I Made a Mistake on an Invoice I Already Sent — Can I Fix It?

Quick answers

I made a mistake on an invoice I already sent — can I fix it?

Not by editing it. UAE VAT law has no mechanism for cancelling or amending an issued tax invoice — you correct it by issuing a tax credit note, and you have 14 days from the event that triggered the correction to do it.

When do I need a tax credit note?

A tax credit note is required, not optional, when the value of a supply changes after the invoice was issued — including goods returned, a discount agreed after invoicing, a cancelled supply, a pricing or VAT error, or a change in VAT treatment.

When does the 14-day credit note deadline start?

The clock starts when the goods came back, when the discount was agreed, when the supply was cancelled, or when the error occurred — not on the date of the original invoice, and not on the day someone in accounts finally noticed.

What can I still change on a sent invoice without a credit note?

Internal notes, payment details and terms, the due date, the document language and the design carry no tax consequence and can be adjusted without a credit note. The fiscal core cannot.

Is this tax advice?

No. This is general information about correcting issued tax invoices with credit notes in the UAE. Confirm your obligations with the Federal Tax Authority or a qualified tax advisor.

Why an issued invoice cannot be cancelled

Once a tax invoice is issued it exists permanently, in your records and in the tax record of the supply. It created a VAT liability for you and, if your client is registered, a right to reclaim input VAT for them.

Quietly rewriting it breaks that pairing. Your client may have already claimed VAT against the original figure; the FTA can cross-match what you declared against what they claimed. A corrected document that leaves no trace of the correction is worse than the original error.

A credit note leaves the trail intact. It works as a negative invoice, pointing at the original and stating what changed and why.

When you need one

A tax credit note is required, not optional, when the value of a supply changes after the invoice was issued. The common cases:

Goods returned by the customer. A discount agreed after invoicing. The supply cancelled. A pricing or VAT error on the original document. A change in the VAT treatment of the supply.

If the correction increases the amount rather than reducing it, that is handled by a debit note instead — the same discipline, in the opposite direction.

The 14-day clock, and where it starts

A tax credit note must be issued within 14 days of the event that gave rise to the adjustment. This sits in Article 62(2) of Federal Decree-Law No. 8 of 2017 and has applied since 1 January 2023; before that the law set no deadline at all.

The word doing the work is event.

The clock starts when the goods came back, when the discount was agreed, when the supply was cancelled, or when the error occurred — not on the date of the original invoice, and not on the day someone in accounts finally noticed. An error found three months later does not give you three months of grace; it gives you a credit note that should have been issued back then.

What has to be on it

Article 60 of the Executive Regulation sets the mandatory particulars:

The words "Tax Credit Note", clearly displayed. Your name, address and TRN, and the recipient's name, address and TRN where they are registered. The date of issue. A clear explanation of why the note is being issued. Enough information to identify the original supply it relates to. And the figures: the value shown on the original tax invoice, the corrected value, the difference between them, and the tax on that difference, in AED.

Three of these are the ones businesses skip, and each one on its own can invalidate the adjustment: the reason for issue, the reference to the original invoice, and the before-and-after values rather than just the difference.

Credit notes may be issued electronically.

More than one against the same invoice

If a second credit note is issued against an invoice that already has one, the adjustment is calculated from the previous credit note, not from the original invoice value. Treating each one as if it stood alone double-counts the reduction.

What your client has to do

A credit note is not a courtesy. Where your client reclaimed input VAT on the original invoice, receiving the credit note obliges them to reduce that claim.

That is why sending it matters as much as raising it. A credit note sitting unsent in your system corrects your return and leaves your client's wrong.

The same deadline applies to the original invoice

Worth knowing while you are here: a tax invoice itself must be issued within 14 days of the date of supply. Delivering the work in January and invoicing in March is a compliance problem in its own right, separate from anything you later need to correct.

What you can still change

Not everything on a sent invoice is fiscal. Internal notes, payment details and terms, the due date, the document language and the design carry no tax consequence and can be adjusted without a credit note.

The fiscal core cannot: the invoice number and date, both parties and their TRNs, the line items, the amounts, the VAT rates and the currency. Those are what the credit note exists to correct.

This distinction becomes stricter, not looser, under e-invoicing — a document transmitted to the tax authority is immutable by definition, and corrections travel as separate credit notes through the same channel.

In Fatura Go

Credit notes reference the original invoice and carry their own sequential numbering, and the VAT report accounts for them against the period.

Frequently asked questions