What the Saudi national address is
The Saudi national address is the official addressing system of the Kingdom. It is issued by Saudi Post, known as SPL (Saudi Post and Logistics), and it gives a building a standard, unambiguous description: which building, on which street, in which district and city, with a postal code. People often ask “what is national address” when a form, a bank, an online store or a delivery company asks for it. The short answer is that it replaces descriptions such as “behind the big supermarket, next to the mosque” with a structured address that anyone can read the same way.
For a business that delivers goods, this matters a great deal. A driver who has to phone the customer to find the door loses time, and a package sent to the wrong building often comes back. A complete national address, kept in the same place every time, is the first protection against both.
The parts of the national address and how they are written
A full national address is made of the following parts. The formats below are the ones Tafsee Logistics checks when you type an address.
- Building number (رقم المبنى): exactly 4 digits.
- Street (الشارع): the street name, as written on the address.
- District (الحي): the neighbourhood name.
- City (المدينة): the city name.
- Postal code (الرمز البريدي): exactly 5 digits. This is the Saudi postal code.
- Additional number (الرقم الإضافي): exactly 4 digits. It narrows the postal code down to a smaller area.
- Short address (العنوان المختصر): 4 letters followed by 4 digits, for example RRRD2929. It is a compact code that stands for the whole address.
The national address format is therefore easy to remember in outline: a building number of four digits, a postal code of five, an additional number of four, and a short address of four letters and four digits. A value with the wrong number of digits is almost always a typing mistake, which is why checking the format when the address is entered saves a failed delivery later.
The short address
The short address is the part customers find easiest to share, because it is only eight characters. Customers send it in a message, print it on a card or give it over the phone. If you want to know more about the short address on its own, read the short address in Saudi Arabia. If you only want to test whether a value is written correctly, use the free national address format checker.
How to find and verify your own national address
Every address is registered with Saudi Post, so the place to look yours up is the official National Address service of SPL at splonline.com.sa. People searching for a national address lookup or the Arabic phrase for inquiring about the national address (الاستعلام عن العنوان الوطني) are looking for that official service. There you can see the registered details of a building and confirm them before you share them with a customer, a supplier or a delivery company.
A clear note about what Tafsee does here. Tafsee Logistics does not look addresses up and cannot query the SPL service. It does not check whether an address exists. It checks only that what you type is written in the right shape, for example that a postal code has five digits. The facts of the address come from the customer or from the official SPL service, and you enter them.
How businesses use the national address for delivery
A business that delivers to homes, shops and offices needs the same information every time, for every customer, in the same order. The national address supplies it. Used well, it helps in four places:
- At order taking: the customer gives the building number, postal code and short address, and the office writes them down once.
- At planning: the district and city decide which drivers cover which area, so a trip is made of stops that are close to each other.
- At the door: the driver can find the building from the building number and street, and can read the short address back to the customer on the phone.
- After a failed delivery: if the delivery did not work, the office can check whether the address was incomplete before trying again.
A national address does not replace a conversation with the customer. Some entrances are on a side street, some buildings contain many units, and some customers move. That is why Tafsee Logistics also keeps a unit field, a directions field and an optional map pin next to the address fields.
How Tafsee Logistics stores the national address
In Tafsee Logistics, every customer can have several delivery addresses, because one customer often has a shop, a warehouse and a home. Each address has the following fields:
- label, city, district and street
- building number (4 digits), postal code (5 digits) and additional number (4 digits)
- short address (4 letters and 4 digits, for example RRRD2929)
- unit and directions, for the details an address cannot carry
- an optional map pin
The address is saved against the customer and chosen when a shipment is received or when delivery is arranged. When the lot goes on a trip, the stop shows the address to the driver in the driver app, with buttons to call or message the customer and to open the address in the phone's own maps app.
The optional map pin
A pin shows the exact door on the map. You can place it by using your own location, by searching for a place or district, by pasting a map link or coordinates, or by moving the map under a fixed pin. If you do not know where the customer is, you can ask the customer to place the pin: Tafsee Logistics creates a one-time link that the customer opens on their phone. The link expires after 7 days or once it has been used, and a location outside Saudi Arabia is refused. You can read the steps in customer map pins.
A missing address does not go unnoticed
On the Ready for Dispatch screen, a lot whose customer has no address or no phone is marked with “Add an address” or “Add a phone”, so the gap is found in the office and not at the customer's door. When a trip is planned, Ready for Dispatch can group lots by district so that one driver covers one area.
A short checklist for your team
- Ask the customer for the short address and the building number, and confirm both by reading them back.
- Check the postal code and the additional number, which are the two most commonly mistyped parts.
- Compare with the official SPL service if there is any doubt.
- Add the unit and the directions if the building has many entrances or floors.
- Add a map pin, or ask the customer to place one, for any address that is hard to find.
Tafsee Logistics is software for warehouses and local delivery teams in Saudi Arabia. It does not issue national addresses and it is not a postal service; it keeps the address your customer gives you complete and visible from the first order to the proof of delivery.
