What a credit note is

A document that amends an earlier invoice, issued by the supplier, referring to the invoice it corrects. It is the ordinary instrument for a price correction in the European VAT system, which is why asking for one by name gets a faster answer than asking for a refund.

When to pay the rest of the invoice

On its due date. The disputed line does not suspend the undisputed remainder, and paying on time keeps the conversation about the one line. Late payment gives the supplier a second subject and a claim of its own.

What to do when the list is out of date

Ask for the current one before you ask for money. A comparison against a superseded list is the most common way a well-made claim falls apart, and the request for a fresh list costs you one line of the same letter.

The letter that gets a credit note

14 September 2026 · このページは英語で提供されています。

Kristel Mägi

A credit note arrives when the letter asking for it leaves nothing to argue about: the invoice number, the line, the item code, the price on the list the supplier sent, the price they billed, the difference per unit and in total, and one plain request.

A pallet truck standing beside stacked wooden crates in a small distributor's storeroom, with a wire tray of paperwork on a shelf beside the roller door.

Price Double Check does that assembly from an invoice and a price list sent in by email. The letter is still yours to write, and the difference between one that gets a credit note within the week and one that goes round the houses for a month is almost entirely a matter of what you put in the first four lines.

Six facts, and nothing else

The person who opens your letter does not know you and will not go looking. What they can do in a minute is find the invoice, find the line, and see whether your figure agrees with theirs. Everything in the letter should serve that minute.

What to give	Where it comes from	The worked example
The invoice number and its date	The head of the invoice	the invoice the line was billed on
The line	The body of the invoice, counted from the top	the line carrying item 5046
The item code	Both documents, and the only key that holds	5046
The price on the list	The list they sent you, named by file and by date	€11.235
The price billed	The unit price on the invoice line	€13.23
The difference	Per unit, as a percentage, and for the line	+17.75 per cent, €47.76 on that invoice

That last row is a real one out of the chain behind this service, and it is worth sitting with for a moment: one line, one delivery, and €47.76 of a margin that was never large. On that consignment the single line took 91 per cent of what the delivery earned.

Quote the code, never the description. Across 442 compared lines in the same run, 335 carried a description on the invoice that did not match the description on the supplier's own price list, word for word: black chocolate against dark chocolate, electrolytes spelled two ways, a hyphen in a product name on one document and not on the other. Argue from the description and you will spend the first reply establishing that the two of you are discussing the same product.

The request is one sentence

After the figures, ask for the thing you want, by its name. A credit note is a document that amends an earlier invoice, and it is what a supplier's accounting system can actually produce; an apology is not, and a promise to fix it on the next order is worse, because it moves the correction to a document nobody will check.

Something close to this, in your own words: please issue a credit note for €47.76 against the invoice named above, being the difference on line 7, item 5046, between the unit price billed and the unit price in the list you sent us in January.

Attach both documents. The list matters more than people expect, because the supplier's first move is to check which version you are holding, and the second is to send you a newer one. Naming the file and its date in the letter shortens that exchange to nothing. The method behind the figures, if the supplier asks how you arrived at them, is set out in the note on checking an invoice against a price list, and a service that produces the same figures every month will produce them in the same shape each time.

What weakens a letter

A total with no lines behind it. A claim for 300 euros across an unspecified set of invoices reads as a negotiating position, and it will be answered as one.
Deducting the money from the payment yourself. Short-paying turns a question about one line into a dispute about a whole invoice, and the undisputed remainder still falls due on its own date under the late-payment rules. Ask, pay, then set the credit note against the next invoice.
Adjectives. Overcharged, unacceptable, systematic. They give the reader a tone to answer instead of a number to check.
Lines you have no basis to claim. Freight has no price in any list, so there is nothing to compare it against. Six of the codes in the validation run appear on invoices and in no price list at all, which is an absence of basis rather than an overcharge. A letter that mixes those in with a real difference invites the whole letter to be treated as a fishing trip.
A quantity that is really a unit of measure. In the supplier's own order template a quantity of one box came to 240 units and not 40, and five apparent short deliveries in the run were that trap rather than a shortfall. Ask what the unit is before you say what is missing.

Four cases that need a different letter

Not every difference between a list and an invoice is a request for money. Four shapes come up often enough to be worth recognising before you write.

One invoice number, several versions. In the validation set three separate files carried the same invoice number and one date, with three different totals: €3,472.70, €3,482.25 and €3,480.34. The letter to write there asks which version stands, and nothing about price until the answer comes back.
A code that was substituted. A 550cc item at €2.07 was delivered and billed as an 800ml item at €2.59, which added €15.60 without any price on any list having changed. Ask about the substitution and whether it was meant to be permanent, because the price follows that answer rather than the other way round.
A price list that was never sent. The largest finding in the run sat behind a list for the current year that simply never arrived, so every invoice was being compared with a list a year old. Ask for the current list first and the credit note second.
The same new price, three months running. A price that appeared once and then held is not a billing error; it is a rise nobody announced. That letter belongs beside the increase letter, and it is the one described in the piece on the increase letter and the next list.

After the credit note arrives

Match it to the line it corrects rather than to the month it landed in. In the validation set a credit note cancelled exactly one of two invoices that shared a number, and reading it as a general reduction of that month would have lost the correction and kept the error. Same supplier, same item code, same document number: that is the join, and it is the one a spreadsheet of monthly totals cannot make.

概要

What a credit note is: A document that amends an earlier invoice, issued by the supplier, referring to the invoice it corrects. It is the ordinary instrument for a price correction in the European VAT system, which is why asking for one by name gets a faster answer than asking for a refund.
When to pay the rest of the invoice: On its due date. The disputed line does not suspend the undisputed remainder, and paying on time keeps the conversation about the one line. Late payment gives the supplier a second subject and a claim of its own.
What to do when the list is out of date: Ask for the current one before you ask for money. A comparison against a superseded list is the most common way a well-made claim falls apart, and the request for a fresh list costs you one line of the same letter.

Forward one invoice and the price list it should have been billed on, and the reply names the lines that disagree with the figures this letter needs: the code, the two prices, the difference per unit and the difference on the line.