Credit invoice

A credit invoice, credit or credit note are all the same thing. It is an invoice with a negative grand total, that is, a minus amount.

Credit invoices can be created for a variety of reasons. The most common reason is to correct a previously created invoice that is already handed to the recipient. It is also possible to use a credit invoice to undo only a part of an invoice, such as when your customer cancels part of the order.

Concrete example

If you mutually decide that you will waive an earlier agreement, you can fully credit the original invoice. This is easy to explain with a short example. Suppose the original invoice has number 0001 and had an amount of € 100.00. To undo this agreement, you create a new invoice. This will thus be number 0002. We create a credit invoice because the grand total is going to be negative. So to fully credit, the amount corresponds inversely to the original invoice. In this case € -100.00.

Crediting in the right way

Any invoice created in Daxto that has a negative grand total is a credit invoice. Still, it is wise not to just create an invoice with a negative grand total, unless the credit invoice does not need to be offset against another invoice AND you will refund the amount to your customer. In that case you connect the refund to the separate credit invoice and everything is settled.

In most cases, however, you proceed as follows: to credit some or all of a previously created invoice, go to the original invoice first. After that, choose Actions → Duplicate to credit invoice.

The advantage of this is that your Daxto assistant will do most of the work for you, such as transcribing all the data and placing a note mentioning the original invoice number. Also, the Daxto assistant will automatically make the amounts negative and make sure the totals of both invoices are balanced. Finally, your Daxto assistant now also knows which original invoice you are creating a credit invoice for, and the whole situation is automatically taken care of by your assistant.

Partial crediting

Suppose your customer cancels half of the order after you have already made the invoice, but before payment has been made. Let's take as an example that it concerns two chairs, each costing € 50.00. The customer no longer wants to buy one of those two chairs. In that case, you create credit invoice 0002 with a grand total of € -50.00. You create this one quite easily:

First, you duplicate the original invoice to a credit invoice. Your assistant filled this one out completely for you. But this has both chairs on it; you only want to cancel one of them. You remove the item of the chair that will be charged from the credit invoice.

After you save the credit invoice, the grand totals of the original invoice will show that half has been credited. This is because your Daxto assistant automatically takes care of the paperwork surrounding this situation. The customer now just needs to pay off the remaining half. You connect that payment to the original invoice. That's all.

Don't forget to hand your customer the credit invoice as well. That, together with the original invoice, makes the story correct for the customer as well as his accounts.

Credit after payment

However, sometimes you don't credit prior. Sometimes you credit after payment has already been made, or a portion has been paid. So how does it work in that case?

In Daxto, the decision was made to make the original invoice the centerpiece. That way you don't have to follow a trail through your records like a detective to get a complete picture. All amounts, credits and memorandum bookings are connected to the original invoice. This way, that invoice always has a current view of where things stand.

An example might be that your customer first purchases and pays for something, but then you both agree that there will still be a 50% discount. This would look like this:

So in this example, after receiving payment, a decision was made to credit a portion of the invoice. You create that credit from the original invoice, by duplicating it to a credit invoice and then adjusting it to half. If you had your assistant do a check at this point, it would indicate that the original invoice was "overpaid". After all, the customer had previously paid everything. Therefore, because of the new credit invoice, there is now an overpayment.

You also see this "overpayment" in the listing of totals on the bottom of the original invoice and in the connected payments to its left. The solution is to refund money to the customer and also connect this transaction to the original invoice. So that is invoice 0001. So everything around this situation can be seen at any time and at a glance in invoice 0001, which is where everything started. That makes it perfectly clear.

Credit invoice from supplier (purchase invoice)

Have you received a credit invoice from a supplier? Then select the correct original invoice for which this credit invoice is intended in the 'Credit invoice for purchase invoice' field. Your Daxto assistant will then offset the two invoices against each other.

If the grand total of the credit invoice you received does not match the original invoice, you can process the remainder by connecting a transaction or booking it to a category.

Want to know more?

There is much more to learn about invoices in general. For example, check out this overview.