Hello
I manage an import/export company and this example happens all the time: a customer receives a container costing them $1000, they receive the container, however some items broke in the container, so i issue a $50 refund/credit. How do I issue a credit to an invoice and have it register on the invoice and be able to track the total credits issued? I understand I could just go into the invoice and adjust it as a line item, but then I would not be able to track the total credits for the years or have it show up on my P&L. I could do a journal entry but then it would not be reflected on the invoice, since there is not way (that i know of) to link a journal entry as an invoice payment, so i would have outstanding invoices. Lastly, i do not want to do both because the credit would be hitting A/R twice. Any suggestions would be helpful.
Hey @CRJ! Thanks for reaching out! I've merged your post with a thread about credit notes here. We currently do not have a feature that allows you to create credit notes in Wave, but it is a common request. You can read through the pages of this thread to see what other users are doing to account for credit notes in Wave. Hopefully one of the workarounds here will work for you at the moment!
I can see this is the lastest one for asking create a create note / credit memo.
I think I have find a way to do it, although it is not the most efficient, this works on wave import as well ( for large quatities)!!!
Go to invoice, find the original invoice, on the very right hand click the drop down and click duplicate
Now you have exact same invoice for the correct Vendor. Manually change the default title from Invoice to "Credit note "( this section is normally hiding on the top, called 'business address and contact details, title , logo'
Then you can put your own documentation number in the invoice number section ( **Sadly you cant customise the name ' invoice number'* But i dont think people really care)
delete all the other item , and only keep the item that you need to send credit note. change the unit price to negative figure.
Change the note like ' This is the credit note that against invoice inv1911-1. Bank transfer payment should reach your account in 1 working day.
If you have any other questions, please contact us'
+1 for the I Can't Believe there are no credit notes...even very small businesses need this. I'm not sure what the moderators or product team are doing to keep in touch with business owners/typical users, but man, this is seriously a basic/essential/fundamental thing...I wouldn't even call it a feature, it's supposed to be part of the core.
I know this software is pretty good and free and I much appreciate it, but this is a serious pain point. At least allow us to record a positive or negative balance at the Customer account level.
Hi @Brigette . We don't currently offer the capability of a credit note, but I've merged your thread into this one so you can get some more context as well as resources on it.
I've read the whole thread for the past half an hour, and I can't believe this discussion is still going on since two years. I've nothing more to add other that what everyone has already stated, that a simple credit note is a basic function of any accounting software and is necessary for even the smallest of the businesses.
Adding my voice!
Definitely need the Credit Note functionality - pretty stock standard for any accounting package.
Thanks for the great product thus far, Wave! Please add Credit Notes.
I've been using Wave for two years now hoping that it will add essential features such as Credit Notes, and I would gladly pay for it. I would even be happy with your suggestion how to work around it if it was possible to change the name from Invoice to Credit Note. But having read this thread I see now that there is no intention in bringing this feature into Wave accounting! I have made up my mind to move to a proper accounting system that doesn't waste my time. Happy to pay for it too!
@CarloSteyn said:
Please introduce the CN feature. Surely managing an accounting platform you should know that this is a required feature. As the members here have given some good advice on what it should do and how it should work, i think it would be best to chat to a few accountants about this - just to make sure you cover all (or at least most) of the basis. Also the fact that once an invoiced is sent it SHOULD NOT BE editable (which some are probably using as a workaround - which is why i mention it here). This is a certain loophole for fraudsters, and i'm sure Wave would not want to be associated with even the slightest of a possibility of this...?
thats like saying we shuldnt sell kitchen knives because someone might stab someone else
We appreciate your contribution to our community. At this time unfortunately we're working on a lot of back end work for our invoicing platform before we can implement new changes moving forward. It's not on the current roadmap but once again we appreciate your +1 to this feature request.
@James_Hudson said:
Hey @AndréKoch , I believe you can set the credit note off against the original by creating a deposit and withdrawal transaction in the Transactions page, one to mark the original invoice as paid, and one to mark the negative invoice as paid.
Categorizing the withdrawal transaction as a refund to the negative invoice that you've created should mark the negative invoice as paid!
Hope this helps!
This doesn't work for me because my invoices are in foreign currency. To work around this; I add a payment to the invoice to an (foreign currency) undeposited funds account and add a transaction to the undeposited funds account that refunds the sales account. BUT I have a couple of problems with this:
1) Since it is a foreign currency undeposited funds account, the transfer doesnt correct the gain/loss in foreign currency. So I have to make a journal entry to correct this, but if Wave finally automates this I will have to delete these journal entries. EDIT!!! Correction: There should not be a gain/loss in forex here since the in and out entries are marked on the SAME DAY!! but wave still shows different local currency values for the 2 transactions in the "Account Transactions" report. I BELIEVE THIS IS AN OVERSIGHT/ERROR in the software (so yeah i dont have journal entries for this, wave needs to correct this). You may check my "Undeposited AUD" account to understand what I mean. And yes this also applied to bad debt and write off transactions.
2) THE CUSTOMER'S INVOICE shows this as a payment made! Can wave please add "Credit Note" to the payment methods in invoices and show these as credit notes at the bottom of the invoices instead of a payment. Also payment methods such as "Bad Debt" and "Write Off" will also be appreciated.
@James_Hudson said:
Hey @AndréKoch , I believe you can set the credit note off against the original by creating a deposit and withdrawal transaction in the Transactions page, one to mark the original invoice as paid, and one to mark the negative invoice as paid.
Categorizing the withdrawal transaction as a refund to the negative invoice that you've created should mark the negative invoice as paid!
Ok so I had a comment here and when trying to edit it, it just disappeared
So anyway, since I've got a chance to thoroughly use your updated software I have found that I can add a payment to the invoice for the value of the "credit note" and select my undeposited funds (transit) account (I have one for each currency I deal with) as the deposit account and then create an expense transaction in the same transit account and categorise it as a refund to sales (and even link the customer to the transaction, INGENIOUS!!).
BUT, yup there's a big but (actually 2):
1) The live invoice shows the customer that a payment was made. It would be great if when recording a payment, "Credit Note" would be one of the selections available in the drop-down for payment method (hmm.. actually all of the other payment methods listed don't have any significance to how your software works). And if "Credit Note" is selected it would ACTUALLY SHOW on the invoice as "Credit note made on xxxxxxx" instead of "Payment made on.....". If I were you guys I would go even further to combine all of the current payment methods to "Money's Received" and not just add "Credit Note" but also add "Bad Debt" and "Write Off" to the drop-down.
2) ERROR/Mismatch in rate of forex between the invoice payment and the expense transaction made in the transit account. At first I thought I needed to create gain/loss in forex as journal transaction to correct the mismatch but I was wrong. This is an in and out transaction in the same account (with the same currency) and there should not be any discrepency in the forex on the same day. This is definitely an error in Wave and needs to be fixed. Oh yeah: you can have a look at my "Undeposited AUD" transit account to actually see this error. Please take a look at it in the transactions page as well as the "Account Transactions" report (filtering the report's Account field to "Undeposited AUD"); both balances (local and foreign currencies) should total to 0 (zero).
Oh and @BarsinA, what I have mentioned here is a simple programming fix that will not take time to implement even though it will not give your users the feature of issuing a separate credit note it would solve the problem by displaying the credit note on the invoice it-self. AND when the above mentioned forex error is fixed all of the accounts will also line up accurately so once fixed make sure to add my method to your how-to guide for credit notes.
How do you add a payment to the invoice and select the undeposited funds (transit) account? This doesn't seem to be an option on the invoice payment drop-down, nor from the transactions page that I can see.
Hi there @AndréKoch , thanks for your message! Credit Notes are something our product teams have definitely considered as a feature idea; at this time, we are not building them out as we're focused on improving and building out some other features in the ecosystem right now. Thanks for your understanding!
As for what you've described there with the forex, yes - that is a situation which leads to a 'ghost' balance somewhere in an account. We're actually currently working on building out the ability to correct this with more control over foreign exchange rates, which you can learn more about here. Thanks for your patience while we work to implement this feature!
Hey @Steve_SG , thanks for reaching out! I'm sorry to hear you're having trouble getting this payment recorded. Can you confirm that the account type for the money in transit account is an Asset account type? You can confirm this in Accounting > Chart of Accounts. Would you be able to confirm the steps you're taking? This Help Centre article also goes over recoding payments to transit accounts: https://support.waveapps.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000389783-Bookkeeping-undeposited-checks
Hi @CallieP, thanks for the link. Recording the payment from the invoice page allows me to post payment into the Undeposited USD account. This forex workaround almost does it, but there's a problem in currency conversion. Here's what I'm doing:
Create a 'shadow' account as type "Money in Transit". In this case it's in USD and called Undeposited USD.
Record payment for an invoice from the Sales->Invoices screen, selecting this account as the destination
Record another transaction from the Accounting->Transactions page. I used a journal transaction, since it seems neither income nor expense. Split the transaction, with payment processing fees going to one account, and the remainder going to the bank.
The problem is that I can't enter a forex transaction from the journal. In this case the bank account in SGD. When I record, say a USD 500 transfer to the bank, it shows up in the bank as SGD 500, which isn't correct.
How can I move money between accounts with different currencies?
Hey @Steve_SG , thanks for getting back! I'll send you another link here specifically about FX transfers, as a starting point. If you still need any clarification from there though please don't hesitate to reach back out!
@CallieP, thanks, that works. The fix is simple, but not intuitive. It's not a journal transaction, but a withdrawal _or _deposit. That works. For the workaround using undeposited funds, it seems a journal entry is what we need, but at the end the results are the same here. Thanks.
@Alexia
I do technical support for business clients, and recently paid for an apple repair and rebilled the client for the amount I paid. Turns out Apple realized they had put the serial number in wrong, and the repair was under warranty, so they reversed the charge on my credit card. I now need to issue my client a credit for the charge.
Is there a way to do this now, or are we still waiting for the credit note? I was hoping it would be in the drop down 'Create a new..."
Hey @Hans , there's no credit note within the software to update you on at the moment. In the meantime, you can always add a line item to the next invoice that you send to your customer with a negative amount to represent a credit note.
Thanks. I sent an invoice with the negative amount, which they used to discount their next payment to me. It worked out but would be easier if a credit could be issued.
I would have done what you suggested, but I use recurring invoices for that client, and I am not aware how I can modify just one recurring invoice with a negative amount. I suppose I could add the negative amount, then after the trigger for the next recurring invoice I could edit it and remove it, but that seems a bit convoluted.
Comments
Hello
I manage an import/export company and this example happens all the time: a customer receives a container costing them $1000, they receive the container, however some items broke in the container, so i issue a $50 refund/credit. How do I issue a credit to an invoice and have it register on the invoice and be able to track the total credits issued? I understand I could just go into the invoice and adjust it as a line item, but then I would not be able to track the total credits for the years or have it show up on my P&L. I could do a journal entry but then it would not be reflected on the invoice, since there is not way (that i know of) to link a journal entry as an invoice payment, so i would have outstanding invoices. Lastly, i do not want to do both because the credit would be hitting A/R twice. Any suggestions would be helpful.
Hey @CRJ! Thanks for reaching out! I've merged your post with a thread about credit notes here. We currently do not have a feature that allows you to create credit notes in Wave, but it is a common request. You can read through the pages of this thread to see what other users are doing to account for credit notes in Wave. Hopefully one of the workarounds here will work for you at the moment!
I can see this is the lastest one for asking create a create note / credit memo.
I think I have find a way to do it, although it is not the most efficient, this works on wave import as well ( for large quatities)!!!
Go to invoice, find the original invoice, on the very right hand click the drop down and click duplicate
Now you have exact same invoice for the correct Vendor. Manually change the default title from Invoice to "Credit note "( this section is normally hiding on the top, called 'business address and contact details, title , logo'
Then you can put your own documentation number in the invoice number section ( **Sadly you cant customise the name ' invoice number'* But i dont think people really care)
delete all the other item , and only keep the item that you need to send credit note. change the unit price to negative figure.
Change the note like ' This is the credit note that against invoice inv1911-1. Bank transfer payment should reach your account in 1 working day.
If you have any other questions, please contact us'
Then you can send as PDF to your client.
Thanks for this alternative solution, @Pigeonwishes_Ltd ! Glad you were able to find something that works for your business.
+1 for the I Can't Believe there are no credit notes...even very small businesses need this. I'm not sure what the moderators or product team are doing to keep in touch with business owners/typical users, but man, this is seriously a basic/essential/fundamental thing...I wouldn't even call it a feature, it's supposed to be part of the core.
I know this software is pretty good and free and I much appreciate it, but this is a serious pain point. At least allow us to record a positive or negative balance at the Customer account level.
Saul
I am battling to find process a credit note. Any suggestions/guidance?
Hi @Brigette . We don't currently offer the capability of a credit note, but I've merged your thread into this one so you can get some more context as well as resources on it.
I've read the whole thread for the past half an hour, and I can't believe this discussion is still going on since two years. I've nothing more to add other that what everyone has already stated, that a simple credit note is a basic function of any accounting software and is necessary for even the smallest of the businesses.
Adding my voice!
Definitely need the Credit Note functionality - pretty stock standard for any accounting package.
Thanks for the great product thus far, Wave! Please add Credit Notes.
How has this been talked about for two years and still not taken seriously... can this be a focus on the roadmap? It's pretty basic to business
Hello, @AlexL - any updates / timelines on the Credit Notes functionality?
Thx!
+1
I just found this thread cause in need of a credit note! C'mon Wave Team! You got an amazing app here!
How do I make a credit note?
Hey @dve83 , I've merged your thread into this one to get a better idea of what's going on.
Thanks everyone for reaching out, we don't currently have any updates!
Hi,
I regularly get Credit notes from my suppliers for items I send back to them that i don't use. How do show these on my accounts.
Regards
Paul
Please Please credit notes, for a short time wave made life easy but now with no credit notes it has become a nightmare
thats like saying we shuldnt sell kitchen knives because someone might stab someone else
Hey there @jaceon77
We appreciate your contribution to our community. At this time unfortunately we're working on a lot of back end work for our invoicing platform before we can implement new changes moving forward. It's not on the current roadmap but once again we appreciate your +1 to this feature request.
This doesn't work for me because my invoices are in foreign currency. To work around this; I add a payment to the invoice to an (foreign currency) undeposited funds account and add a transaction to the undeposited funds account that refunds the sales account. BUT I have a couple of problems with this:
1) Since it is a foreign currency undeposited funds account, the transfer doesnt correct the gain/loss in foreign currency. So I have to make a journal entry to correct this, but if Wave finally automates this I will have to delete these journal entries. EDIT!!! Correction: There should not be a gain/loss in forex here since the in and out entries are marked on the SAME DAY!! but wave still shows different local currency values for the 2 transactions in the "Account Transactions" report. I BELIEVE THIS IS AN OVERSIGHT/ERROR in the software (so yeah i dont have journal entries for this, wave needs to correct this). You may check my "Undeposited AUD" account to understand what I mean. And yes this also applied to bad debt and write off transactions.
2) THE CUSTOMER'S INVOICE shows this as a payment made! Can wave please add "Credit Note" to the payment methods in invoices and show these as credit notes at the bottom of the invoices instead of a payment. Also payment methods such as "Bad Debt" and "Write Off" will also be appreciated.
@James_Hudson
Ok so I had a comment here and when trying to edit it, it just disappeared
So anyway, since I've got a chance to thoroughly use your updated software I have found that I can add a payment to the invoice for the value of the "credit note" and select my undeposited funds (transit) account (I have one for each currency I deal with) as the deposit account and then create an expense transaction in the same transit account and categorise it as a refund to sales (and even link the customer to the transaction, INGENIOUS!!).
BUT, yup there's a big but (actually 2):
1) The live invoice shows the customer that a payment was made. It would be great if when recording a payment, "Credit Note" would be one of the selections available in the drop-down for payment method (hmm.. actually all of the other payment methods listed don't have any significance to how your software works). And if "Credit Note" is selected it would ACTUALLY SHOW on the invoice as "Credit note made on xxxxxxx" instead of "Payment made on.....". If I were you guys I would go even further to combine all of the current payment methods to "Money's Received" and not just add "Credit Note" but also add "Bad Debt" and "Write Off" to the drop-down.
2) ERROR/Mismatch in rate of forex between the invoice payment and the expense transaction made in the transit account. At first I thought I needed to create gain/loss in forex as journal transaction to correct the mismatch but I was wrong. This is an in and out transaction in the same account (with the same currency) and there should not be any discrepency in the forex on the same day. This is definitely an error in Wave and needs to be fixed. Oh yeah: you can have a look at my "Undeposited AUD" transit account to actually see this error. Please take a look at it in the transactions page as well as the "Account Transactions" report (filtering the report's Account field to "Undeposited AUD"); both balances (local and foreign currencies) should total to 0 (zero).
Oh and @BarsinA, what I have mentioned here is a simple programming fix that will not take time to implement even though it will not give your users the feature of issuing a separate credit note it would solve the problem by displaying the credit note on the invoice it-self. AND when the above mentioned forex error is fixed all of the accounts will also line up accurately so once fixed make sure to add my method to your how-to guide for credit notes.
Great work on the new platform guys.
Cheers!
How do you add a payment to the invoice and select the undeposited funds (transit) account? This doesn't seem to be an option on the invoice payment drop-down, nor from the transactions page that I can see.
Hi there @AndréKoch , thanks for your message! Credit Notes are something our product teams have definitely considered as a feature idea; at this time, we are not building them out as we're focused on improving and building out some other features in the ecosystem right now. Thanks for your understanding!
As for what you've described there with the forex, yes - that is a situation which leads to a 'ghost' balance somewhere in an account. We're actually currently working on building out the ability to correct this with more control over foreign exchange rates, which you can learn more about here. Thanks for your patience while we work to implement this feature!
Hey @Steve_SG , thanks for reaching out! I'm sorry to hear you're having trouble getting this payment recorded. Can you confirm that the account type for the money in transit account is an Asset account type? You can confirm this in Accounting > Chart of Accounts. Would you be able to confirm the steps you're taking? This Help Centre article also goes over recoding payments to transit accounts: https://support.waveapps.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000389783-Bookkeeping-undeposited-checks
Hi @CallieP, thanks for the link. Recording the payment from the invoice page allows me to post payment into the Undeposited USD account. This forex workaround almost does it, but there's a problem in currency conversion. Here's what I'm doing:
The problem is that I can't enter a forex transaction from the journal. In this case the bank account in SGD. When I record, say a USD 500 transfer to the bank, it shows up in the bank as SGD 500, which isn't correct.
How can I move money between accounts with different currencies?
Hey @Steve_SG , thanks for getting back! I'll send you another link here specifically about FX transfers, as a starting point. If you still need any clarification from there though please don't hesitate to reach back out!
@CallieP, thanks, that works. The fix is simple, but not intuitive. It's not a journal transaction, but a withdrawal _or _deposit. That works. For the workaround using undeposited funds, it seems a journal entry is what we need, but at the end the results are the same here. Thanks.
@Alexia
I do technical support for business clients, and recently paid for an apple repair and rebilled the client for the amount I paid. Turns out Apple realized they had put the serial number in wrong, and the repair was under warranty, so they reversed the charge on my credit card. I now need to issue my client a credit for the charge.
Is there a way to do this now, or are we still waiting for the credit note? I was hoping it would be in the drop down 'Create a new..."
Hey @Hans , there's no credit note within the software to update you on at the moment. In the meantime, you can always add a line item to the next invoice that you send to your customer with a negative amount to represent a credit note.
Thanks. I sent an invoice with the negative amount, which they used to discount their next payment to me. It worked out but would be easier if a credit could be issued.
I would have done what you suggested, but I use recurring invoices for that client, and I am not aware how I can modify just one recurring invoice with a negative amount. I suppose I could add the negative amount, then after the trigger for the next recurring invoice I could edit it and remove it, but that seems a bit convoluted.