Vendor Credit & Sales Credit template reference
Two templates, one shape, opposite directions:
| Template | You send it to | When |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor Credit | A supplier | They owe you money back — damaged goods, a short shipment, a return you raised. |
| Sales Credit | A customer | You owe them — a refund, a returned item, an overpayment adjustment. |
Each is generated from a credit record rather than a live order, named after the credit number, and attached to emails as Vendor Credit PDF and Credit Note PDF respectively.
Both are purely financial documents with no shipping or fulfillment content at all: two parties instead of three, one date, one note, and totals ending in Total Credit rather than an amount due.
The three identity fields
Both types expose the same three:
- the credit's own number
- the date, in a plain sortable form and a long readable one ("Jan 12, 2024")
- the originating order — the purchase order or sales order the credit was raised against
There's no separate invoice number on a credit. If someone needs to trace the credit to its source paperwork, that field is how they do it — keep it on the page.
The parties differ
Vendor Credit shows a Supplier group: company name, contact name, email, phone, account number, plus a full address group.
Sales Credit shows a Customer group with name, email and phone — and, unusually, keeps the billing address as its own separate top-level group rather than nesting it inside Customer. Look for it there rather than under the customer when you're building the layout.
One note each
Each type has exactly one free-text note the document can print:
- Vendor Credit — the supplier note
- Sales Credit — the customer memo
That's where the reason for the credit belongs. There's no dedicated reason field, so whichever note applies is the one to print.
Credited lines
Both templates loop over line items and print SKU, description, quantity, price and line total per row.
The quantity is the credited quantity and the price is the per-unit credit, so the row total is what's being credited for that line — not what was originally invoiced.
Fee or adjustment lines that aren't tied to a product appear in the same table, with a blank SKU and their explanation in the description. There's no separate charges section on a credit.
Totals
Totals gives Subtotal, Discount, Tax, a grand Total Credit, and a Total Units count.
The switches are the familiar ones — has tax, has discount and tax is included — so a zero-discount credit doesn't print an empty row.
When tax is already included in the prices, print an Includes tax note instead of a separate tax row.
What the stock layouts contain
The two are near-identical.
Header — your logo on the left; on the right the title (Vendor Credit / Sales Credit) with Credit #, Date, and — only when the credit traces back to one — an Originating PO or Originating Order line.
Party band — two columns:
| Left column | Right column | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor Credit | Supplier — company name, address, email and phone when present | From — your store |
| Sales Credit | Bill To — customer name and billing address | From — your store |
Body — the line-items table (SKU, Description, Qty, Price, Total), a right-aligned totals stack ending in a bold Total Credit, and an optional Notes block.
Build one, then repeat for the other — swapping the supplier block for the customer plus billing address block, and the supplier note for the customer memo. The rest carries over unchanged.
What credit notes deliberately don't have
Credits are narrow, and several things you may have used on other document types simply aren't offered here.
No shipping content of any kind — no ship-to address, warehouse, carrier, tracking number, ship date or delivery information.
No custom fields — only purchase orders and sales orders have them.
No logistics dates — purchase orders only.
None of the packing-slip extras — no pickup banner, no address-warning banner, no barcode block, no terms block, no per-line serial numbers.
Page setup
Credits use the same page setup as every other document: the paper size you pick in the editor is applied, and a footer banner pins to the bottom of every page rather than printing inline. See Page setup & CSS support.
Long credits paginate with no repeated header and no repeated column headings.
When in doubt, the Variables panel for the template you have open is the authoritative list of what that type can print.
Next steps
- Common customizations by document type — the credit-note reason block and other additions.
- Purchase Order template reference — the supplier-side document a vendor credit is raised against.
- Sales Order template reference — the customer-side document a sales credit is raised against.