DealersEdge Professional Forums

I was told, years ago, by a manager who's no longer here, to not use Credit Memos when doing returns. Basically, just start a new invoice, type your number, and enter a negative quantity to do a credit, rather than start your invoice, type CM(sold invoice number), and have the entire sold invoice populate. Can anyone explain if there's a difference between the two? Is there accounting funkiness I'm not seeing or knowing about? Playing with it, it seems like using "CM" would be a lot faster/easier.

not sure why one would want to not use "cm" otherwise you would have to verify what the pricing was on the original invoice so as to not give too much credit or not enough credit.

CDK user here. i was never taught the difference , so when I started here we always create a separate invoice. NO CM here.

What DMS are you using?

Definitely easier in ADP!

AlanHomes wrote:What DMS are you using?

Sorry about that, we're on CDK.

Tiny back story, my body shop sent back parts from a total. CM popped into my head for some reason, which prompted me to look into it. Tried it with the blessing of my office manager, another PM in our group, and the old manager that told me not to years ago. Much easier/faster on my end, with one small glitch: I credited a piece that wasn't here yet. Then had to "pre-bill" it to keep the BS paperwork in order. Caused some confusion for the office manager, but I feel it's all ironed out now.

ScottParts wrote:I was told, years ago, by a manager who's no longer here, to not use Credit Memos when doing returns. Basically, just start a new invoice, type your number, and enter a negative quantity to do a credit, rather than start your invoice, type CM(sold invoice number), and have the entire sold invoice populate. Can anyone explain if there's a difference between the two? Is there accounting funkiness I'm not seeing or knowing about? Playing with it, it seems like using "CM" would be a lot faster/easier.

Here is the problem I see with this. With parts costs changing on a monthly basis what the customer paid three months ago may have changed. So if the customer paid $10 three months ago and now the same part is $12 today, why would you credit him more than what he paid?

We use Dealertrack here. The one nice feature (and there are very few in Dealertrack) is you can look up the history of the part number(s) being returned and go straight to that invoice to create a return. It will credit them back at the original sale price. If the customer has a copy of the invoice it makes it even faster.

AlanHomes wrote:
Here is the problem I see with this. With parts costs changing on a monthly basis what the customer paid three months ago may have changed. So if the customer paid $10 three months ago and now the same part is $12 today, why would you credit him more than what he paid?

I 100% agree with this. I've been doing this for many many years now, because I just didn't know there was another way. However, after finding (and getting the OK to use) CM, I really like it. Huge time saver, especially the calculate return charge function. I'm sold.

Here is the problem I see with this. With parts costs changing on a monthly basis what the customer paid three months ago may have changed. So if the customer paid $10 three months ago and now the same part is $12 today, why would you credit him more than what he paid?


If memory serves correctly, our old system credited the original pricing if you're using the CM + original invoice#. Either way, we always check to make certain the of the credited price for the reason you stated.

If you use CM, you don't have to worry what today's price is versus when it was purchased on the original invoice.

CDK keeps it in memory for 12 months.

Also, it shouldn't be possible to credit a part that wasn't billed on that particular invoice (like a part still on order) - Only filled parts can be credited back. Unless there's a setting somewhere that allows it - But that shouldn't be turned on if it is

There's absolutely no reason whatsoever to not use CM with CDK - You don't even have to type part numbers in, they're already there