Limited Company Re-issue invoice or issue a credit note?

john01269

Hi,
I've not long started a limited company and I'm a bit of a programmer so creating my own invoicing system. I run an online retail business using my own website, ebay and amazon. Payments are made straight away the same day as the orders is made by the customers. Now if I had to cancel the order or partially refund, would correctly the invoice be ok and re-sending it to the customer rather than producing a credit note, this way would be far easier, I could place the correct in the discount box of the invoice, I have look at ebay and they do it this way. Is a credit note needed or will HMRC cause problems if I don't use credit notes?

Thanks

Pennywise

Once an invoice has been issued, it becomes a legal fact.  The way to cancel or reduce it is via a credit note.  You really can't just change an existing invoice as you lose the audit trail, and the customer could then put both through their books, pay you for one and then divert the payment for the other to themselves, i.e. fraud/theft.

john01269

The thing is what about the sellers and companies using ebay alone, they just add the refund to the discount part of the invoice, no credit notes issued I don't think.
Anyway, thanks, I thought so, I will create a credit note into my system.

john01269

With a buyer being able to use both invoices, they can't really because both invoices will have the same date, the same invoice number, the same eccommerce platform transaction number etc.