Vendor Credit Applications
A Vendor Credit Application offsets a vendor's existing documents against each other —Bills, Debit Notes, Prepayments or other documents that already affect their payable balance— without moving any new money from your bank accounts. It's the right tool when you already have, say, a prepayment or a credit balance in your favor and want to deduct it from an open bill, or when you need to split a balance across several other documents.
Each application names the vendor (or the employee, when the offset comes from an expense report), and a table of documents where you assign the amount to offset on each one: positive to increase its open balance, negative to decrease it. When you save, AdmCloud generates the accounting entry that moves the balance between those documents.
What is it and what is it for?
Unlike a Bill Payment (which moves real money from a bank account) or an automatic credit application made directly from a Credit Note, a Vendor Credit Application is a standalone document built to offset existing documents against each other: for example, deducting a previously issued Prepayment from the Bill that ultimately consumes it, applying a Debit Note against another bill's balance, or splitting the same credit across several open documents in a single step.
The amounts you assign across the documents must add up to zero: whatever you subtract from some documents is exactly what you add to others. That way, the application never creates or destroys balance — it only moves it between the same vendor's documents.
Screens in this area
| Screen | What it does |
|---|---|
| List | All registered applications, with customizable columns, date and subsidiary filters, and direct access to the Report from its own menu. |
| Create | A form with the general data (vendor or employee, reference) and a table of the vendor's open documents, where you enter the amount to offset on each one. You can open it blank or pre-loaded from a Vendor Bill or an Expense Report. |
| Details | A read-only view with buttons for New, Edit, Duplicate, going to the Journal Entry, Print, Void or Delete depending on your privilege, and the breakdown of the offset documents with the amount applied to each. |
| A printable or PDF format of the application, with the vendor's data and the breakdown of the offset documents. |
How to record an application step by step
- Open it from the list with New, or from the Details of the Vendor Bill or Expense Report you want to offset, so the vendor (or employee) is pulled in automatically.
- Confirm the vendor or employee. It's required and determines which open documents will be available to offset; it cannot be void.
- Review the vendor's open documents using the Period control and the Refresh button, to pull in older documents too if the one you need doesn't show up with the default range. The period is a single date-range control: when you open it you can pick a relative period such as "This month" or set the from/to dates on the calendars.
- Assign the amount to offset on each document: a positive value increases its open balance and a negative value decreases it. The sum of every amount must come out to exactly zero before you can save; the Difference field shows how much is left to balance out.
- Attach any supporting file if needed (for example, the vendor's communication that triggered the offset) and Save the document.
Key fields
| Field | What it's for |
|---|---|
| Number | AdmCloud's internal automatic numbering; you can't repeat or change it once the application is created. |
| Document Date | Defaults to today; must fall within an open Accounts Payable period, and cannot be earlier than the date of any document it offsets. |
| Vendor / Relationship | Vendor or employee (when the offset comes from an Expense Report) that all the offset documents belong to; required. |
| Subsidiary | Required only if your plan has subsidiaries enabled; every offset document must belong to that same subsidiary. |
| Reference | Free text to note the reason for the offset. |
| Documents table | Each row shows the document's number, type, date, currency, open balance, exchange rate, reference and — where your country requires it — its fiscal document number (NCF); the editable field is the amount to offset. |
| Difference | Read-only field that must reach zero before saving; reflects what's left to balance out among the assigned amounts. |
| Attached Files | Supporting documentation for the offset (vendor communication, internal calculation, etc.). |
Validations when saving
- The vendor or employee is required and cannot be void.
- You must offset at least one document with an amount other than zero.
- The sum of the assigned amounts must equal zero (in the document currency if every document shares the same currency, or in local currency if you mix documents in different currencies).
- Every document you offset must exist, not be void, belong to the same subsidiary as the header and, where applicable, to the same vendor as the application.
- Only documents supported by Accounts Payable (bills, notes and other documents that affect the vendor's balance) can be offset; documents such as manual journal entries with no link to the vendor don't qualify.
- Each offset document's date cannot be later than the application's date.
- If your company has balance validation turned on, you can't offset more than the open balance of a Vendor Bill or Debit Note.
- The Accounts Payable accounting period for the date must be open.
- You can't change the document number when editing, nor edit or void an application whose source document already has an electronic signature registered, depending on your electronic invoicing setup.
Delete or void
You can delete an application only if it has no dependent documents; otherwise, AdmCloud blocks the deletion and you must void it instead. Voiding automatically reverses the offset's effect on each involved document's open balance, and keeps the document and its accounting entry for audit purposes, marked as cancelled.
Reports
From the Reports menu on the list you can generate a vendor credit application report, filterable by date, vendor(s), subsidiary and reference.
Availability, permissions and conditions
- Access is controlled by the "Payments" permission (the same one that governs Bill Payments and Vendor Prepayments), with separate levels to browse, add, edit, delete and void.
- The open balance validation when offsetting Vendor Bills and Debit Notes only applies if your company has that option enabled in its settings.
- The NCF / fiscal document field on the documents table only applies in countries with this requirement (for example, the Dominican Republic).
- The Subsidiary is required only if your plan has subsidiaries enabled.
- You can pick a different print template than the default one if your company has custom templates configured for this application.
Tips and common mistakes
Can't find an older document in the table? Widen the Period (or empty it with the control's clear button to stop filtering by date) and press Refresh; only the vendor's most recent documents load by default.
Can't save the document? Check the Difference field: if it isn't zero, the amounts you assigned across the documents still don't balance out.
Can't delete the application? It already has dependent documents; use Void instead of deleting, so AdmCloud reverses the offset and keeps the history intact.