A manual credit adds money to a customer’s account without a payment behind it. Use one for a goodwill gesture, a correction, or a settlement. Because no payment funds the credit, you choose the liability account for what you owe the customer and the expense account for what the gesture costs. Store credit works differently: Rhythm creates it automatically elsewhere and uses the liability account set on the business unit, not an account you choose when you grant it. If you see liability-account activity you do not recognize from a manual credit, check whether it came from voided store credit instead.
When to Use This
Grant a manual credit when you need to add money to a customer’s account without processing a payment first. The customer can use the credit on a later payment, but you cannot refund a manual credit. If the customer needs money back instead of credit on account, issue a payment refund instead.
Prerequisites
- Permission to create manual credits.
- An open batch in the business unit where you’ll book the credit.
- The liability and expense G/L accounts you want to use.
Grant a Manual Credit
- Go to Finance & Billing › Transactions and select Issue Manual Credit. If you start from a contact’s or organization’s page, use Issue Manual Credit in the upper right of the Finance tab, and Rhythm fills in that customer for you.
- Choose the customer, if needed, and enter the Credit Amount.
- Choose the business unit, an open Batch:, and the Date:.
- Choose the Liability G/L Account: and Expense G/L Account:.
- Add a Memo if you’d like.
- Select Save Changes.
Result
Rhythm creates the credit and opens its page. The page shows the total, a used amount of zero, and the full amount available to spend.
Tip
Rhythm uses the liability and expense accounts you last chose in this browser as the defaults, so you do not need to pick the same accounts for several similar credits in a row. If an expense account you know exists is missing from the list, open that G/L account, mark it inactive, save, then mark it active again and save. That can make it available to select again.
When you grant credit to an organization, the balance belongs to the organization’s account. Staff completing a payment on the organization’s behalf can apply it there. Whether an individual contact tied to that organization can use the organization’s credit during their own Portal event registration follows the same portal credit rules described in View Your Credits in the Portal. Check that article if you are counting on that workflow.
Correct a Manual Credit
- Open the credit’s page.
- Select Edit Manual Credit.
- Make your changes, including the customer if needed.
- Select Save Changes.
Result
Rhythm saves your changes and returns you to the credit’s page.
Edit Manual Credit appears for a manual credit only while it has no used amount. It also appears for any legacy credit, which is a credit carried over from an earlier system, regardless of use. If you are trying to zero out a credit that has no related transactions besides the manual credit entry itself, you can safely change its amount to 0 and save instead of deleting it. That clears the balance when nothing has spent the credit and nothing else references it.
If you try to edit a manual credit’s amount after it has been used, Rhythm refuses the save with a message about an illegal attempt to change the field for the available amount. That is the same rule that keeps Edit Manual Credit from appearing on a used manual credit.
Warning
Saving this form always resets the credit’s used amount to zero and makes the full total available again, even when you are editing an existing credit. If you correct a legacy credit that has already been partly or fully used, you are telling Rhythm to forget that use. Only do this if that is what you intend.
Warning
You can't reassign a credit to a different customer once its batch is no longer open, such as after the batch has posted or closed. Rhythm rejects that change with an error about an illegal change in a batch that isn't open. Reassign the customer while the credit's batch is still open, or contact Support if it's already closed.
Some manually created legacy credits have also failed to zero out because Rhythm checked the credit’s original batch instead of the open adjustment batch. In that case, you see a "batch not open" error even though the batch you are working in is open. If that happens while you are correcting a legacy credit, check which batch the credit itself is still tied to, not just the batch you selected.
Delete a Manual Credit
- Open the credit’s page.
- Select Delete Manual Credit.
- Confirm "Are you sure you want to delete this credit?"
Result
Rhythm deletes the credit and takes you to the customer’s page. You cannot recover a deleted credit from this screen.
Delete Manual Credit appears under the same condition as editing: the credit is an unused manual credit, or it is any legacy credit. Legacy credits have also been deleted in bulk through a mass update instead of one at a time. If you need to remove many at once, verify this works the way you expect in your sandbox first.
Why You Can't Delete This Credit
- The credit has related transactions. After a manual credit has been spent, or after a legacy credit has related transactions of any kind, you can no longer delete it. The message names the credit and explains that it has related transactions.
- Its batch isn't open or in error. You can delete a manual credit only while the batch it is booked in is open or in error. A credit in a posted batch shows a message naming the batch and its current status. See Post Batches if you need to unpost the batch first.
- It isn't a manual or legacy credit. You can delete only manual and legacy credits from the credit’s own page.
Rhythm does not currently offer a general self-service way to expire an existing credit and recognize the expired liability for audit purposes without using another flow. If you need a credit removed and it does not meet the conditions above, apply it to an open invoice. That step is required either way. If you do not want the resulting usage to sync to your financial management system, put that usage in its own batch and archive the batch afterward so it stays out of your normal downloads.
Related Reading
A manual credit is one way a customer can have credit on account. Rhythm also lets staff turn part of a payment into credit, and payment-backed credit can later be refunded once it has money available. See the finance area’s other credit tasks for both.