Customer Credit Balance

Question

Am I the only one having issues with credit balances?

Every time one of our customers ends up with a credit on their file it becomes an issue. The credit doesn't automatically apply to their next invoice, and there doesn't seem to be any way to apply it. I always end up having customer service walk me through some clunky workaround that involves deleting payments, reopening invoices, and clicking through several screens. It always makes a mess in QBO that needs to be cleaned up too.

Each time I've talked to support they've given me the impression that it's abnormal for customers to credit like this. I don't get it. My company has credit with one of our suppliers right now.

Examples:

Customer accidentally overpays
Customer wants to pre-pay
Customer returns something and wants a credit rather than a refund
I want just want to give them a credit for whatever reason to make them happy
etc

This seems like a pretty normal thing to me. Every payment processor I've used prior to Jobber will just automatically apply credits to subsequent invoices.

It would be nice if, while creating the invoice, you could click "add deposit" and select something like "account credit".

Since support has always given me the impression that I'm doing something wrong by allowing customers to have credit on their file in the first place (as if it's somehow completely avoidable), I don't suspect they have any plans of implementing an actual fix.

Is anyone else having this issue? If so, how are you handling it?

anthonysalazar · Answer

It's not a perfect solution but whenever I want to give a client a credit, I'll either update their job or their invoice with a "credit" line item and then I'll do a negative dollar amount for how much their credit is. That's helped me get around some of the wonkiness on the platform

krista · Answer

Hi&nbsp;BTDive​, I’m a little curious about the volume/frequency of credits here because while all of the examples you listed are definitely valid use cases, most businesses I work with don’t tend to build up customer credits super often outside of deposits/prepayments.
A few questions that might help narrow this down:• Are these mostly overpayments?• Prepayments/deposits?• Sync/reconciliation issues with QBO?• Or more operational adjustments/goodwill credits?
I do agree with you, though, that account credits are a pretty normal accounting reality and ideally should feel more seamless operationally, especially when QuickBooks is involved.
My suspicion is there may actually be two separate things happening here:

A workflow/process issue that may be creating more credits than expected
Friction in the current product experience around how credits are managed/applied once they exist

Understanding which types of credits occur most often helps uncover a cleaner workflow in the meantime and identify the product gap more clearly.

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Customer Credit Balance

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