Manual / Integrations

SIBA — Boletins de Alojamento (Portugal)

Updated on 2026-09-07

Anyone offering accommodation in Portugal must report every foreign guest to the UCFE: the Boletim de Alojamento. This has to happen within three working days of arrival, per person, children included. The SIBA integration files those declarations automatically, using the details your guests entered themselves in the guest registration.

You'll find it under Connections → Guest experience → SIBA (Boletins de Alojamento). The tile only appears for a Portuguese property.

What you need first

The declaration runs over SIBA's web service, so your property has to be registered in the secure area of siba.ssi.gov.pt. Choose "Web Services" as the submission mode when you register — that choice is fixed, and with any other mode SIBA rejects every file with error P12. Changing it is only possible by emailing siba@sef.pt.

Within roughly 48 hours you receive an ofício with three items:

  • Unidade hoteleira — your NIPC, nine digits
  • Estabelecimento number — the sequence number of this unit within the same NIPC; the first one gets 0
  • Chave de acesso — the activation key, digits only

Lost the key? Request it again at siba@sef.pt quoting your NIPC and estabelecimento number. Do not register again — your existing registration stays valid and a second registration creates a second estabelecimento.

Setting it up in BedFlow

  1. First switch on Guest registration for the property and tick the section "Portugal: document type, issuing country and country of residence". Without those details no boletim can be filed.

  2. Switch off "Belgian national register number as an alternative". It lets a guest skip date of birth, nationality and document — useless for a boletim.

  3. Open the SIBA tile and enter the three items from the ofício. The chave de acesso is stored encrypted and never appears in a log or error message.

  4. Fill in the unit details exactly as SIBA knows them. Mind the maximum lengths — SIBA rejects a file that exceeds them:

    | Field | Max. length | | --- | --- | | Unit name | 40 | | Abbreviation | 15 | | Address | 40 | | Town | 30 | | Postcode | 4 + 3 digits | | Phone and fax | 9 digits | | Contact name | 40 | | Contact email | 140 |

    Address, phone, fax and contact details are updated at SIBA with every submission. Name and abbreviation can only be changed through the UCFE.

  5. Switch on Enable SIBA declaration.

SIBA sends a confirmation to the contact email address for every accepted file. That is your second paper trail, alongside the overview in BedFlow.

How a declaration works

  • As soon as a guest completes their registration, BedFlow prepares a boletim per traveller with the legal deadline: three working days after arrival, weekends and Portuguese public holidays excluded.
  • Portuguese guests are skipped. The duty only covers foreign guests; filing for a Portuguese national gets rejected. You'll see it marked as "skipped" so it stays clear that nothing was filed on purpose.
  • Every morning all open boletins whose guest has already arrived go to SIBA in a single file. Filing in advance is not possible: the arrival date must be today or earlier.
  • If SIBA replies 0, the file was accepted. Otherwise the error code and description appear on the tile and BedFlow retries the next round.

What is being watched

The tile always shows three things: when something was last accepted, how many boletins are queued, and how many of those are past the legal deadline. If anything runs past the deadline you get a notification — filing late is an offence, so it needs to be seen.

A boletim that gets stuck almost always has one of two causes:

  • Incomplete details. The guest left a required field empty, or gave a country SIBA doesn't have in its table. The reason is spelled out ("missing or invalid details: document type"). Complete it in that booking's registration and it goes out with the next round.
  • A rejection from SIBA. The error code is on the tile. P12 means the submission mode of your registration isn't set to Web Services; fix that with an email to siba@sef.pt.

Important: one incomplete guest doesn't hold up the rest. What doesn't check out stays behind, the rest goes out as normal.

Guests arriving before the integration works

If the integration isn't ready yet while guests are already arriving, notify your regional AIMA delegation with siba@sef.pt in copy. SIBA's FAQ explicitly provides for this in case of software problems (point P06).

What SIBA does not do

The boletins are a declaration to the authorities, not a tax and not an invoice. Your municipal tourist tax and Portuguese invoicing through InvoiceXpress are entirely separate — see the InvoiceXpress (Portugal) guide and your municipal levy settings.

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