Correcting a commercial invoice after the goods have shipped
The container has sailed and someone has spotted a wrong price, a wrong quantity or a wrong HS code on the invoice. What you do next depends on one question: has the shipment been entered at customs yet?
Before entry, reissue
If the goods have not been declared at destination, replace the document. Issue a corrected invoice carrying the same invoice number with a revision marker, or a new number that references the old one, and send it to whoever is clearing the goods. Tell the broker explicitly that it supersedes the earlier version, because a broker holding two invoices for one shipment will file whichever arrived first.
Do not simply email a corrected total. The invoice is the valuation document, and the version in the customs file is the one that counts.
After entry, you are amending a declaration
Once an entry is filed, the invoice is evidence for a declaration that has already been made. Correcting it is no longer a document exchange between you and your buyer; it is a disclosure to a customs authority. In the United States that is a post-summary correction or, where duty was underpaid, a prior disclosure. Most jurisdictions have an equivalent, and most treat a voluntary correction far more leniently than one they find themselves.
The practical rule: if the error made the declared value too low, correct it and expect to pay the difference. If it made the value too high, you are probably owed a refund, and you will only get it by asking.
A credit note is not a correction
This is where people go wrong. A credit note records a commercial adjustment between seller and buyer — a short shipment, a return, an agreed discount after the fact. It does not amend a customs declaration, and issuing one does not change the value the goods were entered at.
Use a credit note when the goods were correctly described and correctly valued at the time, and something changed afterwards.
Reissue the invoice when the document was wrong when it was written.
Sending a credit note to fix a typo in an HS code achieves nothing at the border, and leaves your accounts and the customs file disagreeing about what the shipment was worth.
The documents that move with it
An invoice rarely travels alone, and correcting it in isolation creates a new discrepancy where you have just closed one. Check each of these against the corrected version:
The packing list, if quantity or piece count changed. These two documents are compared mechanically, and a corrected invoice against an uncorrected packing list is exactly the mismatch that causes holds in the first place.
The certificate of origin, if the goods description or the HS code changed. A chamber-stamped certificate cannot be edited — it has to be reissued, and where the destination requires consular legalisation the whole chain repeats.
The bill of lading, if the description changed materially. Amending a bill after issue is possible before the vessel sails and difficult afterwards; once it has been surrendered to a bank it is a different problem entirely.
Anything presented under a letter of credit. If the credit has already been drawn on, the corrected invoice does not undo the presentation. Talk to the bank before sending anything.
Write down which version is which
Whatever you reissue, make the sequence legible: a revision number, a date, and a line saying what it replaces. Six months later, during a verification, the question will not be whether you corrected the invoice. It will be whether you can show which version was filed and when.