Systems for Pakistani businesses, and for Pakistani teams selling to overseas clients
Two different readers arrive at this page. One runs a business in Pakistan and has local tax, invoicing and payment constraints to design around. The other is a Pakistani freelancer or firm whose clients are overseas and who found them through a marketplace such as Upwork.
These are two audiences with different problems, and a page that treats them as one would help neither. The first runs a business in Pakistan: sales tax that sits across federal and provincial authorities, invoicing that some authorities require to be integrated, payments that are not always card-first, and customers who often use WhatsApp. The second sells services abroad: clients who arrive through marketplaces, money that arrives in another currency, and a growing business that is run from chat threads.
We have kept to what we can substantiate. Pakistani tax rules change often, usually with each budget, so this page names the authorities and the shape of the problem rather than quoting rates, deadlines or thresholds. Where a point turns on current rules, we link to the authority and say that you should confirm it.
Skofi works from Pakistan, is registered with the Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB), and is an FBR tax filer. Beyond that this page does not claim a company entity, an office, staff or Pakistani clients, and no published case study on this site names its client's country. The evidence section is explicit about that.
What is different about building inside Pakistan
Constraints a system built for a Pakistani business has to design around. Check the authorities' current rules for anything dated.
Sales tax sits across more than one authority
The FBR administers federal sales tax, and provincial boards administer sales tax on services under their own rules, for example the Sindh Revenue Board in Sindh and the Punjab Revenue Authority in Punjab. A business that sells goods and services can face more than one registration, return and portal. Which applies to you is for your tax adviser and the authorities to say.
Invoicing that integrates with the authority
The FBR has required certain registered businesses, Tier-1 retailers among them, to integrate their point of sale or invoicing with its systems for real-time reporting, and the scope and timing have changed more than once. If it applies to you, it may limit whether a custom point of sale or ERP is practical. Confirm the current requirement with the FBR or your tax adviser before choosing software. We have not built an FBR or provincial integration and would not claim to.
Payments are not card-first
Bank transfer, the State Bank's Raast instant payment system, mobile wallets such as JazzCash and Easypaisa, and cash on delivery can all matter, and for some sellers cards are not the main route. A checkout designed around card payments alone may not fit how your customers pay, so ask them.
How you would pay us
For Pakistani clients, payment is by IBFT, the interbank bank transfer. For overseas clients it is Wise, PayPal or Payoneer. The method is agreed at the start of an engagement. Quotes follow a discovery conversation.
WhatsApp as a business channel
Many businesses handle orders, quotes, payment chasing and supplier conversation over WhatsApp. Integrating it properly means the WhatsApp Business Platform, which has opt-in rules and approved message templates for business-initiated messages. The school ERP case study uses WhatsApp for fee reminders from templates.
Urdu, right to left
If an interface or a printed invoice needs Urdu, it needs right-to-left layout and suitable fonts, not only translated strings. It is easier to prove early than to retrofit.
Power and connectivity as a design input
Power cuts and patchy connections can happen, so a warehouse or field tool should open its cached pages and queue writes when offline. The trading ERP installs as a progressive web app that still opens cached pages when signal drops.
What changes when your clients are abroad
For freelancers and small firms who sell services to buyers overseas, often found on Upwork. These are the operational problems, not a tax opinion.
Buying starts on a marketplace
Some overseas buyers meet Pakistani developers and agencies on Upwork, where proposals, milestone payments and reviews do part of the work a contract and a reference would elsewhere. The client reviews on this site are Upwork reviews, so Upwork-led buying is familiar to us. We make no claim about where those clients are.
What overseas buyers worry about
Continuity if one person is unavailable, who owns the code and the accounts, time zones, how payment and security are handled. Answering those in writing is what turns a first job into a retained client. We work in the client's own accounts and repository from the first commit, with a written scope that says what is not included, and the same approach suits anyone selling to overseas buyers.
Marketplace rules come first
Upwork's terms govern how work is contracted, paid and moved off the platform, and its API access is restricted. Do not plan automation around the marketplace without reading them and confirming API access. We would not build anything that works against them.
Getting paid and taxed on foreign income
Funds typically arrive through marketplace withdrawals, Payoneer or bank transfer. Whether registration with the Pakistan Software Export Board affects the tax treatment of export receipts, and on what conditions, is set by the Finance Act and the FBR and has changed over time. This page gives no rate or condition, so take advice from a Pakistani chartered accountant and check the FBR and the State Bank.
Currency
Invoices in dollars or pounds, books in rupees. Store the invoice currency and the rate on the day the funds arrive, and keep both visible in reports, or reconciliation becomes a spreadsheet exercise.
For each audience
A ledger, invoicing and audit system with configurable tax
Custom ERP work on the model of the trading ERP: invoices captured and confirmed by a person, approvals that gate the totals, and a field-level audit log. Federal and provincial tax would be configuration rather than code, so a change at budget time is an edit. Any integration with an authority is scoped only after reading the current specification, and we would tell you early whether it is feasible.
WhatsApp reminders and order intake
Fee, payment and order reminders from approved templates, with a record of who was contacted and what they replied. The school ERP case study did this for fee collection, replacing a notebook.
An agency back office for overseas work
Pipeline, delivery, milestones, invoices and client records in one system on Airtable or monday.com, kept in your own account so the client list does not depend on one marketplace login. For a solo freelancer a spreadsheet is cheaper and we would say so. What you can keep outside the marketplace is limited by its terms on contact and payment, so read them first. It starts to pay for itself when the client count outgrows memory.
Offline-tolerant tools for warehouse and field
Progressive web apps that open cached pages and queue changes, with permissions enforced in the database so that a lost connection never changes who can see what.
Where systems in this market go wrong
- 01
Designing around a payment route that is not there
A billing flow built on cards alone, or on a processor that does not serve your business, fails at the first real customer. Payment routes are confirmed before the design, and the system records the payment method as data so another can be added.
- 02
Tax rates and rules written into code
Rates and treatment change with the Finance Act and the budget cycle, and the federal and provincial split adds a second layer. They live in editable tables with effective dates, never in code.
- 03
A government portal that is slow or down
If an invoice has to be reported to an authority, the till must not wait for it. Reporting runs through a queue with retries and a visible backlog, so a portal outage delays the report and not the sale.
- 04
WhatsApp limits discovered after launch
Business-initiated messages need opt-in and approved templates, and the platform has its own rules. Templates are submitted early and wording is treated as a deliverable.
- 05
The client list lives on the marketplace
If every client relationship exists only inside a marketplace account, a suspension takes the business with it. Client records, contracts and history are kept in your own system, within what the marketplace's terms allow.
- 06
Invoice currency and receipt currency conflated
Recording one amount without the currency and the rate at receipt makes the books impossible to reconcile. Both are stored on every invoice and payment.
Where we are the wrong answer
If you are a retailer who has to integrate with the FBR's invoicing, the sensible route may be an integration the authority itself recognises, or a local software house that already holds one, over a remote builder like us who has not built it. If you are a solo freelancer with a handful of clients, a spreadsheet and a calendar are better than any system we would build. We are useful for custom ERP and operations work, for WhatsApp-led workflows, and for firms whose operations have outgrown chat threads. And we are not your tax adviser.
What we can and cannot point to in Pakistan
Skofi works from Pakistan, is registered with the Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB) and is an FBR tax filer. We claim nothing beyond that: no company entity, office, staff or Pakistani clients, and no integration with the FBR, a provincial revenue authority, Raast or a wallet provider. No published case study on this site names its client's country.
The two case studies below are here for the pattern and are labelled as adjacent. Neither names its client's country, and neither is evidence of Pakistani work. The client reviews on this site are Upwork reviews; we make no claim about where those clients are.
Adjacent, not proof of presence
- An independent school groupSchool management ERP with permissions enforced per branchThe case study does not name its country. Relevant for WhatsApp fee reminders, multi-branch permissions enforced in the database, and one ledger from fees to payroll.Case study
- A regional trading & distribution groupAn ERP with AI invoice capture and an audit trail that holdsThe case study does not name its country. Relevant for an ERP replacing a desktop ledger, invoice capture by camera, and a progressive web app that works when signal drops.Case study
Check the rules with the people who own them
Pakistani sales tax, withholding and exporter rules change with the Finance Act and by authority and province. Work with a Pakistani chartered accountant or tax adviser, and check the FBR, your provincial board and the State Bank of Pakistan for the current position. We build to the rules you give us, as editable configuration.
The disciplines behind it
Platforms we would build on
Related reading
Other markets
Pakistan, specifically
Yes, we work from Pakistan, on Pakistan Standard Time (UTC+5). We are registered with the Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB) and are an FBR tax filer. We do not claim a company entity, office or staff, and no published case study names its client's country. This page speaks to the market's problems and describes what we would build.
For overseas clients, most of our projects land between $5,000 and $10,000 (US dollars). Larger systems cost more than $10,000. That is a typical range, not a quote: we quote after a discovery conversation, once we have seen the process, its exceptions and the systems involved. For a client in Pakistan, the price is set in that same conversation.
For Pakistani clients, by IBFT bank transfer. For overseas clients, by Wise, PayPal or Payoneer. The method is agreed at the start of an engagement. Quotes follow a discovery conversation.
We have not built one. If the requirement applies to you, we would read the authority's current specification before scoping and tell you early whether it is feasible, and whether a recognised integrator or a local software house with an existing integration is the better route.
Not as a service. Upwork's terms govern how work is contracted and paid, and API access is restricted. What we can do is build the operations around your clients, such as pipeline, delivery, milestones and invoices, in your own system, which also keeps your client records off the marketplace.
Right-to-left layouts and Urdu fonts are a normal part of interface work, but we have no published case study in Urdu. We would prove fonts, layout and printing early rather than at the end.
Probably not yet. A spreadsheet and a calendar are cheaper than any system we would build. It starts to make sense when the number of clients, projects and invoices outgrows what you can hold in your head, and the cost of a missed milestone is higher than the cost of the system.
Sources
Statements about what a platform, regulator or provider says come from their own pages. Rules and limits change, so check the current page before you rely on one.
- POS Integration to Be Ensured by All Means Possible Under the Law · Federal Board of Revenue
- Taxable Services · Sindh Revenue Board
- Punjab Revenue Authority · Punjab Revenue Authority
- Raast: Pakistan's Instant Payment System · State Bank of Pakistan
- Template fundamentals · Meta (WhatsApp Business Platform)
- How to request an API key from Upwork · Upwork (Help Center)
Page copy drafted with AI assistance. Skofi is accountable for it. Editorial policy
Tell us about the process that keeps costing you.
A 15-minute call is usually enough to say whether this is an automation, an integration, or something that should be built, and whether we are the right people for it.
What happens on the call
- 15 minutes, no deck
- We map the process on the call
- A written scope, or an honest no