Customer Credits

Customer credit is money that you owe to the customer, and can be used against future payments.

Cin7 Core creates customer credits from:

Credit notes for store credit
Prepayments
Overpayments

Customers can receive store credit in POS but it only applies to POS sales.

Overpayments in Cin7 Core cause errors when syncing to accounting software and are not forbidden. There are two options to record an overpayment from a customer:
1. Pay the exact invoice amount and record the additional payment as a customer credit.
2. Record the entire payment as a customer credit, then pay the invoice using customer credit. The customer can use the overpaid amount as a credit against future sales.

Prerequisites

Set up Accounts (necessary)
- Map Customer Credits account using Account Mapping
Set up Bank Accounts (necessary)
Set up Customers (recommended)
Permissions:
- Users will need the Customers List & Editing permission to view customer credits.
- Users will need the Financial – Chart of Accounts & Mapping to add an edit a customer credit account.
- Users will need to set sales permissions for adding customer credits for sales quotes and credit notes.
- Users will need Financials: Spend/Receive Money to add a customer credit through receive money.

Set up an account for customer credits

Before you can use Customer Credits, you will need an account to hold them. It must be a liability account and accept payments (for Xero and Cin7 Core accounting). Xero and QuickBooks users can create accounts through their accounting system. If you use Cin7 Core accounting, go to Settings → Reference Books → Financials → Chart of Accounts. For more information about account settings and creating accounts, see Accounts and Chart of Accounts.

Once you have prepared your customer credit account, go to Settings → Reference Books → Financials → Account Mapping to make sure it is correctly mapped. Save your changes to finish.

Add customer credit

Once you have a customer credit account, you can add customer credits for your different customers. There are three methods of adding a customer credit: through a sale, through a credit note/refund, or through the Receive Money function. Customers in POS can make deposits on layby sales or receive store credit, however, these will only apply to POS sales and will not be able to be used against sale invoices processed through the Cin7 Core web portal. See Returning a Sale - POS for more information.

Through a sale

Add a customer credit to a customer through a sales order or quote. For example, if a prepayment or deposit has been given for an item or service.

Create a new sale by navigating to Sale → New Sale or choose an existing sale or quote.
Fill in the details as required.
Authorize the sale or quote.
If a sale has had the Undo operation previously, you can add a customer credit before authorizing.
Click Customer Credit to add the credit details. You can use customer credits for the Quote, Order, or Invoice stages of the sales order.
The deposit account field will be auto-filled by the account set up for customer credits. Fill in the rest of the credit details and click Create.
The customer credit will be added to the sale, ready to be used against the invoice.

Through a Credit Note

The Credit Note function can be used to add a customer credit If the customer has been overcharged, wrongly charged, and/or needs to be refunded.

Add customer credit through a credit note:

Navigate to Sale → Sales and choose a sale to which the credit note will be applied. It must be a sale with an authorized invoice.
On the Sale Details page, click the Credit Note tab and enter the details for the credit note. See Customer Credit Notes and Refunds for more details on credit notes.
Authorize the credit note. If prompted to restock, proceed to Step 4. Otherwise, skip to Step 6.
On the Restock tab, authorize the Restock action.
Click the Credit Note tab again.
Scroll down to the Refunds section. Click Customer Credit to add the credit note value to the customer's account. When you make a sale to this customer in the future, they will be able to use their customer credit as a payment method.

Through Receive Money

Creating customer credits through the Receive Money feature is useful when a customer has made a prepayment which does not relate to any particular sale, but still needs to be accounted for.

Note: The receiving Bank Account and Customer need to have the same currency in order to add customer credit through receive money.

Add customer credit through Receive Money:

Navigate to Financials → Receive Money.
Select the bank account that will be receiving the deposit. You may also select the Customer you are receiving the money from, although this is not required.
- You might want to consider setting up a generic service item called Deposits to receive these payments.
Under the Lines section, click +.
Select the product, enter the quantity and price, select a tax rule, and change the account to Customer Credits. The Quantity and Price should equal the amount deposited by the customer.
Click Complete.

View customer credit

View all the customer credits currently on record for your different customers.

View customer credit:

Navigate to Sale → Customer Credits.
The list of customer credits for each customer will be displayed. The transaction the credit is associated with can be accessed by clicking the link on the right.

Use customer credit

Accumulated Customer Credit can be used to offset payments owed. It can be applied to the sale during the Invoice stage.

Use available customer credit on an invoice:

Create a sale order, then go through the stages, until you reach the Invoice stage. You can also choose an authorized invoice from Sale → Sales, then skip to Step 3.
Authorize the invoice, then click Yes when prompted to apply existing customer credit, if any, to the sales order. Skip to Step 4.
Still on the Invoice tab, scroll down to the Payment section at the bottom, then click +Use Customer Credit.
On the Allocate Customer Credit as Payment page, check the appropriate customer credit from the list to be applied to the order. The credit will be listed with a link to the document that generated the credit (return, money received, etc.). The allocated amount from the existing customer credit is then shown at the bottom.
Click Add & Save. The customer credit is then added to the payments section and discounted from the total balance due. If the customer credit is more than enough to pay for the order, the total balance due will reflect zero, as seen in the screenshot below.

Remove customer credit

Customer credits can be removed by deleting the credit line from the task where it was added. Customer credits can't transfer to a different customer. You can remove the customer credit and then create a new customer credit for a different customer.

To remove a customer credit, go to Sale → Customer/Credits and to the Customer Credits tab, where you can see a list of all active customer credits and a link to the task each one was created by.

Click the link to be taken to the task where the customer credit was created. You can delete the Customer Credit by clicking X.