trade-in credit

I want to thank you for reaching out to the Community, Robinbird. I'm glad to discuss with you how to keep track of open invoices with trade-in credits.

To handle this situation, we can generate an Accounts Receivable Aging Detail Report, which provides a comprehensive overview of payments and/or credits. When giving credits for invoices, it's crucial to check the remaining unapplied credits or open invoices, calculate the outstanding amount, and monitor the duration of overdue payments.

To identify the overdue balances and the length of time a transaction is past due, you can follow these steps to generate an Accounts Receivable Aging detail report:

1. Log into the QuickBooks Desktop company file.
2. Click Reports from the top menu.
3. Select Customers & Receivables.
4. Run the A/R Aging Summary Report.
5. On the Report window, click the Customize Report button.
6. On the Modify Report window, go to the Filters tab and search for Name as the filter.
7. Under the Name box drop-down, select the customer you want to show on the report.
8. Click OK from that screen and then another OK on the Modify Report window.

Once the task is completed, you can proceed to create a credit memo in order to refund or give credit to your customer. For more detailed information on this process, please refer to the article.: Give your customer a credit or refund in QuickBooks Desktop for Windows.

Additionally, you can check out this article for additional information on how the customize reports and learn about how a chart of accounts works in QuickBooks Desktop:

• Customize reports in QuickBooks Desktop
• Work with the chart of accounts in QuickBooks Desktop.

Should you encounter any challenges with other reports-related processes in QuickBooks Desktop, please don't hesitate to share them with me. I'm more than willing to assist you further. I eagerly await your response and wish you a productive day!

@Robinbird 

Obviously, the advice from @VoltF is not very helpful.

The easiest way to handle it is to set up the trade-in as an inventory item and then issue a credit memo to the customer for that item.  That puts the trade-in into inventory and gives them an A/R credit that can be applied to the invoice for the repairs.  Then, create the invoice for the repairs and apply the credit memo to cover the amount due on the invoice.  To refund the balance on the credit memo to the customer, go to the credit memo and click on 'Use credit to give refund'.  Then, print the check.  That's by far the easiest way to do it.

However, if you want an invoice that shows the trade-in credit, the charges for the repairs, and the refund, which nets to $0, that's more involved and requires setting up more items and accounts.  If you need that, please advise and I will try and help.