I've had a search through this forum for 'refund invoice' and not found anything useful, and the Google search results I get relate to Sage mostly. I have no formal bookkeeping experience, I've been learning as I go on VT+.
I'm requesting a refund from a parking company for payments made. I've already repaid them to my partner as travel/subsistence expenses and made the appropriate entry on VT+. My question is, is it best practice to raise an invoice to the parking company to accompany the refund expense, or just wait for the refund to arrive and then enter it as a negative payment? Further, I assume I'd use SIN to raise a sales invoice as I can't see any other way to do it, and if so do I set up the service/product type as Total, or as Service to take account of the VAT element?
I'd appreciate any pointers in the right direction or corrections to my assumptions; I'm a programmer by trade but having your own consultancy means you get make a hash of so many new skills!
Not sure of the background to requesting a refund but I would not raise an invoice, as this becomes part of your turnover, and is not trading income (assuming it is some sort of error/ dispute with the parking company)
When you received the refund I would post it using the REC button, select the bank account the refund is going to be lodged in, and post it to Expenses > Travel (or what ever expense you normally post the parking costs to). Add a note in the Note section to explain what it's for (optional)
This will add the funds to the bank and reduce your parking expense by the value of the refund.
HTH
Bill
Edited for typos
-- Edited by Wella on Saturday 10th of November 2012 12:32:40 PM
Thanks very much for your reply, that's made it a lot clearer for me. You're right, it is a refund; my first instinct was to do what you'd suggested but I wasn't sure if I should be recording the fact I'd asked for a refund, which is where my thought it might need an invoice came from. Another valuable lesson learned!
-- Edited by SamW on Monday 12th of November 2012 10:04:20 AM
