Electronic invoicing in Chile

What a DTE is, the digital certificate, the CAF, the SII's certification process, certification and production environments, and the 8-day acknowledgment-of-receipt rule — with links to the official SII sources.

This page summarizes the concepts behind Chilean electronic invoicing — the same ones Simplo automates — and links every claim to the official source from the SII (Servicio de Impuestos Internos, the Chilean tax authority). It’s technical context, not tax advice: for rules, deadlines or interpretations specific to your case, consult the SII or your tax advisor.

What a DTE is

A DTE (Documento Tributario Electrónico, “electronic tax document”) is a Chilean tax document — invoice, receipt, credit note, dispatch guide, etc. — issued as XML in the format the SII defines, digitally signed and reported to the SII, which accepts, rejects or accepts it with remarks. It isn’t a PDF you design: the PDF is only the printable representation of an XML that has already been signed and validated.

SII’s official electronic invoicing portal: sii.cl/factura_electronica (in Spanish)
What electronic invoicing is and which systems exist to issue it (the SII’s free system vs. market solutions): sii.cl — Conozca de factura electrónica y de los sistemas disponibles (in Spanish)
The exact format every DTE must follow — the XML structure, required fields and validation rules — is defined by the SII in the technical document Formato de Documentos Tributarios Electrónicos (v2.5, February 2026, in Spanish), complemented by the Instructivo Técnico de Factura Electrónica (in Spanish).

In Simplo, see the supported document types and their SII codes in DTE types.

The digital certificate

Every DTE is digitally signed with a digital certificate: a personal, non-transferable file that identifies the company (or its legal representative) to the SII, equivalent to an electronic ID card. It’s used both to operate on the SII site and to digitally sign electronic tax documents.

What it is, what it’s for and how it’s installed (per the SII): sii.cl — Certificado Digital, factura electrónica (in Spanish)

In Simplo, this certificate is uploaded once per company — see Digital certificate for the endpoint and how to monitor its validity.

Folios and the CAF

Folios (the sequential numbers on each document) aren’t chosen by whoever issues them: the SII pre-authorizes them in ranges, per document type, through a file called the CAF (Código de Autorización de Folios, “Folio Authorization Code”). The issuer requests the CAF from the SII, downloads it and loads it into their invoicing system before they can stamp (issue) documents from that range.

The SII’s official notice on electronic stamping and the CAF: sii.cl — Informativo sobre timbraje electrónico (in Spanish)

In Simplo, the CAF is uploaded once per document type and Simplo assigns the next folio automatically on every emission — see Folios and CAF.

The certification process (concept)

Before anyone can issue valid DTEs in production — whether using the SII’s free system or a market system like Simplo — they have to go through a certification process with the SII. Broadly, the process consists of: applying as an electronic issuer, generating and submitting test document sets in the certification environment, and having the SII validate that those documents meet the required format and rules before it issues the resolution authorizing the taxpayer to issue in production.

This page doesn’t restate the exact steps of the procedure — those change, and the SII is the only reliable source for them:

Application, certification and authorization procedure: sii.cl — Procedimiento de postulación, certificación y autorización (in Spanish)
Certification process detail (test sets, information exchange, printed samples): sii.cl — Proceso de certificación (in Spanish)

Environments: certification vs. production

The SII runs two separate environments for electronic invoicing:

Environment	Used for	Tax effect
Certification	Submitting test sets and validating your implementation during the certification process	None — the documents are test documents, with no tax validity
Production	Issuing real DTEs, once certified and authorized by the SII	Real — every document is a valid DTE, reported to the SII

The SII exposes the certification environment as a site separate from production:

SII’s certification/testing environment: maullin.sii.cl (in Spanish)

Mixing up environments is a common integration mistake: a document issued in certification is never a real DTE, and conversely, a misconfiguration that points production traffic at certification (or vice versa) can leave you without valid folios or generating documents the SII doesn’t recognize. Always confirm which environment you’re operating in before you emit.

Simplo adds a third context that is not an SII environment: the sandbox — a mode of your own company, selected by the API key (sk_simplo_sandbox_), isolated from both real environments, for testing your integration (including rejections and exhausted folios on purpose) without touching certification or production. See Quickstart and Try the unhappy paths.

Acknowledgment of receipt and exchange (concept): the 8-day rule

When the recipient of an invoice neither claims nor objects to it, Chilean law presumes that the goods were delivered or the service rendered, leaving the invoice ready to be assigned (e.g. via factoring) without needing an explicit acknowledgment of receipt. This presumption of receipt by silence kicks in after a period — currently 8 calendar days from receipt of the invoice — as established by Ley N° 20.956 (“Law 20,956”), which amended the deadlines and conditions for acknowledgment of receipt for both paper and electronic invoices.

This page describes the concept — not the operational detail of acknowledgment of receipt, its exceptions, or the exact deadlines applicable to your case, which depend on the law in force and its regulations. For the legal text:

Ley N° 20.956, at the Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional (Ley Chile): bcn.cl/leychile — Ley 20.956 (in Spanish)

The exchange of acknowledgment of receipt between issuer and recipient — and the dte.accepted event Simplo fires when the SII accepts a document — are related but distinct concepts: the former is an act by the commercial recipient, the latter is the SII’s tax verdict on the document. See States for the full lifecycle of a DTE in Simplo.

DTE types — the 12 document types and their SII codes
Folios and CAF — how folios get uploaded to Simplo
Digital certificate — the certificate in Simplo
States — a DTE’s lifecycle, including the SII’s verdict
Introduction — what a DTE is, in 60 seconds
Quickstart — the sandbox and your first DTE
Go to production — the checklist for a real certificate, SII certification and a real CAF