Electronic invoicing on the Sales Invoice

Q: How long should I wait before chasing a Submitted invoice?

It varies by country, but if an invoice is still Submitted the next working day while others posted at the same time have been accepted, raise it. The usual cause is on the administrator's side rather than anything to do with your invoice.

User guide 8 min read Updated August 2026

In countries that require it, a sales invoice is not legally an invoice until the tax authority has seen it and issued it an official number. REDA Financials handles that filing for you as part of posting. This article is for the people who raise and post invoices every day: what changes on your screen, what the new fields mean, how to exclude an invoice that should not be filed, and why a filed invoice can no longer be unposted.

This only applies if your organisation files electronically. If no entity is configured for it, none of the fields below are populated, nothing extra happens when you post, and invoicing works exactly as it always has. If you are not sure, ask your administrator — or read Electronic invoicing: how it works for the whole picture.

What changes for you — and what does not

Almost nothing changes in how you work. You raise the invoice as you always have, and you post it as you always have. Filing happens around the posting, not through extra steps.

Step	What is different
Creating the invoice	Nothing, unless you need to exclude this one invoice from filing — see Skip E-Invoicing. That is the only decision that must be made before posting.
Posting the invoice	Nothing you have to do. Posting behaves exactly as before, at the same speed. Filing is started separately, immediately afterwards, so a slow tax authority can never delay or fail your posting.
After posting	E-Invoice Status on the invoice starts telling you where the filing has got to. This is the field to watch.
Correcting a mistake	This is the real change. Once the invoice has reached the authority you can no longer unpost or edit it — you correct it with a credit memo. See why.

The three new fields on the invoice

They sit in an E-Invoicing section on the Sales Invoice. Two are filled in by the system and cannot be typed into; one is yours.

Field	Who sets it	What it is for
E-Invoice Status	The system — read-only for everybody, including administrators	Where this invoice's filing has got to. Blank means it has never been filed. See the statuses.
E-Invoice UUID	The tax authority — read-only for everybody	The unique fiscal identifier the authority issues when it accepts the invoice. This is the number that makes the document legally valid, and the one an auditor will ask you for. It stays blank until the invoice is accepted.
Skip E-Invoicing	You — if your administrator has enabled it	Excludes this one invoice from filing entirely. See below.

Cannot see these fields? That is an administrator task, not a fault. Upgrading REDA Financials installs new fields but does not place them on a page layout your organisation has customised, and it does not give them to users who are on your own permission sets rather than REDA's. Ask your administrator to add the three fields to your Sales Invoice layout and grant you access to them — the exact steps are in Setting up electronic invoicing for an entity.

Reading E-Invoice Status

The invoice mirrors the status of its filing, so you can see the position without opening anything else. Five of the values mean the system is working and you need do nothing; two mean the invoice needs you.

What you see	What it means	Yours to act on?
(blank)	This invoice has never been filed. Either it is not posted yet, it is excluded by Skip E-Invoicing, or its entity does not file electronically at all.	No
Draft	Filing is prepared but held, because your organisation reviews invoices before they are sent to the authority.	No — but somebody must release it, so check who owns that.
Ready to Send / Queued	Released and in line to be transmitted. Normally lasts seconds.	No
Submitted	The authority has the invoice and is deciding. Depending on the country this takes minutes or hours, and is slower at month-end.	No — unless it stays there for a working day. Then tell your administrator.
Accepted	Approved. E-Invoice UUID is now filled in and the invoice is legally valid. You can send it to your customer.	No — this is the finish line.
Rejected	The authority looked at the invoice and refused it, and said why.	Yes. See below.
Error	The invoice never reached the authority — a configuration or connection problem, not a problem with your invoice.	No — but report it to your administrator; it will not fix itself.
Cancelled	The document was withdrawn at the authority.	No

For the detail behind the status, open the Trail. Every filed invoice has an E-Invoice Trails related list at the bottom of the record, holding the full exchange with the authority — including, on a rejection, the exact reason. See Reading an E-Invoice Trail.

Excluding an invoice with Skip E-Invoicing

Some invoices should never go to the tax authority — an internal charge between your own entities, a test document, or a transaction outside the scope of the mandate. Ticking Skip E-Invoicing excludes that one invoice completely: nothing is filed and no Trail is created.

Open the invoice while it is still in Draft, before posting.
Tick Skip E-Invoicing on the invoice form.
Save, then post as normal.
What you should see: after posting, E-Invoice Status stays blank and the invoice has no E-Invoice Trail. That is the confirmation it was excluded.

Timing matters, and it is unforgiving. The flag is read once, at the moment the invoice is posted. Ticking it afterwards changes nothing, because the decision to file has already been taken — and in any case a posted invoice cannot be edited. If an invoice must not be filed, tick the box before you post it. If you post one by mistake, treat it as any other filed invoice: correct it with a credit memo.

If the checkbox is not on your invoice form, it needs an administrator — twice over. Skip E-Invoicing ships switched off by default, because most organisations never file electronically. Putting it on the page layout is not enough on its own: the Sales Invoice uses a custom entry form, so a field on the layout is displayed but cannot be filled in. To make it tickable, an administrator must also add it to the Sales Invoice Interface field set (Setup → Object Manager → Sales Invoice → Field Sets → Interface).

Why a filed invoice cannot be unposted or edited

Once an invoice has reached Submitted or Accepted, REDA Financials will not let you unpost it or change it. If you try, you will see:

This invoice has been submitted for e-invoicing and cannot be unposted or changed. Issue a Credit Memo to correct it.

This is not a REDA restriction that can be configured away. The tax authority already holds that document; it is part of the public fiscal record. Changing your copy would put your books out of step with the government's record — which is precisely what the mandate exists to prevent.

The remedy is the one accountants have always used, and it leaves a cleaner audit trail than an edit ever could: issue a credit memo to reverse the original, then raise a corrected invoice.

Worked example. You post SI-004182 for 12,400.00 and it reaches Accepted. You then notice the quantity was wrong: it should have been 11,000.00. You cannot unpost it. Instead you raise a credit memo for 12,400.00 against SI-004182 to cancel it in full, then raise a new invoice for 11,000.00. The corrected invoice is filed with the authority in its own right, and your books show the invoice, its cancellation and its replacement — the complete, honest history. Net effect on the customer's balance: 11,000.00, exactly as intended.

When the authority rejects an invoice

Rejected means the authority examined the invoice and refused it. The system worked; the content did not satisfy the rules. Most rejections come down to a handful of causes — most often the customer's tax identification number not matching the authority's register.

Open the invoice, then open its record in the E-Invoice Trails related list.
Read Response Message — the authority's reason, in its own words. It usually lists every problem it found, not just the first.
Ask whether the fault is in this invoice or in the data behind it. A wrong customer tax number is master data: the same rejection will hit every future invoice for that customer until the customer record is corrected.
Correct the cause.
Reverse the rejected invoice with a credit memo and raise a corrected one. It is filed as a new document.

If several invoices are rejected for the same reason, stop and report it. That is one systematic problem, not many separate mistakes — and reissuing invoices one at a time will not fix it. Tell your administrator what the reason says; correcting it once stops the rest.

Common mistakes to avoid

Mistake	Why it hurts	Instead
Posting first and deciding about Skip E-Invoicing afterwards	The flag is read at posting. Afterwards it is too late, and the invoice is already with the authority.	Decide before posting. If in doubt, ask before you post.
Sending the invoice to the customer as soon as it is posted	In a country with a mandate, the invoice is not legally valid until the authority has accepted it and issued the fiscal identifier.	Wait for Accepted and a populated E-Invoice UUID.
Treating Error as your problem to fix	Error means the invoice never reached the authority — a configuration or connection issue. Reissuing the invoice will not help.	Report it to your administrator.
Editing customer details on the invoice to satisfy a rejection	It may get one invoice through, but the underlying customer record is still wrong and the next invoice fails the same way.	Fix the customer record, then reissue.

Where to go next

Electronic invoicing: how it works — the concept and the end-to-end flow.
Reading an E-Invoice Trail — the detail behind a status, and what a rejection actually said.
Creating a Credit Memo — the correction route for a filed invoice.
Posting a Sales Invoice — what posting does to your books.
Setting up electronic invoicing for an entity — for your administrator.

Frequently asked questions

Usually not. Blank means nothing was ever filed for this invoice, which is correct in three normal cases: the invoice is marked Skip E-Invoicing; its entity is not configured to file electronically; or that document type is not in scope for filing. If you expected it to be filed and none of those apply, ask your administrator to check the entity's configuration.

No — both are read-only for everyone, administrators included. The status reflects what has actually happened with the authority, and the identifier is issued by the authority. If they could be typed over, neither would be worth anything as evidence.

It varies by country, but if an invoice is still Submitted the next working day while others posted at the same time have been accepted, raise it. The usual cause is on the administrator's side rather than anything to do with your invoice.

Neither. Filing is started only after the invoice has been safely saved, deliberately so that a slow or unavailable tax authority can never delay a posting or roll one back.

Then it was ticked after the invoice was posted, which is too late — the flag is read once, at posting. Correct the filed invoice with a credit memo, and tick the box before posting next time.

That depends on what your administrator has put in scope for your entity, and on what your country's authority requires. Check the entity's configuration, or ask your administrator, rather than assuming either way.