I submitted a wrong invoice and LHDN has already validated it. Can I cancel? Cancelling and correcting a validated e-invoice

“I submitted a wrong invoice and LHDN has already validated it. Can I cancel?” Only within 72 hours of LHDN validating it: inside that window you raise a cancellation request, approve it and send it to LHDN, then issue the corrected document; once 72 hours have passed no cancellation is possible at all, and the correction becomes a credit note that references the original.

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.

Correcting a validated e-invoice, at a glance

1. Read the validation date-time on the Submission Detail Report, note it down and add 72 hours (Step 1). Recording a cancellation blanks it, so note it first.
2. Inside 72 hours, to cancel: check Before you start, because somebody who can approve must be available today; raise the cancellation request (Step 2), have it approved and choose what happens to the source document (Step 3), then send it to LHDN (Step 4). On a consolidated e-invoice only cancel for edit and resubmit works, and Regenerate new e-invoice cancels it at LHDN without replacing it (Step 5). Void original document is refused when a payment or a return has been raised from the invoice.
3. Past 72 hours, or by choice inside them: issue a credit note (Step 6) against an original that is actually valid, naming exactly the same buyer (Step 7).

The work runs across four pages. Step 1 is on this one; Steps 2 to 4 are on Approve and send a cancellation, Step 5 on Cancel a consolidated e-invoice, and Steps 6 and 7 on Correct it with a credit note instead.

The one rule that decides everything

Once LHDN marks an e-invoice Valid it is a filed tax record — that is what validation does, and it is why BigLedger refuses Save and Resubmit on it: “already validated with ‘Valid’ status. Please cancel it first before creating a new invoice.” The refusal is deliberate, not a bug. (You get a similar refusal at Submitted, which only means LHDN is still deciding; wait a few minutes and the status settles.)

Everything on this page follows from one date field on that record:

• 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.

Inside the window you still have a choice

Being inside 72 hours makes a cancellation possible; it does not make it the only route. For the RM 12,400 laptop invoice that should have been RM 9,920, there are two honest ways to put it right, and they cost different things:

• Cancel it and re-issue. LHDN withdraws the wrong e-invoice and a fresh RM 9,920 invoice gets its own. The cost: somebody has to approve within the window; Void original document refuses an invoice that already has a payment matched to it or a return raised from it; the void’s reversing journal carries the original invoice’s date, so an invoice dated the 31st and voided on the 2nd changes a month you may have closed; and the replacement is a new document with a new number and a new LHDN identifier.
• Leave it standing and issue a credit note for RM 2,480. No approval race and no refusal because something was raised from the invoice. The cost: LHDN keeps both documents, your books carry the RM 12,400 sale and the RM 2,480 credit as two entries rather than one corrected figure, and the credit note must name exactly the same buyer as the original (Step 7).

Which of the two your group uses is a decision for whoever owns the figures, made with your accountant, and best made once rather than invoice by invoice. Steps 2 to 5 are the first route; Steps 6 and 7 are the second, and they work inside the window as well as after it.

Where each date and status on these screens comes from

None of these is typed by anyone, and knowing which are copies and which are calculated tells you which one to trust:

• Valid and Cancelled on the e-invoice are a copy of LHDN’s answer, written when BigLedger last asked LHDN. After a successful cancellation BigLedger asks again at once, so Cancelled appears the moment LHDN accepts it.
• The validation date-time is the time LHDN stamped when it validated the document, stored as received. It is shown to the minute only on the Submission Detail Report. Recording the cancellation blanks it — on the e-invoice record and on every submission-history row for that document — so read it and note it down before you process the request, not after.
• Remained Hours For Cancellation, on a rejection request, is recalculated in your browser from that validation time and your computer’s clock at the moment you open the request. It does not count down while the screen is open, and a wrong computer clock makes it wrong. The count that decides is BigLedger’s own, in whole hours, made on the server when you press Process Request.
• Completed, Cancelled and FAILED on the request are written at the moment Process Request (or Process on a Cancellation Queue row) runs. Nothing goes back to LHDN later to update them.

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 can open My E-Invoice Admin Applet → Monthly Report → Submission Detail Report, where the validation date-time is shown to the minute. The e-invoice’s own record on Internal Submission → To IRB E-Invoice does not show it.
• Somebody who can set a request to Approved on the Rejection Requests screen is available today. A cancellation request does not travel on its own; if the person who normally does it is on leave, you will run the clock out.
• You know what has already been raised from the invoice. Void original document depends on nothing having been raised from it: a payment matched to it, or a return against it, blocks the void. Look at the document’s links before you raise the request, so you choose a route that can finish.
• 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 → Monthly Report → Submission Detail Report

Find the e-invoice by its document number and read the column headed Submission Date: that is its validation date-time, to the minute. The report opens on this month’s Valid e-invoices by LHDN submission date, so an e-invoice validated last month needs the start date moved back. Note the time down now — the cancellation will blank it. 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. Or they read a date off the e-invoice record on To IRB E-Invoice, where every date is shown without a time and none of them is the validation date. Read the Submission Date column.

Steps 2 to 7, in brief

Step 2: Raise the cancellation request

Select the e-invoice on Internal Submission → To IRB E-Invoice and use Request for Rejection; the request lands in Cancellation → Rejection Requests and waits for a person (Step 2).

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

Nothing advances a cancellation request automatically. Set it to Approved the same day and choose a processing logic: three of the four cancel the e-invoice at LHDN first, and new reversal document never talks to LHDN at all (Step 3).

Step 4: Send the cancellation to LHDN

For the three processing logics that cancel, Process Request calls LHDN there and then, and refuses unless, among other checks, the e-invoice is Valid and fewer than 72 whole hours have passed since validation. The Cancellation Queue row, not an e-mail, tells you the outcome (Step 4).

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

On a consolidated e-invoice only cancel for edit and resubmit works, and Regenerate new e-invoice cancels it at LHDN with nothing to replace it. The receipts inside a cancelled consolidated e-invoice need support to push them back to the Batch Pool (Step 5).

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

There is no cancellation past the window. You raise a new document that reverses the wrong one: new reversal document on a rejection request, or a credit note you raise yourself, and the two are not the same size (Step 6).

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

A credit note is rejected with DR303 or DR308 when the e-invoice it references is no longer the live one, or names a different buyer. Point it at the currently valid e-invoice, or clear the reference (Step 7).

What we cannot see for you

If your buyer rejects an e-invoice on the MyInvois portal rather than through BigLedger, only the date comes back. The next time BigLedger fetches that e-invoice’s details from LHDN, it writes the rejection date into the e-invoice’s IRB Reject Request Date field on Internal Submission → To IRB E-Invoice. That is all: no request appears under Cancellation → Rejection Requests, nothing in your queues changes, and nobody is told. The field shows the date without the time. 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:

1. 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).
2. Cancellation → Rejection Requests shows your request as completed and approved, not still in progress.
3. The sales document behind it is in the state you chose in Step 3 — Void (void original document); still Final with a fresh e-invoice record beside the cancelled one (regenerate); still Final and waiting for your Save and Resubmit (cancel for edit); or still Final with a finalised reversing document next to it and the original e-invoice still Valid (new reversal document).
4. If you voided, the invoice’s journal shows a reversing entry dated on the original invoice’s date. If there is none, the reversal has not reached your books — What a void undoes says why that happens and what to check.

Common mistakes

The mistakes that belong to one part are on that part’s page: approving and sending, a consolidated e-invoice and the credit note. These span the whole task:

Related documentation