Bucket loads of Credit Notes

Accounting
1

We are a flower import company. Each time we place an order with our Dutch supplier, we get 3 invoices

  1. The invoice for the flowers
  2. An invoice for ‘packaging’ - which includes all of the trolleys, buckets, trays and pots
  3. A refund ‘invoice’ for returned packaging - for any trolleys, buckets, trays and pots that have been emptied
    We pay invoices, usually at the end of each month to cover the balance of all of the above.

I asked QFSupport how to start setting this up and got the reply below, which makes a lot of sense. . Unfortunately, I don’t think this will work for me because the amount of packing returned almost never matches a particular invoice.
Also, as I understand it, I can’t import credit notes. This is a problem as we’ve just moved to QuickFile and I need to get the last 6 months (3 deliveries a week) into the system somehow.
I wondered whether I could set up the account with the supplier like a bank account and import all of the invoices like a statement, but then I got confused about whether this would mean reversing all of the amounts.

QFSupport

Hi @Floral-Imports
You would normally record each invoice individually assigned to that supplier. With the credit note, you could simply raise a credit note against the relevant invoice. Within QuickFile, there’s only an option to create a credit note against one invoice, however this seems to be the way yours is set up any way, so that should all be OK.
So essentially, you would:

  1. Raise the 2 invoices
  2. Raise a credit note (from the ‘More Options’ menu) on the relevant invoice
  3. If you’re paying from the same currency bank account as the invoice (e.g. the invoice is in EUR and you pay in EUR), then you can use the bank tagging to cover these by clicking ‘Tag Me!’ and then selecting payment to supplier and use the ‘Pay down multiple invoices’ option:

If the invoice is in one currency (e.g. EUR) and you pay in another (e.g. GBP), then you would need to record the payment from the invoice itself using the ‘Log Payment’ button. This will also allow you to specify the amount in both currencies and handle any currency gains/losses too.

2

The amounts don’t have to match exactly, you can create a partial credit note for less than the full value of a purchase, though you can’t raise a credit note for more than the value of the original invoice (if you’re in that situation you’d have to fully credit one purchase and then go back and partial-credit the previous one to make up the difference).

3

Ok. That sounds a bit fiddly, if I go back over the last 6 months. But, possible if I just enter an opening balance for the supplier and do it this way going forwards. Thanks for the advice.