Finance Corrections: Credit the Invoice, Never Edit It

Receiving counts twelve devices fewer than the manifest said. The invoice went out three weeks ago and the client has paid it. There is a version of this story where somebody opens the original and edits a quantity until the total looks better. That is not a correction; that is redrawing the map so the wrong turn disappears. The platform’s answer is a second document that points at the first.

The linked credit note

From a sent, viewed, overdue or paid invoice, Create credit note opens the correction flow. Finance picks the source lines to credit, credits a full or partial quantity or amount per line — the dialog shows how much of each line is still creditable and refuses anything above it — chooses a correction category, states the downstream impact and writes a reason in words. “Shortage confirmed during receiving; crediting 12 missing devices from INV-123” is a reason. “Fix” is not.

Five kinds of consequence

The impact is chosen explicitly, because it decides who still has work: accounting-only, refund follow-up, payout adjustment, settlement adjustment, or dispute and remediation. A linked credit note runs through draft, sent, applied, cancelled and rejected. A sent one can be cancelled or rejected with a reason as long as it has not been applied; both stay visible on the source invoice as history, and neither counts in the net after credit. The source invoice keeps showing the credited total, the net after credit and what is still creditable, and the invoice list reports every invoice net of its active credit notes. Above the list sits a follow-up band for active credit notes whose impact still needs a person, with the credit note, the source invoice, the owner and the amount.

The export accounting actually wants

The CSV from the invoice list downloads the whole filtered list rather than the visible page, and once linked credit notes are in it, that CSV is the accounting export. Each row carries its document role, the source invoice number, the original transaction date, the correction category, impact and reason, the gross and net totals, and a posting instruction — so an accountant can attach a credit note to its source without working out which negative invoice belonged to which sale. It is an export, not a live accounting sync, and it keeps working while a period is locked: the lock stops document changes, not downloads.

The closed-through date

Settings > Core > Invoices holds one field with real teeth: a closed-through date. Documents dated on or before it refuse status changes, cancellation, deletion, rejection and ordinary edits. A correction on an invoice inside a closed period therefore takes the only honest route left — a new linked credit note with its own document date in an open period, while the original transaction date stays visible as the reference. Leave the field empty until finance has genuinely closed a period. The lock does exactly what it says.

What can still be deleted, and what money has already left

A draft settlement can be deleted only while no invoice exists for it. A hard delete of an invoice is available only for a standalone draft. And when a credit note lands on an escrow-backed invoice that has already paid out, applying it creates a pending settlement-correction row carrying the source invoice and the credit note as its evidence; finance marks that row processed with a bank reference, or failed with a reason, on /finance/escrow-settlements — which is also where payout and refund batches are registered after the run at your bank. The platform records the batch you executed. It does not pretend it moved the money.