Invoice sent, mistake spotted: why you never fix it by rewriting
Sooner or later it happens: the invoice is out, and something is wrong. An amount, a quantity, a recipient. The first reflex — reopen the document and fix it — is exactly the one that creates trouble.
An issued invoice is a fact, not a draft
The moment it is sent, your invoice also exists at your client's, at their accountant's, and in your own numbered sequence. "Fixing" it on your side fixes it nowhere else: there are now two versions of the same number, and nobody knows which one counts.
It is also what an audit looks at: a continuous sequence, no gaps, no duplicates. A document rewritten after the fact is precisely what triggers the questions.
The clean mechanism: the credit note
To cancel or correct, you issue a second document, the credit note, which references the original invoice and neutralises it — in full or in part. Then, if needed, a new correct invoice with its own number.
Three documents, three facts, zero ambiguity:
- the original invoice stays what it always was;
- the credit note states in writing what is cancelled, and why it exists;
- the new invoice starts from correct figures.
Your client can follow, their accountant too, and your VAT is declared on what actually happened.
What it means day to day
The practical lesson is not accounting, it is organisation: proofreading before issuing costs less than correcting after. A draft can be edited at will; an issued invoice, never again.
Hence the value of a tool that freezes what left — amounts, rates, party identities — and generates the credit note in one click, linked to the original, instead of letting you rewrite history without saying so.