and licences under the main CR.
• Make it your main CR with the reassignment service (SAR 100 as of November 2026), useful when the branch has become the heart of the business.

Do the sums. An LLC with a main CR and two sub-CRs pays SAR 1,200 × 3 = SAR 3,600 a year in confirmations at today's listed fees; with one CR it pays SAR 1,200. You no longer need a separate CR for another city or a different activity, because one CR covers every region and may hold unrelated activities (Article 9). Before striking a sub-CR off, check the operating licences, contracts and bank accounts that may carry its number.

One knock-on effect for invoicing. ZATCA's XML standard says that where a seller has several CRs, the invoice carries the CR of the branch issuing it, and Odoo's branch configuration asks for the branch CR on each branch contact. So on the day a sub-CR is struck off, every Odoo branch that carries it must switch to the main CR number. Make that switch part of the strike-off plan, not an afterthought.

Your CR number travels inside every e-invoice, not just on the printed copy. Rule BR-KSA-08 of ZATCA's XML implementation standard (version 1.2, May 2023) requires the seller identification to appear once, under one scheme: CRN (commercial registration), MOM, MLS, 700, SAG or OTH, in letters and digits only. Where several IDs exist, you follow that order, so a business with a CR sends its CR number under CRN. Since your CR number is now your unified number, the number starting with 7 is the one that belongs there. If your case is unusual, such as a foreign company's branch, confirm with ZATCA on 19993.

What to check:

• The printed invoice and credit-note layout: the CR number in the header or footer, and the trade name exactly as registered. Article 8 of the Trade Names Law requires the trade name on all your documents, correspondence and printed matter.
• The e-invoice seller ID, typed with no spaces, dashes or prefixes.
• Every branch that issues invoices while it still has a sub-CR.
• Business customers who are not VAT-registered: rule BR-KSA-14 asks for their ID, which may be a CRN or a 700 number, so refresh it when they send a new certificate.
• Your company name: Odoo's documentation limits it to 63 characters to meet ZATCA's requirements.

In Odoo 20, the seller ID sits on the company record (Settings > Companies > Manage Companies), in the Identification Scheme field, whose options include Commercial Registration Number and 700 Number, with the number beside it, as Odoo's Saudi Arabia documentation explains. After the change, open the next invoice you issue and check that ZATCA's response is green. If your FATOORA integration is still in progress, start with our ZATCA Wave 25 guide.

Start with a current CR extract from the ministry's e-services and compare it with the places below. Anyone can view your CR data free through the ministry's CR query or Tawakkalna, so customers see the register, not your old letterhead.

• Website and online store footer: Article 6 of the E-Commerce Law requires an online store to disclose the register it is entered in and its number.
• Invoice, quotation and credit-note layouts, plus the e-invoice seller ID.
• The Odoo company record, each branch contact, and the Address and Footer text in Settings > Configure Document Layout.
• Contracts and purchase orders: name, CR number and national address in the parties clause. Under Article 17, an unregistered change cannot be relied on against third parties, so update the CR first.
• Letterheads, email signatures, business cards and the company stamp.
• Your bank, payment gateways and POS acquirers: send them the extract so their records match yours.
• Customers' vendor records and supplier portals.
• Your shop: display your CR data as Article 16 requires; the ministry says the free unified QR code document from business.sa can replace printed certificates.
• Your trade name: the new law now allows an English one.
• Your calendar: the confirmation due date, and the 15-day rule for future changes.

Copy-ready footer line: Trade name | CR (unified number): [number starting with 7] | VAT: [15 digits] | National address: building no., street, district, city, postal code, secondary no.

Copy-ready message: "Under the Commercial Registration Law in force since 3 April 2025, our CR number, which is also our unified number, is [number]. Please update your records; our [trade name and VAT number] are unchanged."

While you edit templates, add the new riyal symbol too; for your site, see our website and online store services. METCH, an official Odoo partner in Saudi Arabia, can update the Odoo settings with your team.