Your Japanese customer returned your invoice. Here's what their accounting team is checking.
Six reasons a Japanese company sends a foreign invoice back — registration number, per-rate tax, addressee, due date, bank details — and how to fix each.
What happened
You finished the work, sent a PDF invoice in English, and waited. Two weeks later the 経理 (keiri, “accounting department”) of your client replied with a polite message asking you to reissue the document. The reasons sounded minor: no registration number, no tax breakdown, the wrong due date.
Nobody disputed the work or the amount. The money still did not move, and the payment slipped by one or two months because it missed a monthly closing cycle. That is the pattern we see most often when a foreign supplier bills a Japanese company for the first time.
An invoice in Japan is not only a request for money. It is the document the buyer files to claim back 消費税 (shōhizei, “consumption tax”) and the document their internal approval chain attaches to a payment request. When a field is missing, the person reviewing it has no discretion to wave it through, so it comes back to you.
Here is what their accounting team was checking, item by item.
What’s going on on the Japanese side
Since October 2023, a Japanese buyer keeps a 適格請求書 (tekikaku seikyūsho, “qualified invoice”) to claim the 仕入税額控除 (shiire zeigaku kōjo, “input tax credit”). The NTA (National Tax Agency) sets its required items, and a document missing one does not do that job.
What to do next
- Ask a 税理士 (zeirishi, tax accountant) about registration. Whether the invoice system applies to your business, and whether registration is open or worthwhile for you, depends on facts we cannot see from here. The NTA’s published guidance sets out who may register; a tax accountant will check how it reads for your entity.
- Rebuild the invoice around the six required items. Use the table below as a checklist and put each item in its own labelled field rather than in prose.
- Split the totals by tax rate. Show the subtotal per rate, the applicable rate, and the consumption tax amount per rate, and mark any reduced-rate lines.
- Match the buyer’s closing cycle. Ask which closing date and payment date they use, then set the due date to that date instead of a rolling term of your own.
- State the payment route and the fees in writing. Give the account details you want used, say whether you hold a Japanese account, and add one line on who bears the remittance fee.
- Add the identifiers. Invoice number, issue date, subject line naming the billing month, your contact person and theirs.
- Resend with a short covering email in Japanese. Attach the corrected PDF, keep the same invoice number if the buyer asked for a reissue of the same document, and ask them to tell you if anything else is missing.
- Confirm the payment date in the reply. Ask them to confirm the date the payment will leave, so you find out about a slipped cycle before it costs you a month.
Template
The six required items of a qualified invoice, per the NTA:
| # | 日本語 | Romaji | English |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 適格請求書発行事業者の氏名又は名称及び登録番号 | tekikaku seikyūsho hakkō jigyōsha no shimei mata wa meishō oyobi tōroku bangō | Issuer’s name and registration number |
| 2 | 取引年月日 | torihiki nengappi | Transaction date |
| 3 | 取引内容（軽減税率の対象品目である旨） | torihiki naiyō | What was supplied, marking reduced-rate items |
| 4 | 税率ごとに区分して合計した対価の額及び適用税率 | zeiritsu goto ni kubun shite gōkei shita taika no gaku oyobi tekiyō zeiritsu | Totals split by tax rate, and the rate applied |
| 5 | 税率ごとに区分した消費税額等 | zeiritsu goto ni kubun shita shōhizeigaku tō | Consumption tax amount per rate |
| 6 | 書類の交付を受ける事業者の氏名又は名称 | shorui no kōfu o ukeru jigyōsha no shimei mata wa meishō | Name of the business the invoice is issued to |
A covering email for the reissued invoice:
Subject: Invoice INV-XXXX for [month] — reissued
Dear [name]-san,
Thank you for pointing out the missing items on our invoice.
Please find the corrected invoice attached.
Invoice no.: INV-XXXX
Issue date: [date]
Due date: [date, per your closing cycle]
Remittance: [bank, branch, account type, number, account name]
Please let us know if anything else is needed for your records.
件名：請求書（INV-XXXX）再発行のご送付
〇〇株式会社
経理ご担当者様
いつも大変お世話になっております。〇〇の△△でございます。
このたびは請求書の記載事項につきましてご指摘をいただき、誠にありがとうございます。
修正いたしました請求書を添付にてお送りいたします。
請求書番号：INV-XXXX
発行日：〇年〇月〇日
お支払期日：〇年〇月〇日
お振込先：〇〇銀行 〇〇支店 普通 〇〇〇〇〇〇〇 〇〇〇〇
他にご不足の点がございましたら、お手数ですがお知らせいただけますと幸いです。
今後ともどうぞよろしくお願い申し上げます。When to bring in a professional
Bring in a 税理士 (zeirishi, tax accountant) for anything touching registration, consumption tax filing, or refunds — those are judgements about your entity, and the NTA’s guidance is written for people who read it daily. Bring in a lawyer when the dispute is about the contract rather than the paperwork. Laying out the six required items, the due date and the bank details on your own template is ordinary document work you can handle in-house.
Common questions
Does the buyer lose the whole deduction if we have no registration number?
Not immediately. The NTA’s published transitional measure lets a buyer deduct a declining share of the equivalent input tax on purchases from a non-registered party: 80% through 2026-09-30, then 70%, 50% and 30% in later steps, ending 2031-09-30 source.
Can we send the invoice in English?
An English invoice can carry the six required items, and the amounts and consumption tax are stated in Japanese yen source. In our experience a bilingual layout moves faster, because the person filing it reads Japanese field labels.
How do we check a registration number a client gave us?
The NTA publishes registered issuers on its public lookup site, and registration data is searchable there source.
Should the due date be 30 days or the end of the following month?
Ask the buyer. Their closing cycle governs when money leaves, and the default across Japanese B2B is 月末締め翌月末払い (getsumatsu-jime yokugetsu-matsu-barai, close at month end, pay at the end of the following month) — see how Japanese companies pay by bank transfer.
Our pricing page confuses Japanese buyers too. Related?
Same root cause: fields a Japanese buyer expects, absent. We list them in what Japanese buyers look for on your pricing page, and the wider sequence is in selling to Japanese companies.
Kit
The B2B Paperwork Kit holds the bilingual documents this guide draws from: an invoice template with the six required items as labelled fields, a quotation with a payment-terms block, a delivery note, and the covering and reminder emails in English and Japanese. It is built for suppliers outside Japan billing Japanese companies for the first time.
This guide goes stale when
- The NTA changes the required items (記載事項) of a qualified invoice.
- The transitional measure for purchases from non-registered businesses steps down or ends (the published schedule runs to 2031-09-30).
- The NTA changes the registration number format or how registered issuers are published.
Sources
| Publisher | Document | Checked |
|---|---|---|
| nta | JAPAN INVOICE SYSTEM Oct.1,2023‐ (Revised in Apr. 2026) | September 23, 2026 |
| nta | No.6625 適格請求書等の記載事項 | September 23, 2026 |
| nta | No.6498 適格請求書等保存方式（インボイス制度） | September 23, 2026 |
| nta | 消費税の仕入税額控除制度における適格請求書等保存方式に関するQ&A 問113（免税事業者等からの仕入れに係る経過措置） | September 23, 2026 |
| nta | 登録番号とは｜国税庁インボイス制度適格請求書発行事業者公表サイト | September 23, 2026 |
| jetro | 輸出代金の請求方法と送金に関する銀行諸費用の負担：日本 | September 23, 2026 |
Japan B2B Paperwork Kit
Twelve bilingual documents for selling to a Japanese company — quote, purchase order, delivery note, qualified invoice, payment terms, reminders and the glossary that decodes them.
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