Turkey e-Archive Invoice Cancellation: The 8-Day Window

Short answer: under Turkish rules, cancellation of an e-Archive Invoice (e-Arşiv Fatura) or an e-Self-Employment Receipt (e-Serbest Meslek Makbuzu, e-SMM) must be made within an 8-day period, and that period starts not on the date you issued the document but on the date the e-document was delivered to the buyer. Since 1/5/2021 the notification has been made through the e-Belge portal of GİB (Gelir İdaresi Başkanlığı, the Turkish Revenue Administration).

The rules and periods in this article are based on the Revenue Administration's "e-Archive Applications (e-Archive Invoice, e-Self-Employment Receipt) Cancellation, Notice/Objection Notification Guide" (January 2025, Version 1.1). The guide was first published on 1/5/2021 and updated on 3/1/2025; the update changed the sections on the period within which an objection request must be accepted (4.2 and 4.4). Always check the text in force at ebelge.gib.gov.tr.

When do the eight days start?

In the guide's own words: "In the cancellation of e-Archive Invoice and e-SMM documents, the 8-day period is determined starting from the date the e-document is delivered to the buyer. The cancellation must in every case be made within the 8-day period."

This is where practice gets confused: if you issue the document on the 1st of the month and deliver it to the buyer on the 3rd, the eight days are counted from the 3rd. That is why it matters to have the delivery date on record — the integrator panel shows the time the document was delivered.

Cancellation and objection are not the same thing

A cancellation request is opened by the seller or the buyer so that the document is cancelled in the system. An objection, on the other hand, is a commercial objection to the content of the invoice, and its legal basis is the Turkish Commercial Code (Türk Ticaret Kanunu, TTK): under paragraph (2) of Article 21 of Law No. 6102, "a person who receives an invoice and does not object to its content within eight days of receiving it is deemed to have accepted that content."

Under the third paragraph of Article 18 of the same Law, an objection/notice may be made through a notary, by registered letter, by telegram or through the KEP system (registered electronic mail) using a secure electronic signature. Notifications made through these external channels must also be entered into the GİB system: the section "V.10. Notification of Cancellations/Objections, Reports and Notices Relating to e-Documents" added to VUK (Tax Procedure Law) General Communiqué No. 509 governs this.

Does the other party have to approve?

No. According to the guide, cancellation/objection requests may be approved by the buyer or the seller of the invoice concerned, but the other party is not obliged to approve them. The request is recorded in the system; not approving it does not mean the request is deemed not to have been made.

Where is the notification made?

Cancellation and objection notifications go through GİB's e-Belge applications; for those using the portal method, the entry point is ebelge.gib.gov.tr and the cancellation/objection screen reached from there. The request is created from the "Documents Issued in My Name" tab or the tab of documents you issued yourself, by selecting the document with a date range. If an objection has been made through an external channel (notary, KEP, registered letter, telegram), the number and date of the resulting document are entered in the relevant fields.

What changes if you use a private integrator?

Authority and periods do not change — they are set by legislation and do not differ by integrator. What changes is where the work is done: taxpayers using a private integrator can create cancellation and objection requests through the integrator's panel, and the documents and request history sit in the same place. Tracking the eight-day period also becomes easier, because the delivery date is recorded in the panel.

ELPO is on GİB's official list of private integrators (how to verify it on the list), and in the e-Belge panel five document types are managed in a single account.

Points that are often confused

• e-Invoice and e-Archive are not the same. The 8-day cancellation rule in this article applies to e-Archive Invoice and e-SMM. On the e-Invoice (e-Fatura) side, the commercial invoice scenario uses a rejection response process; for the difference between the two, see the difference between e-Invoice and e-Archive article.
• The period is counted from the delivery date, not the issue date. This is an explicit provision of the guide.
• Cancellation in the system does not replace a commercial objection. The external objection channels in the TTK can also be used, and they must be notified to the GİB system.

Sources

• GİB — e-Archive Applications Cancellation, Notice/Objection Notification Guide, January 2025, V.1.1
• Tax Procedure Law (Vergi Usul Kanunu) General Communiqué No. 509, section "V.10"
• Turkish Commercial Code No. 6102, Article 18/3 and Article 21/2