Free tool

Costa Rican invoice key reader

Paste the 50 positions of a key and you get which document it is, whose, and from what date. It is for identifying a document when the key is all you have: in an email, in a report or in a spreadsheet.

Document key 50 positions. You can paste it with spaces: they are cleaned up.

This does not say whether the tax authority accepted it. What is read here is what the key itself has written in it. If what you want to know is whether the document was accepted or rejected, check it at the official verification page: it is free and you do not need an account.

What a key carries inside it

The key is neither a running number nor a random identifier: it is a composite value, which is why it can be read without asking anyone anything. The 50 positions go like this:

Positions	What it is
1 – 3	Country code. Costa Rica is 506
4 – 9	Day, month and year of issue
10 – 21	The issuer's ID, padded with leading zeros
22 – 41	The sequential number: branch, terminal, document type and number
42	Situation: normal, contingency or offline
43 – 50	Security code, generated by the issuer

A warning almost nobody gives: the key admits letters. Since decree 44648-MJ, new company IDs can contain them, and the key embeds the issuer's ID. Software that validates the key as “fifty digits” will work until the first company with a new-style ID turns up — and will then fail silently.

From Ticuenta

When you do not have to start from the key

Each document is found by customer, by date or by amount, and its status with the tax authority is next to it, with the signed response kept.

See how it works

Costa Rican invoice key reader

What a key carries inside it

When you do not have to start from the key

Also in English