A common ask from new Biller Genie customers: "Can I create a credit memo to apply against this customer's next invoice?" The short answer is no — credit memos and customer account credit are handled entirely in your accounting software. This article explains why, what to do instead, and how the workflow lands on the Biller Genie side.
Credit memos are not a Biller Genie feature
Biller Genie does not have a "Credit Memo" or "Customer Account Credit" object in the merchant portal. There's no page to view a customer's credit balance, no action to apply a credit to an invoice, and no field on the customer record showing "available credit." All credit-memo accounting lives in your accounting software (QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop, or Xero), and Biller Genie simply reflects the resulting invoice and payment balances that the accounting software produces.
Why credit memos belong in your accounting software
- Credit memos are accounting transactions. They reduce revenue, affect your A/R and your general ledger, and need to be reflected in your books exactly the same way regular invoices and payments are. The accounting software is the system of record for all of that.
- Tax handling on credit memos is non-trivial. If the original invoice had tax, the credit memo usually reverses the tax too. QBO, QBD, and Xero handle this natively; rebuilding it inside Biller Genie would create reconciliation problems.
- Auditability. If you ever get audited, you need to be able to show every credit and how it was applied. Your accounting software keeps that audit trail — Biller Genie wouldn't.
Common scenarios and how to handle them
"My customer overpaid an invoice — how do I handle the credit?"
Two options depending on what your customer wants:
- Refund the overpayment. Open the transaction in Biller Genie's All Transactions report, click Refund, and refund the overage amount. The refund processes through the gateway and the funds return to the customer. This is the simplest option if the overpayment is small or if the customer asked for the difference back.
- Create a credit memo in your accounting software and apply it to the customer's next open invoice. In QBO: + New > Credit Memo, pick the customer, enter the credit amount and tax handling, save. The credit memo then becomes available to apply against the next invoice. When that next invoice syncs to Biller Genie, it'll show with the credit already applied — your customer pays the net amount.
"Customer returned goods after paying — they want a credit applied to a future invoice"
Create the credit memo in your accounting software for the returned items. When you create the next invoice for this customer in the accounting software, your accounting software will offer to apply the open credit memo. Save the new invoice with the credit applied, and Biller Genie will sync the net amount. The customer pays the difference.
"I want to give a customer a $100 credit as a goodwill gesture"
In your accounting software, create a $100 credit memo for the customer with a memo line like "Goodwill credit — service interruption." Apply it to their next invoice (or their oldest open invoice, depending on what makes sense). Biller Genie reflects the reduced invoice balance after sync.
"Customer prepaid before I sent the invoice — do I refund them or hold credit?"
Two patterns work:
- Record the prepayment as a Customer Deposit / Payment on Account in your accounting software (this varies by accounting software — QBO has "Receive Payment" without selecting an invoice; QBD has "Receive Payments" with an undeposited funds workflow; Xero has Prepayment on a contact). When you eventually create the invoice, apply the prepayment to it.
- Or create the invoice first for the prepaid amount, mark it paid, then create the actual service invoice later as a separate transaction. Simpler accounting but creates two invoices.
How a credit memo from your accounting software looks in Biller Genie
When you create a credit memo in your accounting software and apply it to a customer's invoice, the next Biller Genie sync brings over the resulting state:
- The invoice in Biller Genie shows the net balance — total minus the applied credit. Your customer sees the net amount on the payment page.
- If the credit fully covers the invoice, Biller Genie marks the invoice as paid (no reminders go out, no autopay charge is attempted).
- If there's an unapplied credit balance on the customer (not yet attached to a specific invoice), Biller Genie doesn't surface that on the customer record. It only sees credits via the per-invoice balance reduction.