Summary invoice

What it means

A summary invoice is one tax document for several separate supplies to the same customer within a single calendar month. It replaces a series of invoices without merging the supplies into one transaction.

Each supply keeps its own tax point, so the individual supply dates have to appear on the document. Despite the similar name it has nothing to do with the EC sales list, which reports supplies to other member states.

A summary invoice concerns supplies that have already taken place. It is not an advance invoice for future deliveries, nor an invoice for a continuous service where the end of the billing period counts as the date of supply; here every supply keeps its own date and the summary document merely brings them together.

How it works in practice

It suits a supplier who delivers goods or performs work several times a month. It has to be issued within fifteen days of the end of the calendar month in which the supplies took place, and it must carry every mandatory invoice particular.

In the records and in the VAT control statement it is a single document with a single number, so matching against the customer happens per document, not per delivery. The customer claims the deduction no earlier than the period in which the tax point fell, and only if the invoice is in hand by the filing deadline; otherwise in the period in which it arrives.

It rests on the delivery notes or work reports it refers to, and when processing it we want to see them alongside. If the month includes supplies at different VAT rates, the tax on the summary invoice is broken down by rate just as on an ordinary document, so that the customer can claim its deduction correctly.

What to watch out for

An invoice for November deliveries issued in December does not move the tax into December. Booking it by the issue date declares the VAT a month late: the cross-check of the control statements exposes it, and an amended return plus late-payment interest follow.

A summary invoice cannot combine supplies from two calendar months. A document covering the last week of October and the first week of November does not qualify, and for the October supplies it is treated as an invoice issued late, with the risk of a penalty and tax placed in the wrong period in both the return and the control statement.