What’s the correct way to create a Credit Note via the API. Previously we used to create an Invoice with negative values but my team are telling me that no longe works? I believe you have made some changes in the web version recently.
Has creating Credit Note's changed?
Peter_Singh
#2
Hi Jon 
,
Peter here from the Engineering team at FreeAgent. Sorry for the trouble here, we’ll do our best to get everything back on track.
We are indeed in the process of improving Credit Notes in the app, and the changes we’ve made so far stop users from transitioning a draft Invoice with a negative value to sent in the web app - which you’ll see in the app as a red banner.
We have not made any changes to the API behavior yet - and you’ll still be able to transition a draft Invoice with negative values to sent using the /v2/mark_as_sent endpoint.
There will be changes to come as we depreciate this behavior via the API too, and build out the Credit Notes endpoints, but this will be announced and we’ll give plenty of notice (at least 3 months) before this happens.
Having looked over your query, we’re assuming that you’re creating draft Invoices with negative values via the API, and then attempting to mark these as sent in the web app - and thus we’ve affected your workflow?
Could you just confirm that our understanding is correct, and if the information we’ve provided helps you out here, or if this is still an issue for you - and that using the API to mark these Invoices as sent isn’t an option for you?
Many thanks,
Peter
Jon_Free
#3
OK. I’ve spoken to the team here and it sounds like they were creating via the API and then trying to send via the web app. So we can use the API going forward. How do I keep abreast of the changes to the API?
Peter_Singh
#4
Hi Jon,
Thanks for confirming that understanding, that you were creating draft negative value invoices via the API and then switching to the web app to mark them as sent.
In the short term, we’ve removed the in app barrier to transitioning a draft negative value invoice to sent, so it should behave as before, and more in step with the API, and not disrupt your workflow.
In terms of announcements, they’ll be posted in the announcements section of this forum, and any major, or breaking changes will have at least a 3 month notification period.
In this case, our plan, although subject to change, is to build out equivalent credit note endpoints to allow you to create credit notes separately via the API, and eventually deprecate the ability to mark an invoice with a negative value as sent, which would be classed as a breaking change.
Apologies that this intermediate step caused a bit of confusion, but I hope it’s not knocked you too far off track, and please do keep your eyes peeled in the announcement section. I’ll also reply to this thread with a link to any future credit note updates, to make sure it’s as visible as possible.
All the best,
Peter
Jon_Free
#5
Is there a way to sign up to email alerts for this or do I literally have to visit this page once a month?
Peter_Singh
#6
Hi Jon,
Our forum here runs on the open-source software discourse, so all the tips and tricks for discourse notifications should apply here.
Saying that, I’m not an expert, but I’m pretty sure that you can enable notifications per topic by going to that page:
https://api-discuss.freeagent.com/c/announcements
And watching it:
You can then configure them further by going into preferences (the gear icon) then notifications or categories
It might be worth over-subscribing to say the uncategorized category first, to just make sure you’re receiving the notifications you’d expect, as the announcement section isn’t updated all that often?
I hope that helps.
All the best,
Peter
Peter_Singh
#8
Hi again @Jon_Free
We’ve just posted an announcement about Credit Notes in the announcement section, directly related to this thread:
This announcement pretty much tallies up with what I posted here at the end of last year on this thread, but if you’ve got any concerns or queries about this please do let us know.
Also, I hope you were already notified of the announcement post ahead of me posting here! 
All the best,
Peter
Jon_Free
#9
Great thanks. I’ll take a look now. Do you have anyone else successfully using it via the API yet?
Peter_Singh
#10
From our monitoring, it’s still very early days and there hasn’t been much usage just yet. From what there has been though, everything is looking like it should.
If you have any issues, or spot anything not quite right, just let us know.