Customer balance and credit
Carry credit or an amount owed from one invoice to the next.
Every customer has a balance. Credit comes off the customer’s next invoices, and an amount owed is added to their next invoice. The customer’s page shows it in the details panel as Credit available or Balance owed.
Adjust a balance
- On the customer’s page, open the actions menu and choose Adjust balance.
- Choose Credit to take an amount off their next invoices, or Amount owed to add it to their next invoice.
- Enter the Amount and an optional Description, such as “Goodwill credit for an outage”. The dialog shows the Current balance and the New balance.
- Click the button with the amount, such as Add $20.00 credit.
An adjustment can’t be edited or deleted. To correct one, add another for the opposite amount. To adjust a balance from your server, create a balance transaction.
Where credit comes from
Besides your own adjustments, Bias adds credit when:
- A credit note on a paid invoice is settled as Credit, or a credit note on an open invoice is larger than the amount due.
- A subscription’s plan changes with Prorate on. The unused time on the old plan is credited, and that credit goes toward the new plan. See Plan changes and proration.
- You cancel a subscription Immediately and choose Credit toward future invoices under Unused time.
- A credit note’s refund fails or can’t be made. What wasn’t refunded becomes credit.
How invoices use the balance
Bias applies the balance when an invoice is finalized, whether you created it or a subscription did:
- Credit lowers the amount due, but not below zero. If credit covers all of it, the invoice is paid right away.
- An amount owed is added to the invoice in full.
The invoice shows the credit as Customer credit applied and an amount owed as Previous balance due. A draft shows Estimated credit to be applied, since nothing is applied until it’s finalized. Bias applies credit to invoices synced from QuickBooks but never adds an amount owed to them. The balance isn’t applied to the invoice for a subscription started through checkout.
Refund unused credit
Credit can’t be paid out on its own. When you cancel a subscription Immediately, choose Refund to original payment under Unused time to refund the unused time to the payments it came from instead. Only the credit from that cancellation is refunded. Credit the customer already had, and anything that can’t be refunded, stays on the balance.
Void an invoice or credit note
Voiding an invoice reverses its balance changes: credit applied to it returns to the balance, and any amount owed on it that hasn’t been collected is owed again.
Note
Voiding an invoice doesn’t refund payments made on it. To return money, issue a credit note settled as a refund.
Voiding a credit note takes its credit back off the balance. If the customer has already used that credit, they now owe it.
Balance history
Once a customer’s balance has changed, their page shows a Balance card listing every change: its type, the invoice or credit note it came from, the amount, and the balance after it. Click a row to open its invoice. Adjust on the card opens the same dialog as Adjust balance.
Each change is a customer balance transaction in the API.