Registered cash register and e-invoicing: what applies to a Belgian salon in 2026?

"Do we need a white cash register too?" does the rounds in Belgian hairdressing groups every few months, usually tangled up with the new e-invoicing rules. They are two different things, with two different dates and two different answers. Both are below, with the official source attached.

Up front: this is not tax advice. We build software, not tax returns. What follows comes from the Belgian government's own sites and is meant to help you ask your accountant the right question.

1. The registered cash register (the "white till")

The official site about the registered cash register describes itself as a site about the GKS "in the hospitality sector". The page explaining who has to use it puts it like this:

The threshold that goes with it applies to annual turnover from restaurant and catering services, excluding VAT and excluding drinks: more than 25,000 euros. Hairdressers and hair salons are not mentioned anywhere on that page.

What is changing, is changing inside hospitality: the same site carries the announcement that the new registered cash register, GKS 2.0, becomes mandatory from 1 July 2026. That concerns those already covered, not new sectors being added.

In short: on the basis of what the government publishes today, the white till is about restaurant and catering services. If your salon also sells food or drink in a way that falls under that, it is a conversation with your accountant — not because you are a hairdresser, but because you are then also doing something else.

2. E-invoicing via Peppol

This is the rule that does affect everyone, and it is already in force. The official information site about the e-invoice puts it this way:

Note the words "between each other". This is about invoices to other businesses, and the same page states the other side explicitly:

The exchange runs over the Peppol network, in Peppol BIS format (unless the parties agree otherwise while respecting the European standard EN 16931). There is an exception for anyone under the small-business exemption regime — an annual turnover of no more than 25,000 euros.

What that means for a four-chair salon

Most of a salon's turnover is B2C: a client in the chair, a till receipt, done. Nothing changes there. But nearly every salon also has a few business lines, and those do fall under the rule.

• If you invoice a company — a wedding paid for by a business, a photo shoot, a firm buying gift vouchers for its staff — that has been a structured electronic invoice since 1 January 2026.
• The obligation runs both ways. Your suppliers send you their invoices the same way, so you have to be able to receive them.
• E-mailing a PDF is still allowed as an extra, but it is no longer the invoice itself.

So the practical question is not "do I have to" but "where does it happen". Some salon packages receive their own invoices over Peppol but do not send yours; you then still need a separate arrangement. That is a good question for your current supplier, and a better one to ask before you pick a new one.

Why our cash journal is built the way it is anyway

HairConnect keeps the cash journal immutable: append-only, with a verification chain across receipts, gapless numbering per salon per financial year, and a correction that takes the form of a counter-entry rather than a quiet edit. Nothing obliges us to today.

We do it because it cannot be retrofitted. A cash journal that started life as an ordinary table does not become watertight afterwards; that is a rebuild of the entire bookkeeping side. What it gives you today is a daily close that always adds up and a discrepancy you can point at. What it gives you tomorrow, we do not know — which is precisely the reason to do it now rather than wait for it.

What else the till does is on the features page. If you are unsure whether either rule applies to your situation, put this page in front of your accountant — they know your revenue lines, we do not.