Allocating Credit Notes

Background

When credit notes are issued to companies, they can be used to settle amounts owed on invoices.

Depending on the value of the credit note, the number of open invoices, and/or instructions from the client, you may allocate the credit note to one or more open invoices.
By way of a reminder, an open invoice, is one where there is still an outstanding (i.e. not paid) amount. A client's Current Debt is the sum of amounts outstanding on all the client's invoices.

Allocating credit notes can therefor be seen as conceptually identical to allocating payments received from customers, with the key exception that the credit note value does not correspond to a credit on your bank account.

Prerequisites

Ensure that you have logged onto strokeone, and have opened the detailed layout of the company with Unused credit notes you wish to allocate.

Note: In order to allocate credit note value, the following balances must be positive:-

Current Debt

Procedure

Ensure that you have selected the Invoices tab
Within the Credit Notes pane, identify a credit note which has a non zero Remaining Balance .
Press the Select button for the record identified in step 2)
(Note: if you have multiple credit notes with a remaining balance, you can only allocate one at a time)
Next, in the Open Invoices pane, identify an invoice with an outstanding balance, that you wish to allocate the selected credit note toward.
There are two methods of applying credit to the Outstanding Amount. You can either specify the amount to allocate, or you can automatically allocate the lower of the credit notes remaining amount, or the outstanding amount of the Invoice.

If you wish to specify the amount, proceed to step 6); to automatically allocate, proceed to step 8)
To specify the amount

Within the Credit Note section, click the Apply button for the invoice identified in step 4)

The Payment Amount dialogue appears.

Note: how the dialogue verbiage refers to the outstanding amount of the invoice selected in 6a) (GBP 1,400 in this example) and the Remaining Amount of the Credit Notes selected in step 3) that can be allocated towards it (GBP75.00) in this example

Enter the amount of value from the Remaining Credit Amount that you wish to allocate.

and click OK.
The following updates occur:-

The Outstanding Amount of the invoice is credited by the amount specified in step 6c)
The paid status of the invoice is updated:-
If Outstanding amount = zero, set as Green (completed), if >0, set as Amber (In Progress)
The Used Amount on the Credit Note is also credited by the amount specified in step 6c
The Remaining Amount on the Credit Note is recalculated as Abs(Paid) minus Used
The company's Current Debt is recalculated as @sum of Outstanding Amounts.
The company's Balance Outstanding is recalculated as Current Debt minus Unallocated Payments

Click for an example

If you still have a remaining balance on the selected credit note and wish to specify an amount of this to allocate towards any outstanding invoice amounts, repeat steps 4) to 6)
To automatically allocate the maximum amount of the credit note against an invoice Outstanding Amount:-

Click the Apply All button under the Credit Note column for the invoice identified in step 4)
strokeone determines the maximum amount of the remaining credit note that is needed to pay-down the outstanding invoice amount.

Set "credit allocation amount" by calculating the min of (Outstanding, Remaining Amount)
The Outstanding Amount of the invoice is credited by credit allocation amount
The paid status of the invoice is updated:-
If Outstanding amount = zero, set as Green (completed), if >0, set as Amber (In Progress)
The Used Amount on the Credit Note is also credited by payment allocation amount
The Remaining Amount on the Credit Note is recalculated as Paid minus Used
The company's Current Debt is recalculated as @sum of Outstanding Amounts.
The company's Balance Outstanding is recalculated as Current Debt minus Unallocated Payments

Continue to allocate Credit Noes until either the Remaining balance on the credit notes is zero, or Current Debt Amount is zero.