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 — Optionally, the supplier invoice the note nets when issued. A note can also exist without a bill — for example when the return shipped before the supplier ever invoiced you.
• 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 paid — or were billed — 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 worth is still with the supplier: the debit note is how you claim it.

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 bottom of its page.
2. Beelocity prices the note for you: each returned quantity at its purchase-order line price, in the order’s currency. Four units returned from a line bought at 2,000 DA gives a subtotal of 8,000 DA.
3. A draft note is created and you land on it, ready to review.

Two guardrails apply:

• Only a shipped return can be credited — before that, nothing has actually left your stock.
• A return carries at most one live note. If you need to correct one, cancel it first and raise a new one — the same goods are never credited twice.

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.

Editing the Draft

While the note 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.

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

Issuing — What Happens to the Bill

Open the note and the road along the bottom 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.

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).

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.
• 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.