"Did You Know?" Series, Episode 5: Credit Memos

Have you ever been in a situation where a mistake made it through the review and approval workflow? And was not caught until AFTER an invoice was printed and sent? Now what? Void the invoice, un-post existing tickets or copy tickets to new tickets, make updates, go through the approve and post process and re-invoice? Yikes. Luckily, Spira’s ORP® has an “easy button” for this exact scenario—the Credit Memo feature.

What is a credit memo?

By definition, a credit memo is an official written acknowledgement that money is owed back to a customer. When you need to create a refund for a client, you can create a credit memo, which is basically an invoice with a negative amount.

What is a Credit Memo in Spira’s ORP®?

Within Spira Web, invoices are created for posted tickets. If there is a discrepancy on a ticket within an invoice, the user can query for the invoice on the Invoice screen, select the invoice, and click on the Credit Memo button. This will create “Credit Memo” tickets, with negative amounts for the original tickets in the invoice and automatically post them, making them available to pick up in the next invoicing run. In addition, new copies of the original tickets are also created in an update state so that the user can make any necessary adjustments. All newly created tickets have references back to the original ticket and invoice number. And everything is created under the original job.

So, assuming everything has already been printed and sent for Customer ABC, if a user selected an invoice for Customer ABC, pressed Credit Memo and then immediately ran invoicing for Customer ABC, an invoice with a negative amount would generate.

How is this feature a benefit?

This feature streamlines the process of issuing corrections on invoices. It maintains the historical integrity of the original tickets and automatically creates new tickets that reference the original with the ability for the user to capture notes and comments. Users would not need to void invoices or un-post and update existing tickets or manually create credit tickets to send through an approval process; credit tickets are systematically created and posted and will automatically be available for processing in the next invoicing run. Also, everything is logically organized on the original job.