Supplier Debit Notes

A supplier debit note records money a supplier owes you — the mirror image of the credit notes you issue to customers, but on the purchasing side. You raise one when goods went back to the supplier on a supplier return, or when a supplier’s bill charged a wrong price or quantity, and it becomes the document you lean on to get that money back: first by reducing what you still owe on their bill, then by collecting the rest as a refund in Treasury.

Key Concepts

• Debit note — A document stating the supplier owes your organization a specific amount, with a reason (return, damage, pricing error, quantity error, or other). Numbered in its own SDN series (e.g., SDN-2026-000001).
• Linked bill — The supplier invoice the note nets when issued. A note raised from a return always names the bill that billed the goods; a note you write by hand may name one, or none.
• Lines — A note raised from a return lists what went back, line by line, at the price and TVA (the value added tax) the bill charged for it. A note written by hand has no lines, only its amounts.
• Applied / Remaining — Applied is how much of the note has already been used (netted against the bill, or refunded through Treasury); Remaining is what is still to collect. Both are maintained automatically — you never edit them.

When to Raise One

The most common trigger is a shipped return. Say you received 10 units at 2,000 DA each and the supplier billed you 20,000 DA. Four units turn out defective, you create a return and ship it. The goods are gone, but the 8,000 DA they were billed at is still with the supplier: the debit note is how you claim it.

If the goods went back before the supplier billed you, you need no note at all: bill the order as usual, and the bill leaves out what went back.

The other trigger is a billing error with no physical return: the supplier billed 2,200 DA instead of the agreed 2,000 DA, or 12 units instead of 10. Raise a note by hand for the difference, with Pricing error or Quantity error as the reason.

Raising a Note from a Return

1. Open the shipped supplier return and click Raise Debit Note, under More actions at the top of its page.
2. Beelocity builds the note from the supplier’s bill: each returned quantity at the price and the TVA rate that bill charged for it. Four units returned from a line billed at 2,000 DA with 19 % TVA come to 8,000 DA plus 1,520 DA of TVA, 9,520 DA in all — exactly what the bill charged for them.
3. The note is dated on the later of the return date and the bill date, and linked to both.
4. A draft note is created and you land on it, ready to review. Its Debit Note Lines tab shows each line and the price it was taken from. Its Notes are left empty for you: the return it came from is already named on the page, under From return.

A few guardrails apply:

• Only a shipped return can be debited — before that, nothing has actually left your stock. Raise the note before you close the return.
• The goods must have been billed. If the supplier has not billed them yet, or they went back before the bill and the bill already left them out, Beelocity refuses: there is nothing to take back.
• Goods billed on more than one bill cannot be raised from the return. You can write a note by hand against each bill to claim the money, but a note written by hand does not give the quantities back to the purchase order: the order keeps counting those goods as billed, so a replacement for them cannot be billed from it.
• A return carries at most one live note. Raising a second one is refused, and the message offers Open it to take you to the note that already exists. If you need to correct it, cancel it first and raise a new one — the same goods are never debited twice.
• The note follows the return and the bill: its supplier, reason, issue date, currency, linked bill and amounts cannot be changed. Only its notes can.

You can also start from scratch: open Procurement > Supplier Debit Notes and click New. Pick the supplier, the reason, the currency, and enter the amounts yourself. If you link one of the supplier’s bills, the note takes the bill’s currency, which then cannot be changed.

Editing the Draft

While a note you wrote by hand is a Draft it has no financial effect and everything is editable:

• Supplier Invoice — link the bill this note should net. The picker lists the chosen supplier’s bills with their outstanding balance. Leave it empty if no bill exists yet.
• Subtotal and Tax — the credit before tax and its tax portion. The Total is always their sum, computed for you.
• Notes — remarks shared with the supplier — and Internal Notes, which stay in-house.

On a note raised from a return only the notes can change: its figures are the bill’s.

A draft can be deleted, or cancelled, at any time.

Issuing — What Happens to the Bill

Open the note and the road along the top of its page shows where it has got to: Draft → Issued, the two steps of a debit note that does its job. Issued is the step waiting, so click it to put the note in force. This is where the money moves:

• If a bill is linked, the note nets it immediately — the bill’s amount due drops as if a payment had settled it, and its status rolls to Partially paid or Paid accordingly.
• The netting is capped at the bill’s outstanding balance. A 8,000 DA note against a bill that only owes 5,000 DA applies 5,000 DA and keeps 3,000 DA available on the note.
• The bill must be in a payable state (approved, or partially paid) to absorb anything — otherwise the note is issued with its full amount left available.
• Whatever the bill could not absorb — or the whole total, when no bill is linked — stays on the note as its Remaining balance.
• A note raised from a return also gives the returned quantities back to the purchase order: the order no longer counts them as billed, so when the supplier re-delivers the goods, the replacement can be billed. If another note raised on the same order line already gave those quantities back, issuing is refused and says how much is left.

An issued note can no longer be edited.

Collecting the Remainder — the Refund

The remaining balance is real money the supplier must send back, and it is collected in Treasury:

1. Record an inbound receipt from the supplier for the refunded amount.
2. On its Allocations tab, choose Debit note as the target and pick the issued note.
3. Confirm the receipt — the cash lands in your treasury account and the note’s Applied amount rolls up.

An allocation can never draw more than the note’s remaining balance, and only an issued, active note can be drawn on.

Cancelling

Cancelling leaves the road, so it is picked off the map rather than on it: click the step the note is standing on and choose Cancelled. Cancelling a draft simply voids it — nothing had happened yet.

Cancelling an issued note reverses what issuing did: the amount it applied to the bill is restored to the bill’s amount due. This correction is only possible while no refund receipt has drawn on the note — once refund cash has moved, remove that allocation first (or leave the note in place). Cancelling a note raised from a return also counts its quantities as billed again: the return is back to waiting for its credit — even if the supplier’s replacement, or the rest of the order, has been billed since — and you can raise a new note from it.

Finding a Note

The Supplier Debit Notes list searches by number, and its filter button narrows it by Reason, Status, Supplier, an Issue Date range, a Total or Applied band, or Active (see Working with lists). The Remaining column is worked out from the other two and is not a filter.

Statuses

Important Notes

• Debit notes share their access rights with purchase orders and supplier invoices — the same team that manages the money leg of purchasing.
• The note’s currency must match the linked bill’s currency to issue, and any refund receipt must be in the note’s currency.
• While a note raised from a return stands, draft or issued, the bill it was built from cannot be reopened as a draft or cancelled: the bill’s page names the note, and you cancel the note first.
• The supplier’s own paperwork for the same credit is often called an avoir fournisseur — record its reference in the note’s notes so both sides’ documents can be traced.