I have a customer who is also a vendor. How to I apply a vendor credit to a customer invoice with Quickbooks Online

[shelly-wilsonair]

I have a customer who is also a vendor.  How do I apply a vendor credit to a customer invoice with Quickbooks Online in Canada.  Step by step would be greatly appreciated!

[LauraAB]

Hi shelly-wilsonair,

I can help you sort out these transactions. Customers and vendors, as well as the related transactions, are separate from each other in QuickBooks. That means there isn't a way to apply a vendor credit to a customer invoice. If you have a bill and an invoice, each would be closed out independently from one other without the use of any credits to offset one another.

I want to make sure you're handling your transactions as needed, so I encourage you to reach out to your accountant to make sure everything is as entered correctly. Perhaps our accountant users here in community can help shed some light on this situation, too.

Vendor credits mean that you've overpaid the vendor or have returned a product to them. For this, they've given you a credit for your next bill so that you don't pay as much. Read the manage supplier credits article to learn more. I suspect that you may not even need it in this case since it sounds like it could have been created to account for the difference from your customer and vendor transactions. It's for this reason that I recommend speaking with your accountant.

As for your open customer invoice, simply record a payment using the steps outlined in the how to create an invoice article to close out that transaction.

If you're not feeling certain about what you need to do, your accountant can even be added as an accountant user to take a closer look at how things are currently set up. That way they'll be able to see the best way to move forward. QuickBooks Online can also help you find an accountant through the Find a pro to help tool in the My Accountant tab.

I hope that helps. Let me know if you have more tech questions about QuickBooks!

[Anonymous]

As LauraAB said - you cant direclty link customer and vendor transactions.

Instead use a manual bank account for "offset+clearing", then record a customer payment (or sales receipt) IN  and  a vendor bill payment (or check disbursement) OUT in equal amounts thru this bank account.

[quinn1]

I have a vendor, who I recently did a construction job for. I am wanting to match the bank feed to the deposited check, however, when I go to state who the payment was received from, I cannot create a customer for the business because they are already a vendor in my quickbooks. How do I enter this? I am using Quickbooks desktop. Thanks!!

[Anonymous]

The customer name has to be (slightly) different from the vendor name - all names have to be unique, even f they are a different type.

[glennedy1]

Seems a bit ridiculous that a Vendor can't be a Customer. A law firm provides service for my company - which I pay them for. My company also does work on their building, which I invoice them for. They are both a Vendor AND a Customer. 

[Rebecca R]

Thank you for sharing your input @glennedy1. As others have mentioned above, if you give either the customer or supplier version of this company a slightly different name, you'll be able to enter it as both. I hear what you're saying though, and I know that having one profile act as both a customer and a supplier would be handy. Our product development team works on implementing additions like this into QuickBooks Online in order to ensure that we meet our user's needs. Let them know how adding a company as a dual Supplier and Customer would be beneficial by navigating to the Gear icon, then selecting Feedback. 

[gjprince]

I just put a period at the end of the name so I can distinguish the customer from the vendor.  As long as you are consistent in doing this, it will work nicely

[LauraAB]

Hi gjprince,

Thanks for stopping by to share your input on how you set up a customer that is also a supplier to differentiate the name slightly in QuickBooks Online. You're right, it's about finding a system that works for you, and I'm glad you've got a system for your books. I'd also like to further clarify how this can be done so that everyone can decide the best way to make the names different for them.

For things like drop-down menus and transaction sorting, QuickBooks Online uses the Display name as field on your customer or supplier setup. This is the field that you'll want to ensure is different in your books so that the program understands where to categorize your transactions and ensure that you don't accidentally assign the wrong one to the wrong name type. Don't worry, it's not the name your customers or suppliers would see on their copies of their forms.

As an example, you could put a name as John Doe (Customer) and then John Doe (Supplier) in the Display name as fields on their respective profiles to enter the same person as both a customer and a supplier. If you do this, I also recommend being mindful of the Print on cheque as field, which uses the Display name as field by default. You can simply uncheck the box if you don't want it to also display on a cheque in that way.

In doing this, you can use the first, last, and middle name fields and have the same name as many times as you'd like in your customer and supplier lists. So long as the name is different in the display field, you'll be good to go.

If you happen to be using QuickBooks Desktop, the program behaves in the same way in that it'll only allow you to use a name once. In this case, you can use the Customer name or Vendor name fields at the top of the Edit customer and Edit vendor windows to slightly change the names.

I hope this helps expand on the options available!

[glennedy1]

Doesn't all this work around stuff (er $@!%) just scream to the fact that Quickbooks needs to allow a single entity to be both a customer and a vendor? What horrible UX and embarrassing that CS folks have to go through all this explaining how to make what should be a simple function work. Not good Intuit, not good.

[JamesM4]

Hi glennedy1. Thanks for chiming in on this. Your feedback on this is valuable and I'll make sure your voice is heard. You're more than welcome to leave feedback to our engineers by clicking the Gear icon and looking for Feedback. New product ideas and improvements are largely based on the valuable feedback we get from users like you. Feel free to ask other questions.

[Mobibooks]

I am an accountant and use of a clearing account is a good way to treat this type of contra transaction that way your sales and expense are recorded accurately. Just be sure to include a memo on the transactions for your accountant to refer to. 

[LauraAB]

Hi Mobibooks,

Thanks so much for taking the time to share your insight on this situation! Knowing how to set up the customer and supplier profiles is important, but it's also good to know how to handle transactions that might cross over one another. Making a note in the memo when entering transactions as you've mentioned is also a good idea.

I just wanted to take a moment to also highlight this article, which also goes over dealing with the exchange of goods and services with people who are customers as well as suppliers: Record a barter transaction. When this thread was originally started, this article wasn't around. It doesn't cover credits, however I do hope that users in this situation might find this useful.

Thanks again for stopping by this thread.

[bknash]

Seriously!!

Why cant this be a thing?

I have 20+ clients that we work for that I am now also ordering product from in a distributor type manner - I now have to duplicate ALL of my clients and name as Client XX VENDOR - so tedious.

[Alex M]

Hi there bknash,

I can see that having a customer who could also be a supplier in QuickBooks Online would be an interesting feature for your business needs. I recommend you leave feedback in the system by clicking the Gear Icon, then Feedback. The comments made in this section are taken into consideration when the developers design new features for QuickBooks Online. If you have any other questions, feel free to reach out here.

[Lisa1357]

The credit is not from an overpayment. It is payment for warranty service that we invoice for. It is a vender credit that gets applied to purchases we make leaving the invoices still outstanding. We need to be able to transfer the vender credit to the customer invoice 

[Trish_T]

Hi Lisa1357,

Thanks for joining us here.  QuickBooks Online offers a variety of ways to record transaction to best suit your business needs.  In addition to the valuable information provided above, it's always best to reach out to your accountant so they can provide their expertise and best course of action.  If you don't have an accountant, we can help you locate a ProAdvisor in your local area.  However, you can create a product or service item for the warranty and then enter it as a credit memo for the amount to be applied to an invoice by following these steps;

Step 1:

Create a product or service item;

1. Open Settings ⚙

2. Select Products and services

3. Click New

4. From the Product/Service information panel, select the appropriate type of item to create

5. Enter the information for the item

6. Hit Save and Close.

Step 2:

Create the customer invoice;

1. From the left menu Select + New

2. Choose Invoice 

3. Use the Customer ▼ dropdown menu and select the Customer name

4. In the Product/Service field, enter the item you created in Step 1

5. Enter the Amount of the warranty item

6. Hit Save and close.

Step 3:

Create a credit memo;

1. Select + New from the left menu and then Credit Memo

2. Enter the Customer name from the Customer drop-down list

3. Select the warranty item you created using the drop-down list in the Product/Service field

4. Enter the Amount and then hit Save and close.

Here's how to apply the credit memo to the invoice;

1. Hit + New and then Receive Payment

2. Select the Customer from the ▼ drop-down menu

3. Be sure to place a checkmark next to the Credit memo

4. Confirm the amounts

5. Hit Save and close

Please don't hesitate to reach back out to Community if you have any other questions.  Your success is our number one priority and we're always glad to assist!