What it does
A correction request bundles one or more invoices from the same claimant, addressed to one vendor email (plus any additional vendor contacts you want copied in).
Sending it does three things at once:
The vendor receives an email led by the claimant's own company details, with a summary PDF and a link to a secure correction portal
Those invoices are marked Correction requested in VAT4U, and the request appears in the correction tracker
You — and the claimant's delivery manager — get notified at every step the vendor takes
The vendor never needs a VAT4U account. They verify their identity with a 6-digit code emailed to them, upload corrected files, tick off the invoices they have corrected, and close the request themselves.
What it does not do: it does not edit or re-issue anything on the vendor's side, and it does not touch the original document. The original invoice image is always still there for audit.
The Spanish correction partner is a separate process. If the claimant uses the DevoluIVA connector for corrections, that flow still works exactly as before. The tracker shows both in two tabs: Supplier Requests (this feature) and Spanish portal correction requests.
Before you begin — what you need
A vendor email address to send the request to. VAT4U pre-fills the vendor's primary contact email if one is stored on the vendor record, and offers the stored secondary contact as a CC. You can always overwrite both
Invoices from a single claimant. A request cannot span two claimants — send one request per claimant
Every selected invoice must have at least one document attached. There is nothing to correct on an invoice with no invoice image
If either of the last two conditions fails, VAT4U blocks the request and tells you which one — nothing is sent.
Step 1 — Start the request
There are two entry points, depending on whether you are correcting a batch or a single invoice.
A batch: in Manage Expenses, filter or select the invoices you want corrected, open the batch actions, and choose Request Correction from Vendor
A single invoice: open the expense and click Request correction in the header
Either way the same request form opens.
Step 2 — Fill in the request
The form first tells you what it is about to do:
how many invoices will be included
a warning if some of them were already part of an earlier correction request — worth a second look before you re-send, so the vendor is not chased twice for the same invoice
Then fill in:
Field | Required | Notes |
Supplier email | Yes | Pre-filled from the vendor's primary contact when available. This is the address the verification code is sent to |
Additional vendor contacts (CC) | No | Any number of extra addresses on the vendor's side, copied on every message. Pre-filled from the vendor's stored secondary contact when there is one. You are CC'd automatically |
Reason for correction | Yes | Pick from: missing VAT number, incorrect VAT rate, wrong invoice date, incorrect customer address, wrong amount, or Other. The reason is printed on the summary PDF and shown in the portal |
Additional note | No | Free text, passed on to the vendor as extra context |
Response deadline | No | A date shown in the email, the summary PDF and the portal. It is a stated expectation, not a hard cut-off — see Reminders and expiry |
Automatic reminders | Yes | Weekly, Monthly, or None. Reminders stop automatically once the request is marked resolved — see Reminders and expiry |
Click Send correction request. The request is sent in the background, so you can carry on working; the confirmation email lands in your inbox once it has gone out.
Step 3 — What the vendor receives
The vendor gets one email containing:
who is asking — the claimant's legal name, address and VAT number, so the vendor recognises the customer rather than only seeing VAT4U branding
the reason, your note, and the deadline if you set one
how many invoices need correcting
a link to the secure correction portal
a summary PDF attached — a formal, printable version of the same request, listing every invoice number, date and amount, with an outstanding/received overview, the claimant's details, and a general contact address
the original invoice documents, attached up to a limit — see below
You are CC'd on this email, along with any additional vendor contacts you added. Replies come back into VAT4U (see Vendor replies).
How many documents are attached
To keep the email deliverable, invoice documents are capped:
5 invoices or fewer — every invoice document is attached
more than 5 — a single sample invoice is attached, and the summary PDF notes that the full set is available in the portal
The summary PDF always lists every invoice in the request, however many there are.
The contact address printed on the email and PDF is a general mailbox, not a named person. No individual account-manager name is exposed to vendors.
Step 4 — What the vendor does in the portal
The portal is a public page, but nothing in it is visible until the vendor proves they own the mailbox the request was sent to.
Verify identity. The vendor clicks Send verification code and receives a 6-digit code, valid for 10 minutes. After 5 failed attempts the code is locked and they must request a new one. A Resend code link is always available
Review the request. Once verified, the portal shows the requesting company's name, address and VAT number, a general contact address, the correction reason, and the request details
Upload corrected invoices. There is one drop area that takes any number of files at once
any format — PDF, images, ZIP archives
maximum 50 MB per file
the vendor does not match files to individual invoices — VAT4U does that internally
everything they have uploaded is listed back to them
Tick the invoices they have corrected. Each invoice appears as a card below the drop area with its number, date, vendor and amount, and a checkbox. A Select all button ticks every invoice at once
Mark as Complete. This closes the request and invalidates the link. If some invoices are not ticked, the vendor is warned first and can still confirm — that produces a partial result rather than a resolved one
A vendor who completes the request gets a confirmation email. The portal link cannot be reused after completion.
No VAT amount is shown to the vendor. On an invoice that has not been fully processed yet, that figure could be misleading, so it is deliberately left out of the portal.
Step 5 — Track the request
Go to VAT Recovery → Correction Requests. The Supplier Requests tab lists every request across the claimants you have access to, with a stats strip at the top — total, open, resolved, partial, expired — that doubles as a filter. You can also search by reference, vendor email or claimant, and filter by status.
A Refresh button re-reads the statuses without a full page reload. Each row also has a download action when the vendor has uploaded files.
Click a request to open its detail panel:
Details — claimant, vendor email, CC contacts (editable in place), reason, deadline, and the reminder cadence with how many reminders have gone out
Vendor engagement — whether the vendor has opened the email, and whether they have replied. These are tracked separately on purpose: an email that was never opened is a different problem from one that was read and ignored
Fulfillment — how many invoices the vendor has marked corrected
Invoices — each invoice, linked to its expense record, badged Pending, Marked corrected, or Replaced
Supplier uploads — every file the vendor dropped in, with Download all (.zip)
Emails sent — each message sent to the vendor, and whether it was opened
Activity log — a timeline of everything that happened: dispatched, code sent, portal first opened, email opened, replies, uploads, ticks, reminders, resends, contact changes, resolution, expiry, re-opens
Actions — Re-send / change address, Mark resolved, and Re-open request on partial and expired requests
Statuses
Status | Meaning |
Sent | The request has gone out; the vendor has not opened the portal yet |
OTP Verified | The vendor verified their identity and opened the portal |
In Progress | The vendor has uploaded a file or ticked at least one invoice |
Partial | The vendor closed the request without ticking everything |
Resolved | Every invoice was ticked as corrected and the vendor marked the request complete — or someone on your side marked it resolved |
Expired | 60 days passed without a full response |
Managing a live request
You do not have to start over when something needs to change.
Re-sending to a different address
Vendors often answer with "send it to this address instead". Use Re-send / change address in the detail panel. You can:
send to a new address and make it the primary contact — the previous one is kept as a CC so the trail is not lost
add CC contacts and re-send to the existing address
The request keeps its reference, its invoices, its portal link and its whole history. Nothing is restarted.
Editing the CC list
The CC contacts row in the detail panel is editable in place, so you can add or remove vendor contacts without sending anything.
Marking a request resolved
Mark resolved closes the request once the corrected invoices have come in. It:
sets the status to Resolved
stops automated reminders
closes the vendor's portal link
sets the invoices to correction status Corrected
Use this when you have the corrected invoices in hand — including when they arrived outside the portal.
Re-opening a request
Partial and expired requests can be re-opened from the detail panel. This resets the request to Sent, issues a fresh 60-day portal link, restarts the reminder cycle, and re-sends the request email and summary PDF to the vendor. Anything already uploaded is kept — the vendor picks up where they left off.
Vendor replies
Correction emails are sent with a reply-to address that routes back into VAT4U, so when a vendor simply hits Reply:
the message is captured by the inbox / Smart BCC module and linked to the correction request
the person who raised the request is notified by email and in-app
the reply is recorded on the request's activity log
This is what the Replied signal in the tracker reflects. Only addresses the request was actually sent to are accepted this way; anything else falls back to the normal inbox whitelist rules.
This needs a Smart BCC integration on the claimant. Without one, replies go to the general contact mailbox instead of being linked to the request automatically.
Where corrected invoices end up
There are two paths, and they behave differently.
Files dropped into the bulk area are stored against the correction request, not attached to an invoice automatically. VAT4U matches them to the right invoices internally. You can pull them all down with Download all (.zip) from the tracker.
A file uploaded against one specific invoice becomes a first-class document on that expense, immediately visible in the expense's document list. The original invoice image is not deleted or overwritten.
Two things are recorded on the invoice's own audit trail either way: that a correction was requested, and that a corrected document was received.
When invoices become "Corrected"
Invoices with an actual replacement document attached move to correction status Corrected when the vendor closes the request — whether they closed it fully or partially
Invoices the vendor only ticked stay as Correction requested until someone on your side uses Mark resolved — because the files still have to be matched and checked first
Everything else stays Correction requested so it remains visible as outstanding
The corrected file is not re-processed automatically. It is attached, not re-read — nobody's extracted amounts change behind your back. Review the corrected invoice and update the expense yourself before including it in a claim.
Reminders and expiry
While a request is still open, VAT4U chases the vendor for you on the cadence you chose when raising it.
Weekly — a reminder every 7 days
Monthly — a reminder every 30 days
None — no automatic chasing
The reminder email shows how many invoices are still outstanding and, if set, the deadline. Reminders stop as soon as the request is marked resolved, resolved by the vendor, closed as partial, or expired.
After 60 days, an unanswered or partially answered request expires. The portal link stops working, and you and the delivery manager are notified that manual follow-up is needed. That notice tells you whether the vendor ever opened the request email — if they never did, the address may simply be unmonitored, and re-sending to a different contact is usually more productive than chasing the same mailbox.
Both reminders and expiry run from a daily maintenance job, so they land the day after they become due rather than to the minute.
Who gets notified, and when
Every internal notification below arrives as an email and an in-app notification (the bell). Internal notifications go to whoever raised the request, and to the claimant's delivery manager when that is a different person.
Event | Vendor | You (requester) | Delivery manager (if assigned to claimant) |
Request sent | ✔ (with summary PDF) | ✔ (also CC'd on the vendor email) | — |
Verification code | ✔ | — | — |
Vendor opens the portal for the first time | — | — | ✔ |
Vendor replies to the request | — | ✔ | — |
Reminder (weekly or monthly) | ✔ | — | — |
Request resolved | ✔ (receipt) | ✔ | ✔ |
Request closed partially | — | ✔ | ✔ |
Request expired after 60 days | — | ✔ | ✔ |
Email opens are tracked but not notified. They show up in the tracker's Vendor engagement panel and in the activity log, so you can see at a glance whether a request has landed in a mailbox nobody reads.
Troubleshooting
"To send invoices for correction please pick one claimant at a time." The selection spans more than one claimant. Narrow the filter to a single claimant and send one request per claimant.
"Make sure to pick only invoices which have at least one Document attached." One or more selected invoices have no invoice image. Filter those out, or retrieve the missing documents first — see Retrieve Missing Documents.
The vendor says the link is invalid or expired. The link stops working when the request is resolved, closed as partial, or 60 days old. Open the request in the tracker and use Re-open request to issue a fresh link.
The vendor never got the verification code. The code only goes to the address the request was sent to — check it in the detail panel for a typo. If it is wrong, use Re-send / change address to point the request at the correct address; you do not need to raise a new request. Also worth checking their spam folder, as the code arrives from the same sender as the original request.
The vendor says it went to the wrong person, or there is another contact to try. Use Re-send / change address to switch the primary contact or add more CC addresses. The request keeps its reference and history.
The email was never opened. Check Vendor engagement in the detail panel. If the request shows as never opened after a reminder or two, the mailbox is probably unmonitored — re-send to a different contact rather than continuing to chase the same address.
The vendor is locked out after too many attempts. Codes lock after 5 wrong attempts. The vendor can simply request a new code with Resend code — no action needed from you.
The vendor emailed the corrected invoice to me directly instead of using the portal. Attach it to the expense yourself as you normally would, then use Mark resolved on the request. That closes it and stops the automated reminders, so the vendor is not chased for something you already have.
The download gives "None of the uploaded documents could be read from storage." The request has upload records but the files could not be fetched. That is a storage problem, not an empty request — raise it with support rather than assuming the vendor sent nothing.