Invoices - Allow Credit Notes to be marked as "Sent" after they have been allocated
If a credit note has been applied to an invoice, Xero blocks us from marking the credit note as "sent".
Xero then shows this error message:
"Credit note wasn’t marked as sent.
Editing is not available for credit notes that have invoice allocations or cash refunds applied, so they cannot be marked as sent"
According to support this is the intentional behaviour.
When a credit note has been allocated to an invoice or has a cash refund applied, you can only edit certain fields - specifically the Contact, Credit Note #, Reference, Description, Account and Tracking fields.
However, the "Sent" checkbox is not on this list, and that means that they do not allow the credit note to be marked as "sent" because they consider it an edit!
This is a poor user experience.
It is interesting to note that even when sending the credit note from within Xero, the Xero system itself is also blocked from marking the credit note as sent.
My expectation is that:
1) If I send a credit note from Xero, then the credit note should be automatically marked as sent.
2) If I tick "sent" on the credit note, then the credit note should be marked as sent.
It seems silly to consider this to be an "edit" of the credit note.
Josh Moore
shared this idea
Hi Josh, thanks for sharing this suggestion. We understand how Credit Notes not being able to be marked as “Sent” after allocation can create confusion when the document has already been issued.
Separating the “Sent” status from allocation or edit activity would help keep tracking clearer and more consistent with how the document is used.
We’ll continue monitoring interest and use cases shared here.
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Hylton Woolf
commented
Xero currently requires the cash refund or payment to be removed and the bank transaction reconciled again merely to correct a reference or line description. These fields are commonly populated incorrectly by Shopify and other e-commerce integrations—for example, with generic descriptions such as “Surcharge adjustments”.
Changing the reference or description does not alter the contact, credit-note amount, GST, account coding, allocation or payment. These non-financial fields should remain editable while all financial fields remain locked.
Credit notes should work consistently with bills, sales invoices and supplier credit notes, where the tax rate, account and amounts are correctly locked after payment, but references and descriptions can still be corrected. In an e-commerce integration environment, references and descriptions are often entered incorrectly, guessed by the platform or left too generic, so users need access to correct them or add meaningful details.
Requiring Remove & Redo for a purely descriptive correction creates unnecessary work, disrupts an otherwise correct bank reconciliation and provides no additional accounting or audit protection.
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Joelle Bridges
commented
We do a high volume of credit notes and the new interface not only won't allow the individual CNs to be marked as Sent, but also there are no longer checkboxes next to each CN in the list (under Invoices > All) to select multiple CNs to email at once. This inability to sent multiple emails, NOR to mark them as sent, is an admin nightmare and is causing huge delays and no good workaround to ease the bottleneck of workflow issues not seeing/tracking what CN emails were sent. Please PLEASE prioritize a fix for this matter for those of us whose businesses depend on this process
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Maria Valdivia
commented
We send a high volume of credit notes, and the new system is not allowing us to mark them as sent once they are marked paid and emailed to the contact person.
This wasn't like this before, and now delays so much of the whole process...
Having to email paid, then undo the pay to mark it as sent. This is ridiculous for Xero to change this. -
Paul Dyball
commented
This is really frustrating, and I think this is an issue for every user - but not everyone has the time to report it.