When a customer pays for an invoice using credit card, but a credit memo is applied first, the receipt that prints doesn't show the credit memo amount.

Hello, 

Thanks for reaching out to the Community with your question. I'm here to help!

Credit memos are a great tool available to you in QuickBooks Online! When you apply a credit memo to an invoice, the idea is that your customer has previously paid this money, and now it's being deducted from their next invoice. I can see why you'd like the receipt to show the credit memo amount of $25, stating that the customer has paid a total of $75. 

In QuickBooks Online, however, the receipt or statement will show the total amount of the original invoice (i.e. $100), because this is the amount of money received in total in order to zero out the balance of the invoice. When you apply a credit memo, you're applying money that's been received already. 

If you'd like to deduct $25 from the invoice to have the receipt show a total of only $75 paid, I recommend using the Discount tool on your invoice. 

To activate the Discount feature, follow these steps:

    1. Click the Gear icon.
    2. Select Account and Settings.
    3. Click Sales tab.
    4. Click the pencil icon under Sales form content.
    5. Put a mark into the box next to Discount.
    6. Click Save and Done.
 

When you create your invoice, you'll see a box at the bottom of the screen for your Discount. You can toggle between Discount percent, and Discount value. Select Discount value, and enter $25. This will adjust the total of your invoice to $75, and will reflect this adjusted total when the payment is received.

Here's what your printed statement will look like after you receive a payment using the Discount tool:

I hope this helps you display the invoice in a way that works for you and your customers. If you have any questions for me, just let me now.

Have a great day!

This is an interesting answer.
I understand your concept of using the Discount Field to show the the breakdown of the payment but it doesn't show the true disposition of payment funds and could create a challenge should this customer re-order and potentially expect a similar "discount". To clarify it could and will  be interpretted as either "$25.00 discount" or "25% discount"(on a $100.00 order). A credit memo is very different than a discount.
I also do not understand how this would be a "best practices" accounting solution?
It's complicated, labour intensive and can easily be misunderstood especially for bookkeepers and clerks who don't have the benefit usually of an Accounting Degree!

It would be a good step for QBO software to advance in such a way that the double entry accounting system is a "back office process" of the entire program platform and only utilized by the user and/or their accountant to correct data entry errors so they reflect correctly in the company financial statements and for tax auditing purposes.

Double entry accounting has not changed much since its invention hundreds if years ago. A user should not have to have an accounting degree to understand the software...It defeats the purpose of the product!
I look forward to a more transparant and user friendly update/solution.
Thank you though...I am so grateful for this community. It has transformed the educational part of learning QBO into learning the application in a practical setting.

I have studied QBO and many other accounting software programs since the early 80's when I was involved in custom accounting software programming. My education included only two accounting courses while learning programming. I have taken QBO courses many times but it is not until I actually used the software in a fast paced business setting that I realized how difficult it could be for new users and those without any practical expereince or accounting/bookkeeping knowledge. Now I am undoing years of tangled messes one entry at a time from inexperienced bookkeepers.

Hi there janicevanartdept,

It's vital for all your transactions to be correctly entered so that your books are well balanced. QuickBooks Online is a great tool that allows you to both create and send invoices in the same software all the while entering them directly into your books. I can provide some information on credits and discounts.

A discount would be based on a percentage, and I can see how your customers could get confused by this being a discount instead of a credit. Another way you could reduce the total of your invoice would be to add a negative line item to the invoice that you would name Credit instead of a discount. This would reduce the total of your invoice without having it be marked as a discount.

As for the way the payment appears on the receipt the customer gets after a payment or for any other suggestions, I recommend leaving feedback in the system by clicking on the Gear Icon, then Feedback. Comments made in that section are taken into consideration by our developers when designing new features for future updates of QuickBooks Online. I'll pass along the feedback you've left here on my end as well.

If you have any other questions, feel free to reach out here.