Downloading and installing the offline e-Invoice application

This documentation provides a step-by-step guide for setting up environment variables, registering the device at the PoS terminal, and installing/updating the application using the specified commands. Adjust the commands and parameters based on your specific environment and requirements.

Step 1: Download the ClearTax e-Invoice application

The offline application will be shared by your account manager. Please download the ClearTax offline application for NCR-Aloha. The application file named ‘ClearTax-NCRAloha-eInvApp-v1’ will be downloaded as a zip file. Unzip/extract it to get the contents of the application.

Recommended: Save this folder in the C drive (primary drive) of your system after extraction as this would run as a continuous service in the terminal.

You will find the below context inside the extracted folder.

Step 2: Setting Up Environment Variables and Configuration

In this step we will execute the batch file first to set the path variables where the certificates, devices and other required files will be stored. This script will create a configuration file in the application directory and set the required path variables in the Windows environment

Folder: ncr-aloha-app/Configuration/config.json.

Right click on ‘install.bat’ file in the folder where the e-Invoice app is copied to and click on ‘Run as administrator’. Ensure that you have administrator privileges enabled on your user as this would be required to install the application. If the system asks for permission to execute the run command then provide it to complete the setting up of the different configurations.

Alternatively, go to ‘Windows’ and type ‘cmd’ to initiate the opening of the command prompt. Click on ‘Run as administrator’ to execute commands as an administrator. Execute the below command:

install.sh

Please ensure that you have admin privileges on the machine to execute this as all further steps would need to be run as an admin. If the system asks for permission to execute the run command then provide it to complete the setting up of the different configurations.

The variables and paths that have been set to enable e-Invoicing on a test machine are visible below.

Step 3: Application Installation

Run the following command in the terminal to install the ClearTax e-Invoice application:

ncr-aloha.exe install OR
.\ncraloha.exe install

You can run either of the commands to initiate the installation process. The command has to be executed by pointing the terminal to the folder in which the original zip file is extracted.

Once the installation process is complete a message will be shown on the screen to confirm the same.

Step 4: Starting the application

After the successful installation of the application, execute the following command to start the application service in the system:

ncr-aloha.exe start

Step 5: Verification of the status of the service

The status of the ClearTax e-Invoice service can be verified by checking the ‘Task Manager’. Task manager can be opened from the ‘Windows’ home and searching for task manager to open it. Go to the 'Services' tab and find the 'clearalohaapp' in the list of active services. If you are able to find this then it is active and running but if you're not able to find it then it has not active and you have to start it.

Installation is complete once the offline e-Invoice application is started and running in task manager. Now all invoices generated at the NCR Aloha Fiscal manager will be converted to e-Invoices and submitted to ZATCA.