When a price or date changes after you invoiced
What a travel agency does with the invoice and pay link when a booking's fare or dates change after invoicing, before or after the client has paid.
By Achekam · · 5 min read · For Travel businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
A family books a stay at a coastal lodge with flights. You quote, they accept, you invoice and e-mail a pay link. Soon afterwards the airline's fare class sells out and the next one up costs more. Or the client phones: can they leave a day later, and add a night at the end? Either way, the invoice sitting in their inbox is now wrong.
Travel agencies deal with changes like this every week, and the tempting fix is to edit the invoice and resend it. In Achekam, as in any properly kept set of books, an issued invoice is not edited. What you do instead depends on one question: has the client paid yet? This article walks through both cases, and how to charge for the change itself.
A fare that rises before the client pays
If the client has not paid anything, the cleanest answer is to cancel the old invoice and issue a correct one.
An administrator can void an issued invoice that has no payments or credits against it, and the void reverses its journal. The sale it recorded is taken back out of the books, so the old amount no longer sits in your debtors or your output VAT.
Before voiding, check two things:
- No payment has arrived. Look for a receipt on the invoice and check the gateway or bank for anything not yet recorded. A client who paid the old link while you were re-quoting changes the case entirely; see the next section.
- The client knows the new price. Phone or e-mail first. A void followed by a higher invoice with no explanation is how complaints start.
Voiding an unpaid invoice and issuing a new one with a new link
Once the old invoice is voided, create a new one as a draft with the new fare and dates, check it, and issue it. Issuing takes the next number in your sequence and posts debtors, sales and output VAT.
Then create a new pay link. A payment link can only be made for an issued invoice, never for a draft or a voided one. A link lasts 14 days by default, and an open link for the same amount is reused rather than duplicated. E-mail the new invoice with its link, and ask the client to discard the first e-mail. An issued invoice can be downloaded as a PDF on your letterhead and e-mailed from the invoice, and a failed send is reported as not sent, so check it went.
A paid booking that changes: credit notes and new invoices
Once the client has paid, in full or in part, the invoice cannot be voided. Now the original stays, and you correct it with documents that sit beside it.
If the price goes up, leave the paid invoice alone and issue a new invoice for the extra amount, with a clear description: "Additional fare following change of travel date". Send it with its own pay link.
If the price goes down, or the change replaces part of the trip, issue a credit note from the original invoice. A credit note is always issued from the invoice it corrects, in full or for chosen lines, posted to the ledger, and can be downloaded as a PDF or e-mailed. Credit the lines that changed, then invoice the new arrangement on a fresh invoice. Leftover credit is held for the client, and a receipt can be re-allocated, so the money already paid can be moved to where it belongs. Your accountant will tell you how they prefer it applied.
A worked example in words: the client paid in full for flights and a lodge stay. They now want flights on different dates and an extra night. Credit the flight line and the accommodation line on the original invoice, invoice the new flights and the longer stay on a new invoice, and re-allocate the original payment to it, dealing with any leftover credit as your accountant prefers. The client then owes, or is owed, only the difference.
Online payments are checked against the amount the link asked for, and a repeated gateway notification never pays twice, so a client who paid the old link before you voided it will show as paid on that invoice, not on the new one. That is your signal that the paid-booking route applies.
Charging a change fee
If your booking terms allow a change fee, invoice it as its own line, either on the new invoice or on a separate one, described plainly: "Change fee: travel date amended at client's request". Do not hide it inside a higher fare. A stated fee is far easier to explain than an unexplained increase, and your income from fees stays visible in the books.
The fee your terms allow, and whether a supplier's own change penalty is passed on at cost or with a margin, belong in your booking terms, signed before travel. Refunding a cancelled trip covers the harder case where the booking is cancelled outright.
The credit note keeps the original invoice date and tax codes
When a line states no rate, VAT is taken at the rate in force on the invoice date. A credit note uses its original invoice's date and tax codes, so VAT on the credited lines is reversed exactly as it was charged, even if the change happens in a later month or after a rate change. Crediting subscribers for an outage last month shows the same rule at work in another industry.
That keeps your VAT records consistent, but your return still has to reflect the credit in the right period. In Kenya, KRA's FAQ on filing returns on iTax answers practical questions on credit notes, carrying forward VAT credits and amended returns. South African and Nigerian agencies should confirm the treatment with their accountant.
For trips priced in foreign currency, where the change is caused by the exchange rate rather than the supplier, see invoicing a dollar-priced trip in local currency.
A change desk routine
Before touching any document after a change, ask three questions: has the client paid anything, does the new price go up or down, and do our booking terms allow a change fee? Then follow the matching route above, every time. A consistent routine is what keeps your receivables, your VAT and your client's understanding of the booking all in agreement.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
