Returns and refunds that balance to the penny

A return is really two decisions that lazy software merges into one: what happens to the money, and what happens to the goods. SeroBooks asks them separately because the answers are often different. Money: refund now, or credit on the customer's account. Goods: back into sellable stock, written off as damaged, or kept by the customer with the money returned anyway.

That last combination — keep on invoice — matters more than it looks. Sometimes the right commercial answer is to give money back without taking the goods: a short-shipped carton, a goodwill gesture. Software that cannot express that pushes staff into recording something false.

Every credit note starts from the original sale: open the invoice, press Record Return, choose lines and quantities. Working from the document is what makes fraud and error structurally hard — you cannot return more than was bought, at a price that was never charged, or twice. The invoice tracks what is still returnable and caps the credit note at that.

Tax reverses with the line, at the rate the line was sold at. A grouped GST+PST sale reverses both components correctly, so the tax return stays right without anyone thinking about it.

Choosing Damaged takes the item back without adding it to sellable stock — and for serialized goods, permanently retires that serial so the same broken unit can never be sold twice. Choosing Restock puts the item back at the location it was sold from, not wherever the till happens to be, which is what keeps multi-location counts true.

This distinction is the most common place a stock file drifts from reality. Using Restock for broken goods quietly builds a shelf of phantom inventory; the credit note screen makes the honest path the easy one.

A credit left on the account sits against the customer's balance and nets off their next purchase — visible on their statement, their record, and in Receivables. Because credit can only attach to an account, a walk-in return is refunded rather than credited; the software will not create money owed to someone it cannot name.

In the books, a credit note is its own document with its own ledger posting — never a negative invoice, never a deleted sale. Your sales history stays intact and your auditor stays calm.