White Friday 2026 Checklist for Saudi Retailers: Your 3-Week Plan

Black Friday falls on Friday 27 November 2026. In Saudi Arabia it is sold as White Friday, each marketplace and brand sets its own dates, and year-end sales follow in December. Count back from your own first sale day: three weeks from Monday 2 November gets a shop or online store ready by Sunday 22 November.

Start with the licence: it comes before any advert. The Ministry of Commerce requires a shop or online store to hold a discount licence before announcing a price cut. Discounting without one breaches the Anti-Commercial Fraud Law, which the Ministry says carries up to three years in prison, fines up to SAR 1 million, or both.

What the Ministry's discount licensing service asks for, as of November 2026:

• A commercial registration, agency or trademark registered with the Ministry, and a login with a username and password or through Nafath.
• Each store, online stores included, added to the e-discounts system, then a request listing the period and products, typed in or uploaded in Excel.
• Your price list before and after the discount. The page also lists a condition that discounted products are not less than 50%, so ask the Ministry on 1900 how it applies to your offer.
• A fee of SAR 300 per shop, paid through SADAD, then a random sample of invoices for the selected products: keep recent invoices that prove each pre-discount price.

Then print the licence and display it. The Ministry's nine discount controls (in Arabic) apply to shops and online stores, and its inspectors check them: more than 40,000 visits to markets and shopping centres in September and October 2026, the Ministry said on 1 November (in Arabic). The controls include: display the licence so customers can scan its barcode for the discount type, percentage, duration and store details; offer only genuine, licensed discounts; state the discount range (from–to) clearly; put a price tag on each discounted item showing the price before and after the discount; disclose your exchange and return policy during the offer; and honour manufacturers' warranties.

The Ministry's exceptional discount period, which ran to 30 October 2026 without using stores' annual discount days, has ended. We found no White Friday season announcement as of 2 November, so plan on a regular licence and watch the Ministry's news.

Your best forecast is last year's sale week. Black Friday 2025 fell on 28 November, so pull sales for that week and the weeks either side. In Odoo, Point of Sale ‣ Reporting ‣ Orders shows them in a graph or pivot view that you can filter and group; online orders appear as sales orders.

Then correct it: an item that sold out on day three hides the demand you missed, so rebuild it from the days the item was on the shelf.

Copy this template into a sheet, one row per key item:

• Item | Sale-week sales last year | Days in stock | True demand | Expected growth | Safety stock | Stock on hand | On order | Quantity to order
• True demand = sales ÷ days in stock × days in the sale period
• Quantity to order = true demand × (1 + growth) + safety stock − stock on hand − on order

A worked example: a 100 ml perfume sold 120 units last year but ran out after 5 of 7 days, so true demand is 120 ÷ 5 × 7 = 168. With 10% growth that is about 185. Add two peak days of safety stock (2 × 26 = 52), subtract 70 units on hand and nothing on order, and you order 167, delivered by 20 November.

Now check the margin before you print the poster. The perfume sells for SAR 200 including 15% VAT, which is SAR 173.91 before VAT, and costs SAR 110: SAR 63.91 gross profit a unit. At 30% off it sells for SAR 140, or SAR 121.74 before VAT, leaving SAR 11.74. You would need about 5.4 times the units to earn the same profit, so save deep discounts for slow stock and protect your best sellers.

For fast movers, set min/max reordering rules under Inventory ‣ Operations ‣ Replenishment; on the Buy route, Odoo creates a request for quotation when forecasted stock drops below the minimum. More in our guide to Odoo inventory management in Saudi Arabia.

Peak day is when a till freezes or invoices pile up, so test both in week three under real pressure: two cashiers, dozens of orders in a few minutes, refunds, cash and cards.

What ZATCA requires, under its e-invoicing implementation resolution:

• Simplified tax invoices, such as POS receipts, and their credit and debit notes are reported to ZATCA within 24 hours of being generated, once your business must integrate.
• If the connection drops, a compliant solution keeps working, queues the invoices and reports them when it reconnects.
• Altering or deleting a generated e-invoice or note is a prohibited function, so fix a mistake with a credit note, never by editing the sale.

If any year's VAT-subject revenue from 2022 to 2025 topped SAR 187,500, you may be in Wave 25, which ZATCA says must integrate with FATOORA by 1 February 2027: see our ZATCA Wave 25 guide.

In Odoo POS:

• In an internet outage the POS switches to offline mode; Odoo's documentation warns not to close or reload the browser, or clear its cache, until it reconnects.
• Open registers before the doors open: the more products and customers the POS loads, the longer opening takes.
• Close every register daily. If the cash count differs from the expected amount, Proceed Anyway posts the difference to the cash difference journal; with Set Maximum Difference on, a gap above the Authorized Difference needs a manager to approve the closing.
• Give your promotion Availability Dates that match the licence, and use Limit Usage on limited-quantity offers.

Payments: give cash, the card terminal and each buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) provider a payment method of its own, so the daily close matches each settlement report, and test a mada card, Apple Pay and a credit card on every terminal and at online checkout. Online, Odoo 20's Amazon Payment Services provider lists mada among its methods. Use only BNPL companies licensed by SAMA: its BNPL rules cap plans at 12 instalments and oblige providers to stop stores passing any extra fee to the customer.

Returns peak after the sale, and online and in-store rules differ.

Online stores follow the E-Commerce Law (Royal Decree M/126 of 7/11/1440H, July 2019; official Arabic text):

• Article 13: a customer may cancel within 7 days of receiving the product if it has not been used, and bears the cost of cancelling unless you agree otherwise. Exceptions include goods made to the customer's specification, used videos, discs or software, newspapers, magazines and books, damage from the customer's misuse, and accommodation, transport or catering.
• Article 14: if you deliver more than 15 days after the contract date or the agreed date, the customer may cancel and recover what they paid, unless the delay is force majeure. You must also tell customers about any expected delay.
• Article 7: before the order, show the total price including all fees, taxes and delivery charges, plus payment, delivery and warranty terms.
• Article 8: after the order, issue an invoice showing each item's cost, the total and the delivery date and place.
• Articles 10 and 11: your online advert is part of the contract and binds you, and it must not mislead.
• Article 18: penalties include a fine of up to SAR 1 million, suspension, or blocking the store.

In shops, the Ministry's discount controls require you to disclose your exchange and return policy during the offer. Put one policy on the shelf, the receipt and the website. A template to adapt:

• Exchange or return within [number] days with the receipt, unused and in its original packaging.
• Refund to the original payment method within [number] days.
• Not returnable: [items], stated before payment.
• Sale items: [same terms, or the difference], written on the price tag and the receipt.
• Delivery to [city] in [X–Y] working days; we will message you if that changes.

For delivery, promise only what your courier can handle in peak week, and set a last order date for delivery before year-end.

In the sale week, run the same short checklist every day:

• Before opening: licence on display, price tags matching the licence, registers open, top 20 items counted.
• Midday: refill fast movers from the stockroom, and check that online stock matches the shelf.
• At closing: close every register, count the cash, match card and BNPL totals to their settlement reports, and check that no invoices are waiting to reach ZATCA.

Then hold two reviews: one in the first week of December, while the season is fresh, and one after the year-end sales, before you close the books. Use the same scorecard both times:

• Sales and gross profit by item against plan, after discount and VAT.
• Sell-through: units sold ÷ units available, per item.
• Stockout days on items you meant to have.
• Returns as a share of sales, by reason.
• Payment mix: cash, mada, credit cards, BNPL.
• Orders delivered later than the date you promised.
• Leftover stock to clear, and whether clearing it needs a new licence.

Write down three decisions: what to stock deeper, what not to discount again, and what broke at the till. They feed straight into Ramadan 2027, expected to start on 8 February, so start our Ramadan 2027 playbook for retail and restaurants before the year ends.

Your next step this week: pull last year's sale-week report and list your top 20 items. METCH, an official Odoo partner in Saudi Arabia, sets up Odoo POS, inventory and ZATCA e-invoicing for shops and online stores, so your next season runs from one system.