A Credit Note That Cannot Say Which Rate It Reverses
A return against last year's sale is credited at last year's rate. If your credit note holds one amount and no tax split, it cannot express that — and nothing will tell you.
Rate changes are usually discussed forwards. What applies from the date, which documents carry which figure, and how to make sure nothing raised on the wrong side of the line goes out with the wrong number. All of that is real work and all of it is tractable.
The awkward direction is backwards. A credit against an old supply carries the rate that supply carried — not the rate in force today. So a return processed this month may need to reverse a figure that no longer exists anywhere in your configuration.
In a market where two figures are both correct answers and only a date decides between them, that is not an edge case. It is every return, every settlement discount and every corrected invoice for as long as the older supplies are still within their return window.
Our own document cannot do this, and here is exactly how
This is the honest centre of the post. A credit note in our product holds one amount, a customer, a reason and an optional link to the invoice it relates to. It does not hold a tax split. There is no rate on it, no net-and-tax breakdown, and therefore no way for it to state which rate it is reversing.
In a single-rate market that is a limitation nobody notices, because the answer is never in doubt. Here it means the document that exists to correct a mistake cannot itself carry the fact that matters most about the correction.
Two more of ours, in the same area
Our country profile holds one rate and no effective date — there is no date anywhere in the reference data, so "the rate as at" is not a question it can answer. And nothing prompts you when a rate moves underneath an open document: a quotation issued before a change and accepted after it will convert without anybody re-checking. Neither is hard to build. Both are unbuilt today, and a page that let you discover them in month two would not deserve to be read.
Where it shows up, in order of how quietly
| The document | What goes wrong | How loudly |
|---|---|---|
| A credit against an old supply | The reversal cannot state the rate it is reversing | Silently — the credit is issued and the totals look fine |
| A quotation issued before a change | Accepted afterwards and converted without a re-check | Silently, until the customer queries the invoice |
| A settlement discount on an old invoice | Same problem as the credit, with less attention on it | Silently |
| A new invoice after the change | Nothing. This is the easy case and the one everybody plans for | Loudly, if wrong |
Everybody prepares for the first invoice after a change. Almost nobody prepares for the first credit note — and the credit note is the document that has to remember what the world used to look like.
What to do about it now, given all of the above
The answer is not to wait for us. Three things, in this order.
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Keep the original document reachable
A credit that links to the invoice it corrects is a credit whose context can be established, even when the credit itself carries no split. Our credit note has that optional link — use it, and make it a rule rather than an option, because it is the difference between a reversal you can explain and one you cannot.
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Decide who owns the date, and write it down
Since nothing in the system will prompt you, somebody has to hold the change date and the list of open documents crossing it. That is a diary entry and a named person, not a feature — and being explicit that it is manual is what stops it being assumed.
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Re-check open quotations at the change, not after
The population is finite and knowable on the day. Afterwards it is a set of accepted documents nobody flagged, and the first you hear of it is a customer disputing a total.
The division, stated plainly
A rate on every sales line at capture
Held per line rather than per document, so what a supply actually carried is recorded on the supply — which is the fact a later reversal needs to refer back to.
A credit note that links to its invoice
Optional in the product and worth making mandatory in your process. It is the mechanism that preserves context in the absence of a split.
Documents held against the transaction
So establishing what a supply carried is a retrieval rather than a search through a period.
A tax split on the credit note
Not built. One amount, a customer, a reason, a link — no net, no tax, no rate. Ordinary work, commissionable now with a written specification, a timeline and a price, and the first thing we would expect a Fijian buyer to ask for.
Effective dates in the rate reference data
Not built. One rate, no dates, so "the rate as at" is not answerable from the profile. Also ordinary work and also commissionable.
A prompt when a rate moves under an open document
Not built. Nothing watches; somebody has to. Commissionable, and in the meantime it is a diary entry with a name against it.
Telling you which figure applies to a given supply
Not ours. Two rates are both correct answers and a date decides — which date and which supply is a question for your adviser and your own records, not for a vendor's reference file.
Three roadmap items in one section is more than this corpus usually admits on a single subject, and it is the honest count. Buying software for a market with two live figures means buying into whichever vendor's document model can express the distinction — so the question to put to every vendor on your list is simply: show me a credit note reversing a supply at a rate that is no longer current. Watch what they open.
What is built here, what is not, and what we would decline is on the Fiji market page. The offline half of operating across the islands is four things you can do with no signal. The market where the change is to the instrument rather than the figure is Liberia.
