ANAF cash register 2026: obligations, reporting and fiscal integration

What an ANAF-connected cash register means in 2026

Today's generation of fiscal electronic cash registers (AMEF) no longer relies on a paper roll as legal memory; instead they use a secure electronic journal that stores every issued receipt in a non-editable format. The essential difference from older devices is that these registers are connected to ANAF's IT system and periodically transmit sales data rather than merely storing it locally.

In practice, being connected to ANAF means the device (or the software driving it) generates standardized files with sales totals and sends them to the tax authority through the electronic platform. As a result, ANAF has an almost real-time picture of declared turnover, and discrepancies between what you sell and what you report become far easier to detect.

For a business, the takeaway is simple: the cash register is no longer an isolated device at the counter, but a node in a fiscal data flow that also includes electronic invoicing and accounting records.

• Electronic journal instead of the paper control roll
• Periodic transmission of sales data to ANAF
• Fiscal receipt with mandatory elements (tax ID, VAT, date, device serial)
• Ever tighter integration with management and invoicing software

What obligations you have as a business

The first obligation remains the basic one: for every payment received from an individual, whether cash or card, you must issue a fiscal receipt through a fiscalized cash register registered with ANAF. The device must be fiscalized when put into service and declared, and every point of sale where you take payment must be covered.

The second obligation concerns proper maintenance: periodic checks through an authorized service unit, keeping the device's documents, and ensuring the electronic journal works and transmits correctly. If the device temporarily cannot transmit to ANAF, the legislation sets out clear procedures for operating and reporting afterwards — you are not simply allowed to take payments outside the register.

The third and increasingly important obligation is consistency with the other flows: what the cash register reports must be coherent with the invoices you issue (including via e-Factura) and with your tax declarations. Penalties for failing to issue receipts, for non-connection or for device irregularities are, under the legislation in force, among the most severe in the fiscal area and can include substantial fines and even suspension of the point of sale's activity.

Practical advice: treat compliance as an ongoing process, not a one-off event that ends when you buy the device.

How reporting to ANAF works

Reporting essentially has two layers. The first is the automatic transmission of electronic-journal data to ANAF, done periodically through the device's connection. The second layer covers the broader tax filings your sales feed into: the VAT return and, for companies within the scope of SAF-T, the standard audit file (D406), which details transactions in a unified format.

As ANAF expands automatic pre-filling of returns (for example through e-TVA-type mechanisms that cross-check data from various sources), consistency between the cash register, electronic invoices and accounting becomes critical. If the total of your receipts does not match what your invoices and accounting records show, you will receive discrepancy notices that you have to justify.

That is why, for many companies, the biggest risk is not the device itself but the lack of synchronization between sources: the cash register says one thing, the invoicing software another, and the accountant a third. An integrated system, where the sale simultaneously produces the fiscal receipt and the data for reporting, dramatically reduces this risk.

What changes concretely for HoReCa

In HoReCa, the high volume of small transactions, mixed payments (cash, card, meal vouchers) and orders from delivery platforms make fiscal discipline especially hard to manage manually. Every closed table means a fiscal receipt, and at the end of the day there must be a clear correspondence between what was sold in-house, what was delivered by couriers and what was reported.

Orders from Glovo, Wolt or Bolt Food add a layer of complexity: if entered manually, errors and gaps in fiscalization appear. If they sync automatically into the POS and the kitchen KDS, then each order can be handled correctly for tax purposes without double entry. Here the integration between the ordering platform, the cash register / fiscal printer and e-Factura is the difference between a calm inspection and a stressful one.

A second HoReCa-specific aspect is the link with invoicing: more and more corporate clients ask for an invoice, which must be issued and transmitted through the e-Factura system. In practice you need the same system that issues the receipt to also issue the electronic invoice, correctly correlated, without double-counting reported VAT.

• A fiscal receipt for every order, including deliveries
• Mixed payments handled cleanly (cash, card, vouchers)
• Glovo/Wolt/Bolt orders synced automatically into POS and KDS
• Invoices on the same flow, transmitted via e-Factura on request

The link with e-Factura and the fiscal printer

Since 2024, under Law 296/2023, electronic invoicing through the e-Factura system became mandatory for B2B, and the scope has gradually widened, including towards B2C. In practice the cash register handles the fiscal receipt to the final consumer, while e-Factura handles invoices — but both describe the same economic activity and must be consistent.

This is where the fiscal printer comes in: unlike a standalone cash register, a fiscal printer is driven directly by the management / POS software. So the same sale entered into the system produces the fiscal receipt on the printer and, when needed, the electronic invoice — with no manual re-entry. The result is a single source of truth per transaction that propagates correctly into fiscal reporting.

For a modern business, the right question is no longer 'which cash register do I buy', but 'how do I connect the cash register / fiscal printer to the software that runs my orders, stock and invoices'.

How an integrated system helps (Appy's role)

Appy is an all-in-one HoReCa platform built for the Romanian market that ties selling, fiscalization and reporting into a single flow. Instead of a separate cash register, separate ordering software and separate invoicing, the POS produces the fiscal receipt through the integrated fiscal printer and can issue the invoice via ANAF e-Factura, keeping the data consistent.

On top of that, orders from Glovo, Wolt and Bolt Food flow automatically into the POS and the kitchen KDS, which means even delivery orders don't slip past correct fiscalization. And for the staff side, the separate time-clock (pontaj) module — a 6-digit PIN plus a non-biometric, GDPR-safe selfie, with an hours engine for night, public-holiday and overtime pay under the Labor Code — helps any company, not just restaurants, keep an accurate timesheet for labor-inspection purposes.

The point isn't that software guarantees compliance on its own — responsibility remains with the business — but that an integrated system drastically cuts the human-error sources that lead to discrepancies with ANAF. With transparent pricing (a Starter plan at 0 €, plans from 49 €) you can start in a controlled way and scale as you grow.