Tuesday’s delivery came in one case of chicken short. You marked it at the door, called the rep, and on Thursday a PDF shows up: Credit memo, minus $139.60.

The easy move is to knock $139.60 off the chicken line somewhere. Then chicken looks cheap for a week, and the next quote goes out priced on a case that never existed. A credit fixes what you paid. It says nothing about what chicken costs.

CostCook shows the credit separately below monthly food spend. It does not change the ingredient price, recipe cost or event cost. This guide follows one credit memo from the rep’s email to that line.

Send it to the same address as the invoices

A credit memo goes to your kitchen’s invoice address, the same one your reps already use for invoices. If it came to your own Gmail, forward it there. If the address isn’t set up yet, start with how to get supplier invoices emailed straight into CostCook.

Then open Purchases > Invoice inbox. The inbox files an email as a credit when the subject, the file name or the email itself says “credit memo” or “credit note”. The card reads:

Harbor Produce                         Thu 8:02 AM
Credit memo
Waiting in review. Once confirmed, it comes off your cost.

To see only what is waiting on you, filter to Invoices and credits.

If it was filed as something else, say a statement, open Change what this email is and choose Credit memo. Its files go back into review, and review still reads the document, so check for the credit box below.

Check that review sees a credit

The inbox sorted it by the email. Review reads the PDF, so the PDF needs the words Credit memo or Credit note in its heading, near the top of the page. When it does, review opens with a box above the lines:

This is a credit memo. Confirming it takes $139.60 off your cost for its month. It adds no purchases and changes no prices.

That box is the whole check. If it isn’t there, review is reading the document as an ordinary invoice, and confirming it would record $139.60 of chicken you never got. Don’t confirm it. Ask the rep for the credit memo itself, not a copy of the invoice with a note written on it.

Make the total match what they printed

A credit is checked the same way an invoice is:

  1. Confirm the printed total. Until you do, review stops with “Confirm the printed invoice total.”
  2. The lines have to add up to that total. If they don’t, review says “Invoice totals differ by” and the amount, and waits.

Suppliers print credits in different ways: $139.60, -$139.60, ($139.60). Review compares the amounts without the sign, so any of the three adds up. You don’t have to retype a minus sign to make it balance.

The button is the same one invoices use, Import invoice and update costs. On a credit, go by the box above it, not the button’s name.

What changes after you confirm it

After you confirm, these stay as they were:

  • Ingredient prices. Chicken is still $139.60 a case, because that is still what a case costs.
  • Recipe costs and open quotes. Nothing built on that price moves.
  • The month’s food spend. The credit doesn’t come off it.

The credit shows up beside that number instead of inside it. On Purchases, under the month’s spend, a line reads (with no other fees or tax that month):

−$139.60 in invoice fees, tax and credits: not food, not counted above.

So the month shows what the food cost you, and right under it, what came back. When the inbox and the review box say “off your cost”, this line is what they mean.

Where it stops

A few things a credit memo does not do in CostCook today. Know them before you go looking.

  • It isn’t linked to the invoice it credits. Keep the invoice number in your note to the rep, and check the credit’s own lines against it.
  • It doesn’t change an event’s cost. If the short case was for Saturday’s wedding, the event’s cost after still reads the purchases recorded on it. The credit sits on the month.
  • Nothing asks the supplier for you. At the door, Fewer came puts the short case on the follow-up list. Getting the credit is still a phone call or an email to your rep.

The habit that keeps it clean

Once a week, filter the inbox to Invoices and credits and clear it. On each credit, look for the box before you press anything. If the box is there and the total matches, confirm it. If it isn’t, ask for the real memo.

To check the invoice lines that come in alongside the credits, read how to check a supplier invoice before it changes your recipe costs. To see what to do at the door when the case is missing, read the delivery arrived wrong.