Credit notes

How you correct an issued invoice. A credit note is a negative invoice that leaves the original standing.

A credit note reverses some or all of an invoice you have already issued. It is the only way to correct one.

Why you cannot just edit the invoice

Because the tenant has it.

Once an invoice is issued it is a record that exists outside your system — in an inbox, in a filing cabinet, possibly in front of a rental housing tribunal. If you could quietly change it, your copy and their copy would disagree, and yours would be the one that changed.

So the original stands, and a credit note sits beside it saying what was wrong. Both appear on the statement. The balance ends up right, and the history explains itself.

A draft invoice can be changed or deleted. Approving it issues the document, after which it is fixed — a correction is a separate credit note.

This is not Domi Vera being strict. Gap-free numbering and non-editable issued documents are what SARS expects of any invoicing system.

What a credit note is, mechanically

A negative invoice. Same structure, same numbering discipline, opposite sign — which is why it settles against a balance exactly as an invoice does, with no special arithmetic.

Credit notes run their own number sequence, prefixed to distinguish them at a glance.

Full or partial

Credit the whole invoice when it should not have been raised at all. Credit part of it when one line was wrong — the water charge was overstated, a repair was not the tenant’s liability after all — and leave the rest standing.

A partial credit is the common case, and it is usually the honest one: most wrong invoices are wrong in one line.

The effect on interest

Crediting a charge removes it from what interest accrues on, and the interest recalculates accordingly.

If the period’s statement has already been issued, its interest is locked. Correcting the underlying charge afterwards will not retroactively rewrite that locked figure — it adjusts going forward. Credit before you send where you can.

When not to use one

A credit note is for correcting a document. It is not for:

A discount you intended — put it on the invoice as a line.
A payment — record a payment.
A deposit refund — settle the deposit.

Using a credit note for any of those makes the statement read as though you invoiced something in error, which is not what happened.

InvoicesA demand for a specific period. Draft while you check it, Issued once approved — and an issued invoice is never edited.
StatementsA running account over time — everything charged, everything paid, and the balance. An invoice is one entry on it.
Payments and allocationRecording what came in, and what it settles. A payment reduces a balance — it is not attached to one invoice.