Booking Bol.com returns as credit notes in Moneybird automatically

Booking a sale is manageable. A return is the part that most often gets left behind in the books. The order has already been invoiced, the money has been refunded, but in Moneybird the revenue is still sitting there. Skip the correction and you pay VAT on a sale that did not go through, and present revenue that is higher than what you actually earned. With a single return that goes unnoticed. With dozens a month the gap grows into something your accountant will start asking about.

Why a return goes wrong so easily by hand

A refund is not simply a negative amount you subtract somewhere. There is more to it than you would think at first glance.

• The return arrives separately from the sale. An order is sold today and only sent back weeks later. By then the sale has long been booked and you have forgotten a correction was still due. The return falls through the cracks.
• The amount does not always match the order. Sometimes only part of an order is returned, or a partial refund is issued. Book the full order amount back without thinking and you overshoot, and now your revenue is wrong the other way.
• The VAT has to come back too. A credit note reverses not just the revenue but also the VAT you charged on the sale. Forget that and you keep paying VAT on money you have given back.
• Different rates mixed together. If the original order held an item at 21% and one at 9%, the credit note has to follow that same split. A single rate across the whole amount is simply wrong.
• The payout does not reconcile. Bol.com offsets returns in your payout. As long as the credit note is missing, a gap remains between what lands in your bank and what your books show, and you have to hunt that gap down again every month.

Each point is fixable on its own. The trouble is you have to apply them again with every return, and one always slips through eventually.

What the connector does with returns

The connector between Bol.com and Moneybird pulls your returns automatically and turns them into credit notes. In practice this happens:

• A return at Bol.com becomes a credit note in Moneybird, for exactly the amount that was actually refunded.
• The VAT comes back at the same rate as the original sale, per line. An order with two rates produces a credit note that holds that same split.
• The credit note is booked to the same administration your sales land in, so your revenue and your VAT cleanly cancel out.
• Because it runs daily, the correction arrives when the return is processed at Bol.com, not weeks later when you happen to remember.

The result is that your revenue in Moneybird shows what was really sold, and your VAT return is a sum of bookings that already add up, rather than a moment where you hope you caught every return.

You keep sight of what happens

Automatic does not mean it happens behind your back. Every credit note shows up in the log, with the order it belongs to. If a booking fails once, it is retried automatically and you see exactly which return it concerns. You do not have to check anything by hand, but you always can, and that difference matters when your VAT return is on the line.

Getting started

As long as you have the odd return a month, you can credit it by hand. Once there are more, this is exactly the kind of work you would rather not have to remember and that still must not go wrong. To see how returns, invoices and VAT land in Moneybird automatically, look at the Bol.com to Moneybird connector. You can try it for thirty days, unlimited, no card required.