The tax side of invoicing a foreign client is the easy half. The half that ambushes people is the bank: money arrives from abroad, and it does not land in your account. It sits, and the bank notifies you, and it stays sitting until you tell them what the payment is for. Nobody warns new arrivals about this, so the first month reads as a lost payment.

It is not lost. It is unallocated. The mechanism is called the raspored priliva — the allocation of the inflow — and once you know it exists it takes two minutes a month, or zero, because you can set a standing instruction and stop doing it by hand.

Checked on 2 September 2026.

What happens when your client pays

The sequence, in the order you will experience it:

  1. Your client sends the payment to your business account.
  2. The money reaches your bank and is held as an unallocated inflow. It is not yet on your balance.
  3. The bank notifies you — how depends on the bank, usually e-banking, sometimes email or a phone call from the international payments desk.
  4. You supply the basis of the inflow: what this money is for, with a code, and generally with the supporting document behind it — your invoice.
  5. The bank books it, and it appears in your account.

Published bank manuals for international payments describe the recipient supplying that allocation data promptly after being notified — one bank’s manual states the obligation as within 24 hours of receiving the notification. Treat that as the shape of the requirement rather than a universal number: it is set in your bank’s own procedure under the National Bank of Serbia’s rules on payment transactions with abroad, and it is the sort of thing that differs in detail between banks. Ask your bank for their written procedure when you open the account, and keep the answer. It is the single most useful thing you can extract from the account-opening appointment.

The allocation is submitted in writing — in person, by email, or through e-banking, depending on the bank.

The standing instruction, which is the actual tip

If you invoice the same client every month for the same thing, doing the allocation by hand every month is pointless. Banks offer a trajni raspored priliva — a permanent, standing allocation instruction. You confirm to the bank that you will continue receiving inflows from the same foreign partner on the same basis, and the bank books future inflows automatically.

Two things to check when you set one up, because both vary:

  • The threshold. Automatic booking under a standing instruction is commonly capped — one bank’s published manual describes automatic booking of future inflows up to EUR 1,000. Above the bank’s threshold you allocate by hand again. If your monthly invoice is larger than the cap, the standing instruction saves you nothing and you should know that before you rely on it.
  • How it ends. A standing allocation stays valid until the bank receives a revocation or a new instruction. Which means it also keeps applying when your arrangement changes. If you switch clients, change the contractual basis, or start being paid for something different, update it. An instruction that describes last year’s relationship is worse than no instruction.

Ask for the form by name — trajni raspored priliva — rather than describing the concept. It exists, it is a standard form, and asking for it by name is the difference between a two-minute conversation and a confused one.

What the bank will want to see

Expect to be able to produce, for any given inflow:

  • The invoice the payment corresponds to, with your business details, your client’s details, the amount and the currency.
  • The contract or engagement basis, at least the first time and whenever the basis changes.
  • The purpose code for the type of transaction. Your bank will tell you which one your work falls under; get it in writing once and reuse it.

Keep these somewhere you can reach in two minutes. The failure mode is not that the bank refuses anything — it is that the request arrives on a Friday afternoon while you are travelling and the money waits until Monday because your invoice is on a laptop at home.

The tax side, which is simpler than people fear

If you are a paušalac, the arrival of foreign income does not change your monthly tax bill. Your obligation comes from the Poreska uprava’s rešenje and it is derived from a municipal formula, not from your invoices. What foreign income does affect is the ceiling — turnover counts toward the 6,000,000 RSD annual limit, and euro invoices convert into dinars at rates you do not control, so watch the running total rather than the invoice count.

Record every invoice in the KPO book as you issue it. That is the whole compliance obligation on this side, and it is also your only defence against discovering in November that you crossed a limit in August.

If you are on Model B, the treatment follows your books and your knjigovođa handles it. If you are employed, none of this applies to you and your employer deals with payroll.

What this has to do with the independence test

A pattern of inflows is evidence, and it is the evidence that is easiest for anyone to read.

If every inflow into your business account for twelve months comes from one nalogodavac, that fact sits in your bank statements in a form no argument improves. Criterion 6 of the independence test — at least 70% of income over 12 months from one client — is not a matter of interpretation when your statements show 100%.

This is not a reason to bank differently. It is a reason to understand that the nine criteria are checked against facts that already exist in your records, and that the fix is a second real client rather than a second account.

Two things people get wrong

Being paid into a personal account instead of the business account. If you are registered as a preduzetnik and invoicing as one, business income belongs in the business account. Routing client payments to a personal account because it was open first creates a mismatch between what you invoiced and what your business received, and it is your knjigovođa who has to explain it. Open the business account before you issue the first invoice.

Assuming a payment platform removes the requirement. Money that reaches you from abroad through an intermediary is still money that reaches you from abroad. Whether a given route changes any of the above is a question for your bank and your knjigovođa, about your specific arrangement — not something to settle from a forum thread. This site does not recommend financial routes and will not start; what it will do is tell you the question exists.

The order to do it in

  1. Open the business account first, before invoicing anyone.
  2. At the account opening, ask for two things in writing: the bank’s procedure and deadline for allocating inflows, and the purpose code your work falls under.
  3. Ask whether they offer a trajni raspored priliva, and what the automatic-booking threshold is. Set it up if your invoices sit under the cap.
  4. Issue the invoice, record it in the KPO the same day.
  5. When the notification arrives, allocate immediately. It takes two minutes and the money is not yours until you do it.
  6. Revisit the standing instruction whenever your client relationship changes.

None of this needs paying anyone. It is six habits, and the reason it looks like a service worth buying is that the first month goes wrong for almost everyone and nobody writes it down. The bank staff on the international payments desk do this all day, and it is a routine conversation for them even when it is a bewildering one for you. Ask early, while nothing is waiting.