Credit Notes
Reverse all or part of an invoice and reduce what a customer owes.
Overview
A credit note is an invoice in the opposite direction. It keeps a link to the invoice it corrects and posts the reverse accounting entry, so it reduces both the customer balance and revenue.
Use a credit note instead of editing a posted invoice: the original stays in the ledger and the correction is visible.
When to use credit notes
- Goods are returned or a price was wrong.
- You agree a discount after invoicing.
- An invoice was raised in error and needs to be cancelled with a trail.
Prerequisites
Step by step
Open Customers → Accounting → Credit Notes. The list shows the credit note, customer, original invoice, date, amount and status.
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Screenshot for this step has not been captured yet — run npm run docs:flow.
Field reference
| Field | Description | Required | Data type | Business meaning |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Customer | The customer being credited. | Yes | Customer record | Reduces their receivable. |
| Original invoice | The invoice being corrected. | No | Invoice | Links the two documents. |
| Credit reason | Why the credit is issued. | No | Text | Saved in the document notes. |
| Lines | Product or description, quantity, price and tax. | Yes | Lines | Each posts the reverse of the original line. |
Lifecycle
DraftPostedApplied
A credit note is edited only while it is a draft.
Accounting impact
- Debit income and tax for each line; credit the receivable account.
- Stock-tracked lines can return goods to stock where configured.
Permissions
These permission keys control access (granted to roles in Administration → Roles & Permissions):
- accounting.invoices.creditnote