If you are wondering why an invoice in Novi or QuickBooks is showing as paid even though a payment wasn't actually received, it was probably credited. This may seem counterintuitive, and you're asking "Why not just void the invoice instead of issuing a credit memo?"

Most bookkeepers or CPAs do not want staff randomly voiding invoices in QuickBooks. This is because it touches financial statements, which may have already been reported to the IRS or a board of directors.

The most common example of credit memos is for dues non-renewals. If any of your association's member types are set to auto-renew, you may have wondered why an expired member's dues invoice shows as paid. Since QuickBooks does not recognize a "non-renewed" status, if a credit memo has been applied to an invoice, it will always show as "paid" even if the member didn't actually "pay."

The good news is, if the dues invoice is (1) created in Novi and (2) non-renewed in Novi, it will have a transaction status of "Non-Renew" in Novi. This feature allows the admin to see which dues invoices were non-renewed right from the Transactions list on the backend.