Issue a Credit or Refund

Issue a Credit or Refund

Credit

Create a credit when you want to reduce the amount a customer owes you.  This is not the same as a refund, because with a credit you're not actually giving the customer any money, only the promise of money or a discount in the future. 

If they currently owe you less than the amount you want to credit, they will retain the difference as a credit until the next time you invoice them, at which time the credit amount will automatically reduce the amount owing.

To create a credit, click "+ Credit" on the transaction register, or select "New Credit" from the family Financials menu.



When creating a credit, select the charge item that you would normally use for this child's fees.  This way the charge item total is properly adjusted for reporting purposes.

All credits are created with a "CR" prefix on the reference number and are listed on the transaction register with a "Credit" link so that it's easy to recognize.  Click the credit link to view the credit and optionally email the credit note to the payer.  



Since a credit is essentially a reverse invoice, the credit amount will be listed in the charge column of your transaction register, but with a negative amount.   After you've created the credit, you can issue a refund if desired.

Refund

To record a refund click on "+ Refund" on the Transaction register page, or select "New Refund" from the family Financials menu.  Note that you can only enter a refund if the family currently has a credit, and the refund amount can not exceed the amount of the existing credit.  If there is no credit on the account, the refund option will be disabled.



Assuming this refund will offset a previously made, tax deductible payment, you also need to make sure this refund is recorded as "Tax Deductible" so that it will correctly update the year end tax receipt.

If this family is a divorced family, where both parents take turns making payments or pay portions of each invoice, make sure to also choose the correct parent in the Tax Receipt dropdown so that the correct tax receipt is adjusted, as each parent will receive their own tax receipt.

Since a refund is a payment going in the other direction, it will be listed in the payment column on your transaction register but with a negative value.  However, when emailing the refund receipt to the payer, the amount will be displayed as a positive number to more clearly indicate the amount that was refunded.  Click the Refund link in the reference column to view and optionally email the refund receipt to the parent.


Refunding Multiple Families

Since a refund is just a payment going in the other direction, you can also manually create a refund by entering in a payment with a negative amount.  Therefore, if you want to pay refunds to multiple families at the same time, you can record negative payments on Finance / Receive Multiple Payments.  



Warning:  Entering in refunds in bulk this way does not first confirm that each family has a credit balance, therefore you should only use this method if you know for a fact that each of these families has a credit, otherwise when you enter in refunds they will end up with a balance owing.




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