The anti-invoice, properly formed
A credit note must answer three questions on its face: which sale it reverses, how much tax comes back, and why.
What it must contain
- Credit note number and date
- Reference to the original invoice number
- Items/amounts credited
- Tax reversed by component
- Reason (return, error, goodwill)
- Settlement: refunded or held as credit
SeroBooks generates these from the return flow — quantities capped by what is still returnable.
The mistakes that cost money
The big one is not referencing the original invoice. A credit note that stands alone cannot be matched, cannot be capped at what was actually charged, and gives an auditor no way to see the pair. Always name the invoice it reverses.
The second is silence about tax. A credit note must reverse tax at the rate the original line carried — including splitting a combined rate back into its components — or your return will be wrong in the customer's favour and yours will not balance.
When a template stops being enough
A credit note does two things a document cannot do by itself: it decides what happens to the money and, separately, what happens to the goods. Restocked, written off as damaged, or not returned at all — those are three different outcomes for your stock file, and a printed form records none of them.
It also has to be capped. Nothing on paper stops a second credit note being raised against the same invoice for the same goods.
Templates are training wheels. The software is the bicycle.
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