As of 13 August 2026, AI can only partly allocate credit notes to the right invoices.

What to actually do

1. Hand it to a person

   The route this page recommends

   A person who owns the outcome does this end to end, worth it when the failure is dear.

2. Use a tool built for this

   Second choice

3. Do it yourself

   The distant third

   A chat interface, power-user skill, and roughly 1 hour until you can act on the result.

   How to actually do it

   1. Open your accounting system and export the credit notes and open invoices for the same customer ledger and period, retaining invoice numbers, customer IDs, amounts, VAT amounts, currencies and statuses.
   2. Export or copy the written credit allocation policy, including rules for referenced invoices, partial credits, closed invoices, disputes and unapplied balances.
   3. Remove unrelated personal information, then paste the credit note table, invoice table and allocation rules into a chatbot with the prompt above.
   4. Check the proposed allocations against the source records by matching every customer ID, invoice number, credit note number, currency and amount, and recalculate the remaining balances.
   5. Give each exception to the finance colleague responsible for credit control and resolve it from the original customer account, correspondence or credit note rather than asking the model to guess.
   6. Enter only approved allocations into the accounting system, then compare the posted credit total and customer balances with the control totals produced from the source exports.

   Prompt

   Allocate the credit notes to the correct invoices using the records below.
   
   Credit notes:
   [Paste a table with credit note number, customer name or account ID, date, total amount, VAT amount, currency, reason and any stated invoice reference.]
   
   Open invoices:
   [Paste a table with invoice number, customer name or account ID, invoice date, due date, outstanding amount, VAT amount, currency and status.]
   
   Our allocation rules:
   [Paste your written rules, including whether a credit must be applied to the referenced invoice, how partial credits are handled, and what to do with disputed, closed or cross-customer items.]
   
   Return three tables:
   1. Proposed allocations with credit note number, invoice number, customer, amount applied, remaining credit and remaining invoice balance.
   2. Exceptions that you cannot allocate confidently, with the exact reason and the missing information needed.
   3. Control totals comparing credit notes supplied, credit allocated and credit left unapplied.
   
   Match only on evidence in the supplied records. Do not invent invoice references, customer identities, amounts, VAT treatment or allocation rules. Do not allocate across customers or currencies unless the stated rules explicitly allow it. Flag duplicate invoice numbers, duplicate credit notes, amount mismatches, already-closed invoices and any item that could affect VAT. Do not post anything to an accounting system. Use exact source values and show your arithmetic.

   Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.