What Are Credit Notes and When Are They Needed?

Credit notes, also known as credit memos or credit invoices, are commercial documents issued by the seller (your business) to the buyer (animal owner). Credit notes are used when a sale has been completed and an invoice has been finalised in Provet Cloud, but the invoice needs corrections. This may happen, for example, when a client returns a product or an item has been charged incorrectly.

Good accounting practices do not allow editing or deleting finalised invoices. Therefore, you always have to create a credit note when a finalised invoice needs a correction, even if you notice a mistake before the client has paid and you have not yet added any payments to the invoice. Likewise, if there is an error on a finalised credit note, you have to create another credit note to correct the error.

Note that it is not possible to create a credit note on an invoice that is part of a consolidated invoice. However, unpaid consolidated invoices can be revoked, after which it is possible to create credit notes for the original invoices.

In Provet Cloud, credit notes look much like regular invoices, but they are always connected to a regular invoice or another credit note (if a correction was made to a credit note).

Provet Cloud Credit Note Functions

To open the credit note dialogue, select the Credit note button at the bottom of the page on a finalised invoice. The available functions depend on the department and user permission group settings. For more information about the different workflows, select the links in the following list.

• Full Refunds: You can credit and refund an entire invoice, for example, if a customer wants to return everything that was included on the same invoice.
• Partial Refunds: You can credit and refund a part of an invoice if a customer wants to return one or some of the items included on an invoice. Sometimes an item may also be partially refunded, for example, to refund a part of the cost of a procedure.
• Crediting and Invoicing Again: You can credit an invoice and invoice again when the original invoice rows are correct, but some invoice information needs to be changed. For example, a customer has paid the invoice using their personal information but then wants to have the invoice addressed to their business.
• Cancelling or Correcting Payments: You can cancel or correct payments if there is some mistake in the payments, such as an incorrect payment method (for example, the client has paid by cash, but the payment was accidentally added as a card payment). This does not create a credit note.