Cancelling and Correcting a Validated E-Invoice

You have just noticed that an e-invoice LHDN validated yesterday is wrong — wrong customer, wrong amount, or a sale that should never have been invoiced at all. You cannot simply edit it. What you can do depends almost entirely on one thing: whether 72 hours have passed since LHDN validated it. This guide gives you the decision in about five minutes and the fix in about ten.

Meet GadgetSphere

Yesterday afternoon a GadgetSphere branch invoiced a corporate customer RM 12,400 for a laptop refresh. This morning the customer calls: the order was for eight machines, not ten, and the invoice should be RM 9,920. The e-invoice went to LHDN last night and came back Valid. Nothing can be typed over it, so the question is which of two routes GadgetSphere is on.

The one rule that decides everything

Once LHDN marks an e-invoice Valid, it is a filed tax record. BigLedger will refuse Save and Resubmit on it — you will see “already validated with ‘Valid’ status. Please cancel it first before creating a new invoice.” That refusal is deliberate, not a bug. (You will get a similar refusal at Submitted, which just means LHDN is still deciding; wait a few minutes and the status settles.)

From there:

Inside 72 hours of validation — cancel it at LHDN, then issue the corrected document.
Past 72 hours — no cancellation is possible at all. The correction becomes a credit note referencing the original.

The clock runs from the validation time recorded on the e-invoice, held in universal time (UTC) — which can be earlier than what the MyInvois portal appears to show you. Read the validation date-time off the e-invoice record and count from that. Do not count from memory, and do not count from when you raised the sale.

Before you start

The e-invoice status is Valid. Nothing on this page applies to a document that is still in a pool or still IN_QUEUE — those you can simply fix and resubmit.
You have the e-invoice open in My E-Invoice Admin Applet → Internal Submission → To IRB E-Invoice, so you can read its validation date-time.
Someone with approval rights is available today. A cancellation request does not travel on its own; if the only person who can approve it is on leave, you will run the clock out.
For anything past the window, your accountant is in the loop. A credit note changes your reported figures.

Step 1: Work out whether you are still inside the window

Outcome: you know which of the two routes you are on before you touch anything.

My E-Invoice Admin Applet → Internal Submission → To IRB E-Invoice

Find the e-invoice, open it and read its validation date-time. Add 72 hours. If that moment is still ahead of you, go to Step 2. If it has passed, skip to Step 6.

GadgetSphere’s wrong invoice was validated at 21:40 last night, so the deadline is 21:40 two nights from now — comfortable, but not something to leave until the afternoon of the third day.

How this goes wrong: people count 72 hours from the invoice date rather than the validation date, which on a backdated or queued document can be days apart. Read the field.

Step 2: Raise the cancellation request

Outcome: a cancellation request exists against the e-invoice, waiting for approval.

My E-Invoice Admin Applet → Internal Submission → To IRB E-Invoice → Request for Rejection

Select the e-invoice and use Request for Rejection. The button is only enabled on a Valid e-invoice, which is your confirmation that you are on the right route. The request lands in Cancellation → Rejection Requests as requested and in progress.

A buyer can also start this from the My E-Invoice Portal Applet — a customer who spots the error before you do can raise the rejection themselves. It arrives in exactly the same list and needs exactly the same approval from you.

Step 3: Approve the request and choose what happens to the source document

Outcome: the request is approved with a decision recorded about the sales document behind it.

My E-Invoice Admin Applet → Cancellation → Rejection Requests

This is the step everyone misses.

Nothing advances a cancellation request automatically. There is no background job. A request you raised and walked away from will sit at requested / in progress until the 72 hours expire and the option is gone. If a request “looks stuck”, it is almost always waiting for a human to do this step.

Open the request, set the approval status to Approved, and choose a processing logic — what BigLedger should do with the underlying sales document once LHDN confirms the cancellation:

What you want to happen	Choose	Use it when
Void the original sales document too	Void original document (`VOID_ORIGINAL_DOC`)	The sale is cancelled outright — wrong customer, order withdrawn
Cancel and immediately re-issue from the same document	Regenerate new e-invoice (`REGEN_NEW_EINVOICE`)	The document is right and the e-invoice was built wrong
Create a reversing document	New reversal document (`NEW_REVERSAL_DOC`)	Your accounting policy is to reverse rather than void
Cancel at LHDN only, and fix it yourself afterwards	Cancel for edit and resubmit (`CANCEL_FOR_EDIT_AND_RESUBMIT`, shown as `CANCEL_EINVOICE`)	You want to edit the document before it goes back — and the only choice that works for a consolidated e-invoice

For GadgetSphere’s over-invoiced laptop order, the document itself needs editing down to eight machines, so cancel for edit and resubmit is right: LHDN cancels, the branch corrects the invoice, and it goes back as a fresh e-invoice.

Rejection Requests listing showing requestor status, processing status and approval status columns, with one row still in progress and unapproved — Cancellation → Rejection Requests — the top row is requested and in progress with no approval status. It will stay that way until someone approves it.

Step 4: Send the cancellation to LHDN

Outcome: LHDN has cancelled the e-invoice and the status on your record says so.

My E-Invoice Admin Applet → Cancellation → Rejection Requests → Process Request

With the request approved and a processing logic set, use Process Request. BigLedger builds a cancellation queue row and calls LHDN there and then. Watch the result in Cancellation → Cancellation Queue — the Request Error field on the row carries the reason if it did not go through.

Cancellation Queue detail panel showing a failed submission status with the request error Passed 72 hours from validation date time — Cancellation → Cancellation Queue — this request failed for the one reason you cannot argue with: the 72 hours had already gone.

Before it calls LHDN, BigLedger checks three things, and refuses on any of them: the e-invoice must be Valid, it must actually have an LHDN document reference, and fewer than 72 hours must have passed since validation. If you see “Passed 72 hours from validation date time”, the window closed while the request was waiting for approval — go to Step 6.

Step 5: If it is a consolidated e-invoice, act immediately

Outcome: the cancellation is under way despite the extra constraint consolidated e-invoices carry.

A consolidated e-invoice has no single sales document behind it — it reports hundreds of receipts at once. That breaks two of the four options above: voiding and regenerating both fail with “Can not void the generic document” before LHDN is even called, because there is nothing to void. Only cancel for edit and resubmit works.

If that option is not available to you on the Rejection Requests screen, raise a support request straight away and say the e-invoice is consolidated. Do not experiment with the other options — each failed attempt burns time out of a 72-hour window you cannot extend.

Afterwards, the receipts that were inside the cancelled consolidated e-invoice still need reporting. They are pushed back to the Batch Pool and consolidated again as a named list of exactly those documents — not by re-running consolidation for the period, which would sweep in everything else as well. This is support’s job, not a self-service action; ask for it in the same request.

Step 6: Past 72 hours — issue a credit note instead

Outcome: LHDN’s records are corrected by a new document rather than by removing the old one.

Sales → Internal Sales Credit Note Applet

There is no cancellation past the window. What you do instead is raise a credit note for the difference (or the whole amount), referencing the LHDN identifier of the e-invoice that was wrong. Once it is validated, LHDN’s records net out correctly even though the original e-invoice is still there.

For a consolidated e-invoice, the buyer on that credit note is General Public, exactly as it was on the consolidated e-invoice itself.

Talk to your accountant first. In most of these cases your BigLedger ledger is already correct and it is only the tax reporting that is overstated — so the credit note exists to fix LHDN, not to fix your books. Getting that agreed before you raise it stops you correcting the same thing twice.

Step 7: Point the credit note at an original that is actually valid

Outcome: the credit note is accepted first time instead of being rejected for its reference.

A credit note is rejected if the e-invoice it references is no longer the live one. The classic case: the original was rejected as Invalid, somebody fixed and resubmitted it, and it came back with a new LHDN identifier — but the credit note is still pointing at the dead one. You will see one of two errors:

Referenced document status (DR303) — the referenced e-invoice is not in a state that can be referenced.
Buyer mismatch (DR308) — the buyer on the credit note is not the same buyer as on the referenced e-invoice. Matching the reference number is not enough; the identity has to match too.

Two ways out, both fine:

Update the credit note’s original-invoice reference to the currently valid e-invoice, then Save and Resubmit.
Clear the reference fields entirely and submit the credit note without a reference.

What we cannot see for you

If your buyer rejects an e-invoice on the MyInvois portal rather than through BigLedger, that rejection does not come back into BigLedger today. Nothing in your queues or reports will change. If a customer tells you they have rejected one of your e-invoices, check the portal yourself and act on it here — do not wait for BigLedger to notice.

What success looks like

Thirty seconds:

Open the e-invoice in Internal Submission → To IRB E-Invoice. Its status reads Cancelled (inside the window) — or it is still Valid and a validated credit note now references it (outside the window).
Cancellation → Rejection Requests shows your request as completed and approved, not still in progress.
The sales document behind it is in the state you chose in Step 3 — voided, reversed, re-issued, or open for editing.

Common mistakes

Mistake	What you see	Fix
Raising the request and waiting	The request sits at requested / in progress for days, then fails on the 72-hour rule	Approve it and choose a processing logic the same day — nothing advances it for you
Counting 72 hours from the invoice date	You believe you have a day left and you do not	Count from the validation date-time on the e-invoice record, in UTC
Using void or regenerate on a consolidated e-invoice	“Can not void the generic document”, and LHDN was never called	Use cancel-for-edit-and-resubmit, or raise a support request immediately
Cancelling because two rows share a document number	You destroy valid e-invoices that were never duplicates	A sales invoice and a self-billed purchase invoice can hold the same number legitimately — check the document type first
Crediting a note against a superseded original	`DR303` or `DR308` on an otherwise clean credit note	Point at the currently valid e-invoice, or clear the reference and submit without one