Credit notes and corrective invoices: how to correct an issued invoice

An issued VAT invoice is a fixed record: it has a number in a sequence, it may already sit in the customer's VAT return, and it must be storable unchanged for years. Mistakes are therefore corrected by issuing another document that refers to it, never by changing the original.

The rule

The VAT Directive treats "any document or message that amends and refers specifically and unambiguously to the initial invoice" as an invoice (Article 219). That document is what businesses call a credit note when it reduces the amount, a debit note when it increases it, and a corrective or rectifying invoice where national law prefers a full replacement document.

When to issue one

• The customer returns goods, or a service is cancelled or partially delivered.
• A price was wrong, a discount was agreed after the fact, or the VAT rate or treatment was misapplied.
• The customer's details or VAT number were wrong or missing.
• The invoice was issued to the wrong customer entirely.

What the amending document must contain

• Its own sequential number — usually in a dedicated series, so that credit notes and invoices never share a sequence.
• A specific and unambiguous reference to the original invoice: number and date.
• The same identification content as a full invoice (Article 226), with the corrected amounts; for a simplified amending document, at least the data being corrected and the reference (Article 226b).
• Amounts shown as the correction: a credit note for the amount reduced, and the VAT that goes with it, so both parties adjust their returns by the same figure.

Spain: the factura rectificativa

Spanish law (Real Decreto 1619/2012, Article 15) requires a rectifying invoice whenever an issued invoice fails a legal requirement or the taxable base or VAT must be adjusted. It must be identified as a rectifying invoice, state the reason and the invoice it corrects, and be numbered in a specific series. It may show the correction as a difference or restate the full corrected content; either way it goes in its own series.

VAT effects and timing

A credit note reduces the seller's output VAT and the customer's input VAT in the period it is issued, subject to the national rules on when a taxable amount may be reduced (Article 90 of the Directive lets Member States set conditions, and some require the customer's acknowledgement). Issue it promptly and keep the pairing with the original visible in your records.

How EUFactura does it

Issued invoices are immutable in EUFactura. A credit note is created from the invoice it corrects, carries the reference, is numbered in your credit-note series, and its PDF is titled as a credit note in the document's language, with a corrective-invoice variant for Spain. The original stays exactly as issued, with the correction linked to it.