Correct an invoice with a credit or debit note

Personas: Billing clerk (creates the note), Approver (approves or rejects), Issuer (issues — the number is stamped) · Modules: Sales Invoices An already-issued invoice is never edited — you correct it downward with a credit note or upward with a debit note: a separate document of its own, referencing the corrected invoice and numbered from the very same series as the invoices (BG practice: one sequence for all three).

Before you start: the corrected invoice exists and is issued; you know the correction reason (it prints on the document). Colleagues sit in the Approver and Issuer groups.

1. Draft — Billing clerk creates the note

1. Open Sales → Credit Notes (or Debit Notes) and click + New top-right.
2. Pick the corrected Sales Invoice (its date is shown in the picker) — the Customer fills itself from it. Enter the Date, the Tax event date, and the Reason for the correction (printed on the document). Company and Currency are pre-filled and editable.
3. Save — the note appears as DRAFT, its title a temporary placeholder.
4. Add the correcting lines exactly like invoice lines: pick a Product (price, unit and tax rate copy themselves and stay editable), enter Quantity; Net, VAT and Total (= net + VAT — note lines carry no discount) compute themselves. The read-only footer sums Net, VAT, Total.

2. Approve — Approver (Inbox or inline)

1. The Approve task shows the note's number (placeholder), date, the corrected invoice, customer, reason, total and status — Approve / Reject.
2. Approve moves the note to APPROVED; Reject cancels it (CANCELLED).

3. Issue — Issuer

1. The Issue task shows number, date, customer, total and status; one button: Issue.
2. The real number is stamped from the shared "Sales Invoice" series — the same sequence the invoices use — and the note becomes ISSUED. Print renders the document.

What happened behind the scenes

• Status path (both note types): DRAFT → APPROVED → ISSUED, reject → CANCELLED — the same statuses as the invoices, but no send step and no payment settlement.
• The number is consumed from the "Sales Invoice" series only at issue.

Variations and refusals

• Credit note reduces (goods returned, price corrected down); debit note increases (undercharged) — the flows are mirrors of each other.
• Settling a credit note against the invoice's open balance is a planned follow-up — today the note stands on its own; the invoice's Paid/Balance are unchanged by it.
• If nothing was paid on the invoice and you want it out of circulation entirely, a void — not a credit note — is the right correction.

See also

• Sales Invoices module · Void an issued invoice · Issue a sales invoice