Every credit has a total amount and an available amount, whether it comes from a payment, an overpayment, a manual grant, or an import. The total amount is what the credit started with. The available amount goes down when the customer uses the credit or receives a refund from it.
This article explains how Rhythm calculates the available amount and where you can see it.
How the Available Amount Is Calculated
Rhythm calculates a credit’s available balance by taking the total amount and subtracting the amount already used on invoices or paid out as a refund. When you apply part of a credit or refund part of it, the available amount goes down by that same amount.
Keep these details in mind:
- If a credit’s used amount somehow exceeds its total, Rhythm saves the change without showing an error. The available amount shows as zero, and the overage does not appear on the credit.
- A credit marked void always shows an available amount of zero, no matter what its total and used amounts show.
- A credit that has already been fully used or refunded stays in your history with an available amount of zero. It cannot be accidentally applied to a future purchase unless something later reverses part of its use and makes an amount available again, as described below. The record still exists, but that does not mean there is anything left to spend.
On the credit detail page, Rhythm calculates the available amount from the total and used amounts shown on that page. It does not read the available amount from a separate stored value, so the available amount matches the total and used fields you see there.
Warning
A credit’s status badge always reads complete, no matter how much of the credit is still available. Do not use the status to tell whether a credit has been fully spent. Check the Available amount instead.
Where You See a Customer's Credit Balance
A contact or organization record shows the customer’s open credit balance as a total, along with a panel of open credits. You do not need to open each credit record to see whether the customer is carrying credit. This total includes every open credit the customer holds.
For organizations, it counts only credits owned by the organization itself, not credits owned by its individual contacts. An organization record can show no credit balance even when one of its contacts has an open credit. If you expected to see a credit while reconciling an organization account and it is not there, check whether the credit belongs to a contact at that organization instead of the organization record.
The reverse can also happen. A contact can appear in credit reporting or query results even when their own finance tab shows zero, because the report is finding credit held on the related organization record instead of on the contact. If a query result and a contact’s finance tab seem to disagree, check whether the credit is owned by the organization rather than the contact.
Why an Available Amount Might Go Back Up
An available amount goes up when money that was previously counted as used is reversed. For example, if you void a payment that spent part of a credit, that portion of the credit becomes available again. The available amount does not increase on its own for any other reason. A credit’s total is fixed after the credit is created, except for the corrections available for manual credits.
Related
See the related articles for granting or changing a manual credit, turning part of a payment into credit, refunding a credit, and what members see about their own credit balance in the Portal.