Credit note generator

Correct an invoice you have already sent with a credit note: its own number, the invoice it reverses named on it, the VAT worked out, and the balance shown on the original.

Why not just edit the invoice

Because the customer has a copy, and once an invoice has reached their accounts a second version with the same number and a different total is not a correction, it is two invoices that disagree. A credit note fixes the record by adding a document rather than changing one: it says that of the amount on invoice such-and-such, this much is no longer owed. The generator numbers it in its own series, asks which invoice it credits, and nets it off that invoice's balance on the dashboard, so what the customer still owes is what the app says. The guide works one through.

What goes on it

Everything an invoice carries, since for VAT it is treated as one, plus the number of the invoice it corrects and a line saying why: over-measured, not supplied, price corrected to the quote. If the customer has already paid, say on the note whether you are refunding or holding the credit against their next job; a credit with no instruction is one that gets forgotten.

Dating it

Date a credit note the day it is raised, not the day of the invoice it corrects. A backdated note lands in a period whose books may already be closed, and creates the very correction it was meant to avoid. Raised today, it reduces what is owed from today, and the pair of documents reads as a sequence of decisions rather than a history that was tidied afterwards.

Or void it

An invoice that never reached anyone, or was withdrawn before it went near their books, does not need a credit note. Mark it void: the number stays, the document says so, and nothing has to be reversed. The line between the two is whether the customer could have acted on it. The numbering guide explains why both beat deleting.