Finance → Receivables → Invoices → Credit Notes / Debit Notes
Adjustments change what a resident owes without money moving. They are how you correct a bill after it has been issued, and every one of them posts to the general ledger.
Choosing the right instrument
| Situation | Instrument | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| The invoice should never have been issued at all | Void | The invoice is cancelled and its ledger posting is reversed. |
| The invoice is right, but the amount is too high | Credit note | Reduces what is owed. |
| The invoice is right, but something was left off | Debit note | Increases what is owed. |
| The invoice is correct and will never be paid | Write-off | The receivable is removed as bad debt; the invoice remains for history. |
| The resident paid too much and wants it back | Refund | Money physically returns. See Refunds. |
Credit notes
Use a credit note for a discount, a goodwill reduction, a billing error, or to cancel part of a charge.
Open the invoice
Credit notes are raised against the invoice they correct, so the link is preserved.
Create the credit note
Use Create Credit Note from the invoice, or Invoices → Credit Notes → Add.
Enter the lines
Credit the specific service-type lines being reduced, not a single lump sum, so revenue is reversed from the correct income accounts.
State the reason
The reason appears on the resident's statement and in the audit trail. Write it for someone reading it in a year.
Save and issue
The resident's balance falls and the ledger posts the reversal.
Debit notes
Use a debit note to add a charge to an existing invoice relationship — a missed utility line, an agreed penalty, a correction in your favour.
The mechanics mirror credit notes: raise it against the invoice, reference the right service type, give a reason. The resident's balance rises.
Write-offs
A write-off is an accounting decision, not a data cleanup.
- The invoice stays. Its payment status becomes
written_off. - The receivable is removed and bad debt is recognised.
- The debt stops appearing in aging and stops driving collections.
Write-offs are normally routed for approval, and closing a collections case with a write-off is an explicitly approved action.
Bulk credit notes
Credit notes can be imported through Admin → Bulk Upload with the Credit Notes type, for example when reversing a mis-billed run across many leases at once. See Bulk upload.
Where adjustments show up
| Surface | What you see |
|---|---|
| Invoice detail → Adjustments | Every credit and debit note against that invoice. |
| Resident statement | Adjustments as separate dated lines with their reasons. |
| Debt aging | The net effect — an adjusted invoice ages at its adjusted balance. |
| Financial statements | Revenue reversals, bad-debt expense, and the receivable movement. |
| Audit log | Who raised it, when, and the reason given. |
Tax implications
An adjustment against a tax-bearing invoice changes the tax as well as the net. Tax on this platform is exclusive, so a credit of KES 10,000 against a 16% line credits KES 11,600 in total.
Good practice
- One adjustment, one reason. Bundled corrections are impossible to audit.
- Adjust in the period the error is discovered if the original period is closed — do not reopen a closed period to backdate a correction unless your policy requires it. See Accounting periods.
- Reconcile credit notes monthly against approvals; a rise in unapproved credits is the classic early signal of a control problem.