Enter sales returns

Sometimes you many cancel sales orders because your customer no longer wants to buy some (or all) of the goods or services that you're supplying. You might cancel orders for many reasons, such as damage to goods in transit, incorrect quantities, or incorrect items. You enter a sales return to record the goods or services that your customer ordered but no longer requires.

The sales return process

  1. Create a new sales return, or copy from an existing sales order.

  2. Confirm goods received (Receipt), to add the returned goods back into stock.

    You confirm receipt of all goods and services, which are stock and miscellaneous items, free text items, and service/labour items.

  3. Print the credit note.

  4. Post the credit note, to create a transaction and update the customer account and nominal accounts.

What's in a sales return?

A sales return is similar to a sales order in what it contains. Returns are created using customer details and the goods and services you supply held on Sage 200.

Information you need to enter for a return.

  • The items or lines required. You can add the following types of lines:

    • Stock item: These can be for products or services.

    • Free text items: Use this for one off items that have a value but don't have stock record.

      You can also use this when stock items need to be added to a credit note but are not being returned by the customer.

    • Additional charges: These are added to an order to cover costs, such as delivery or insurance. You can add these as one-off charge or create a record for charges you use regularly.

      Add these to a return if additional charges were included on the order and they are to be refunded.

    • Comment lines: These simply add information. You choose whether they're printed on your documents.

  • The warehouse the stock is to be returned to.
  • The delivery address if it's different to the customer's main address.
  • For foreign currency customers, the exchange rate to be used.

Creating returns from existing orders

A quick way to create a return is to copy all the items from an existing sales order. This can be from any order at any time; e.g. despatched, printed, posted, cancelled.

This copies all the items, prices and exchange rates from an existing sales order and adds them to a return. You can add and remove items from the return and change the quantities and prices.

Use if you need to:

  • Return all the items exactly the same as the original order.

  • Return the majority of items the same as the original order. You can remove items that aren't being returned, or add additional items returned from another order as necessary.

  • Return items using the same price as the original order.

    When an item is added to a return, the current selling price for the customer is used. If the price has changed since the item was ordered, then the customer may receive a credit note for a different amount than they were invoiced.

    If you create a return from an order, then the items retain their original selling price.

What is copied from the sales order?

  • All the lines; stock items, free text, additional charges, comments.

    Note: Any lines for stock items that currently Inactive are ignored.

  • The quantity for each line

  • The prices for each line.

  • All discounts including line discounts, order discounts and settlement discounts.

  • The exchange rate. This is always taken from to order to make sure that your customer is credited with the same amount as they paid. You can change the exchange rate, if you need to.

  • If a stock item was set to be fulfilled from the supplier (from Supplier via Stock), it will be returned to stock as normal.

  • The user and any payments are ignored.

What if the customer doesn't send the goods back?

There may be occasions when you need to print a credit note for a customer for items that they're not actually returning, maybe they were damaged or not received.

As the items won't be added back into stock, you don't want to create standard item line on the return. To resolve this, you can use a free text line.

Foreign currency returns

When you are entering returns for foreign currency customers, the exchange rate set on the Currencies and exchange rates screen is displayed on the Return Details tab. This exchange rate is used to calculate the price of any items you add to the return, because prices are stored in base currency. You must check and change the exchange rate, if required, before adding items to the return, otherwise the default exchange rate will be used.

Note: The exchange rate used to post the credit note values to your nominal accounts is set when you print the credit note for the customer.

When you add items to the return, the VAT is set on each line. This means you can use different VAT rates for different items. When you sell products and services to customers in other countries, the VAT rate needs to reflect this. Sage 200 will always use the VAT rate set on the customer's account when the customer's Country Code is set to anything other than GB. When the foreign currency customer is selected on a return, the VAT Rate on the customer account overrides the VAT rate on a stock item.

Making refunds for online payments

If online payment was made with the order which is being returned, an online card refund must be made (if the money is to be refunded). In order to do this, the original order must have been completed by posting an invoice from Sales Order Processing to the Sales Ledger. The sales return must be completed by posting the credit note to the Sales Ledger. The sales payment generated by the online card refund can then be allocated to the credit note.

Amending sales returns

You can amend returns if they haven't been marked as complete, or if credit has not been posted in full for the return.

Amending sales return status

From time to time you may need to suspend a sales return until a query is answered or a problem solved. You can put returns on and off hold or cancel a return.

You can't amend the status of a sales return that is Completed.

See Change sales order or return status.

What do you want to do?