From sandbox testing to live FBR invoices

FBR publishes scenarios numbered SN001 to SN028, and search results are full of advice about “passing all 28”. No business is assigned all 28. They are allocated from a matrix of business nature against sector, and the largest set anyone receives is 15. The smallest is two — a service provider selling services clears exactly two scenarios and is done.

You choose business nature and sector yourself, on the technical details screen in IRIS when you enrol. Business nature accepts several selections; sector accepts exactly one. Those two answers decide your whole testing workload, which is why it is worth understanding them before clicking through.

How allocation actually works

Most manufacturer, importer, exporter and general rows carry a common base set, and the sector then adds one or two sector-specific scenarios on top — steel, textile, telecom, petroleum and FMCG each bring their own. Distributor, wholesaler and retailer rows behave differently, carrying smaller sets built around their own sale types.

Three scenarios are gated on something other than your selection: they cover sales to end consumers by retailers, and only become available if your sales tax profile actually says you are registered as a retailer. Choosing “retailer” as a business nature does not unlock them on its own.

Two details that cause avoidable failures

The scenario ID is sandbox-only, and is rejected in both directions. Omitting it in sandbox fails; sending it to production fails. It is the one field whose correctness depends on which environment you are pointed at, which makes it a classic go-live break.

What matters in each scenario is the sale type it requires, not its description. A scenario is cleared by submitting an invoice whose sale type matches what that scenario expects — a plausible-looking invoice with the wrong sale type will not clear it.