Evolution ERP Documentation

Evolution has two credit controls on every customer account: Stop Credit (a yes/no switch) and Credit Limit (a dollar figure). Both are set on the account, and both then change what the sales and project teams are allowed to do — on the quote screen, on projects, and on invoices — without anyone having to check with accounts first.

The two controls are not interchangeable. Stop Credit is the heavier of the two and reaches much further into the system: it stops projects being created at all and shuts down the whole action bar on a project’s Inventory tab. Credit Limit only bites on invoicing. This page explains both, and shows exactly where each one appears.

In one line: Stop Credit = “this account is frozen, don’t take on any more work”. Credit Limit = “this account can owe us up to $X — don’t invoice past it”.

Setting the Two Values

Both fields live on the account, under Manage Accounts → (open the account) → Billing/Pricing. Stop Credit is near the top of the tab, just under the Sales Person/Account Rep; Credit Limit is further down, below the Pricebooks list.

The account’s Billing/Pricing tab. Stop Credit is a Yes/No dropdown near the top; Credit Limit is a dollar amount further down, labelled “0 is Unlimited”.

Field	What to enter
Stop Credit	No (normal trading) or Yes (account frozen). Setting it to Yes immediately applies every block described further down this page — there is no grace period.
Credit Limit	The maximum the account may owe you, in dollars, entered as a plain number (e.g. `100000`). Leave it at 0 for unlimited — a zero limit is treated as “no limit set”, not as “this account may owe nothing”.

Who can change them? Both rows are restricted. They are only visible to users with Accounts Receivable set to Admin, or to full system administrators. Everyone else simply doesn’t see the Stop Credit or Credit Limit rows on the Billing/Pricing tab — which is deliberate, so sales staff can’t lift a customer’s own credit hold. Remember to press Save Changes.

Who can work past a hold? The same two groups — Accounts Receivable set to Admin, and full system administrators — are the only people who can commit an invoice or create a project for an account that is on stop credit or over its limit. Everyone else is stopped. Where an override applies, Evolution still shows the reason on screen, in amber rather than red, so the decision is a deliberate one rather than a silent exception.

Finding accounts that are on stop credit

On Manage Accounts, open the advanced filters with the more_vert icon at the right of the search bar. The Stop Credit dropdown filters the register to Yes, No or All, which gives you a working list of every frozen account. The same filter exists on the Session/Account search screen.

Manage Accounts with the advanced filters open and Stop Credit set to “Yes” — the register now lists only accounts that are on stop credit.

info There is no equivalent “over their limit” filter — the credit limit is compared against the balance live, on each screen, rather than stored as a flag.

How the Balance Is Worked Out

Wherever Evolution compares an account against its credit limit, the Customer Balance it uses is the total outstanding balance across all of that customer’s invoices — what they owe you right now, including tax. It is not restricted to overdue invoices, and it is not restricted to a branch.

That balance, and the limit it is being measured against, are shown to you on both the quote screen and the invoice screen so you can see how much room is left before the limit bites.

On the Quote Screen

The quote screen is where most people meet these settings, and it reacts to both of them. Three things change.

1. The stop credit badge

If the customer is on stop credit, a red Customer on Stop Credit badge appears in the quote summary panel on the right, above Revision and Terms. It is purely a warning — you can still build, price, save, print and email the quote as normal.

The “Customer on Stop Credit” badge in the quote summary panel, above the Revision, Terms and Total rows.

2. The balance and limit line

Under the quote item grid, Evolution shows the customer’s current balance alongside their credit limit, so the estimator can see the position before promising anything. Accounts with the limit left at 0 show Unlimited.

A quote for an account on stop credit: the red badge sits in the summary panel top right, and the balance/limit line sits under the item grid.

3. Create Invoice and Create Project are blocked

The real enforcement happens in the quote Toolbox — the panel you open from the quote screen and drive with the Select from Dropdown list. Two of its functions are gated:

Toolbox function	Blocked by Stop Credit?	Blocked by Credit Limit?	What you see
Create Invoice	Yes	Yes	The invoice options are replaced by a red warning. There is no override.
Create Project	Yes	No	The project options are replaced by a grey notice.

For a healthy account, Create Invoice shows the normal options — invoice type, whether to include quote notes, and the Create Invoice button:

Create Invoice on an account that is trading normally — invoice type, quote notes option and the Create Invoice button.

On an account that is on stop credit, those controls are gone entirely and replaced with a warning. The Create Invoice button is not disabled — it is simply not rendered, so there is nothing to click:

Create Invoice on a stop-credit account: “WARNING: CANNOT CREATE AN INVOICE — Customer is on Stop Credit”.

On an account that is over its credit limit — the balance has reached or passed the limit — you get the same treatment with a different reason:

Create Invoice on an account whose balance has reached its credit limit: “WARNING: CANNOT CREATE AN INVOICE — CREDIT LIMIT EXCEEDED”.

How the limit test works here: the quote screen blocks invoicing once the customer’s existing balance reaches the limit. It does not add the value of the quote you are about to invoice — so a customer sitting just under their limit can still be invoiced for a large quote that will push them well over. If you need a hard ceiling, set the limit to the figure you actually want enforced.

Create Project is blocked by stop credit only. A customer who is over their credit limit can still have projects created from their quotes — the reasoning being that the limit is about money owed, not about whether you are willing to take the work on.

Create Project on a stop-credit account: “You cannot create a project when the customer is on stop credit”.

How Projects Are Affected

Projects respond to Stop Credit only. The credit limit is never checked anywhere in project management. There are three effects, and the third is much bigger than people expect.

1. Creating the project is blocked, from the quote and from New Project

The Create Project function in the quote Toolbox is a hard block — the link to create the project is not shown at all (see the previous section).

The standalone New Project screen refuses as well. As soon as the customer is known — whether you arrived with the account already selected or picked it from the customer field on the form — a red “Cannot create project” banner appears across the top of the screen giving the reason: the customer is on stop credit, or the account is disabled. Saving is refused if you try anyway, and you are returned to the form with everything you had typed still in place.

The New Project screen for a stop-credit customer: a red banner across the top explains why the project cannot be created.

Users with Accounts Receivable set to Admin or full administrator rights are not stopped here — they see no banner and can book the project.

2. A banner on the project’s General tab

Existing projects are not deleted or closed when a customer goes on stop credit, but every time someone opens one they get a red banner across the top of the General tab: “This customer is on stop credit, please contact accounts”. The rest of the tab still works — you can edit and save project details.

The stop-credit banner across the top of a project’s General tab.

3. The Inventory tab’s entire action bar disappears

This is the one that catches people out. On a project’s Inventory tab, the row of buttons underneath the item list is hidden completely when the customer is on stop credit. That row is not just the requisition button — it is every action on the tab:

Generate Requisition — Requisition
New Packing Slip — Packing Order
New Production Order — Production Order
Requisition for BOM — Request BOM
New Dispatch — Dispatch
Return Goods
Inventory Callup
Transfer Inventory — Stock Transfer
Special Functions
Save Changes

A normal project shows the full action bar:

The Inventory tab on a project for an account trading normally — the full action bar sits under the item list.

The same tab on a stop-credit customer’s project has nothing below the item list:

The Inventory tab on a stop-credit customer’s project — the item list and legend remain, but the whole action bar is gone.

Note that Save Changes goes with it. Because the save button sits in the same hidden block, you cannot save any edit made on the Inventory tab of a stop-credit customer’s project — including quantity changes that have nothing to do with ordering or dispatching. If a project needs inventory work while the account is under review, the account has to come off stop credit first.

info Other project tabs are unaffected — Quotes, Picking, Job Costing, Files, Timesheets and so on behave normally, and existing dispatches for the customer show the same red “please contact accounts” banner as the project General tab.

On the Invoice Screen

Invoice Entry stops the invoice at the point that matters — Commit — while leaving the rest of the screen alone. Open an invoice for a customer who is on stop credit, or whose balance plus this invoice would reach their credit limit, and a red banner across the top of the screen gives the reason. The invoice can still be edited, priced and saved; the Commit button is greyed out, and hovering it repeats the reason.

That means work in progress is never lost. Raise the invoice, save it as a draft, and commit it once accounts have lifted the hold or raised the limit — nothing has to be re-keyed. The block is enforced on the server as well as in the screen, so it holds even if the page is stale when Commit is pressed.

The screen also shows the balance and limit as a band below the item grid, and the Xero Integration panel reports “Customer is on stop credit” in place of the usual send-to-Xero controls, so a stop-credit customer’s invoices are not pushed to Xero from here.

Invoice Entry for a stop-credit customer: a red banner across the top gives the reason, and the balance/limit band sits below the item grid. The Commit button further down is greyed out.

Users who hold the override see the same message in amber instead, and Commit stays available — the banner is there so the decision is a conscious one:

The same invoice seen by a user with Accounts Receivable admin rights: an amber banner explains that the customer is on stop credit but they are allowed to commit.

Two balances, two projects. The Customer Balance in the band below the grid is the account balance — every invoice netted together, so credit balances and overpayments pull it down. The Account Bal on the Add a Payment window counts only the invoices that still have money owing, because those are the ones you can allocate a payment against. On an account carrying credits the payment window will read higher, and both figures are right.

The practical upshot: stop credit and the credit limit are enforced consistently. The quote screen refuses to raise the invoice at all; Invoice Entry lets the paperwork be prepared but refuses to commit it, which is the step that puts the debt on the customer’s account and into the ledger. Either way the invoice does not become real while the account is held.

Quick Reference

Action	Customer on Stop Credit	Customer over Credit Limit
Build, price and save a quote	Allowed (badge shown)	Allowed
Create Invoice from a quote	Blocked	Blocked
Create Project from a quote	Blocked	Allowed
Create a project from the New Project screen	Blocked *	Allowed
Open and edit an existing project	Allowed, with a red banner	Allowed
Requisitions, packing, production, dispatch, returns, callup, stock transfer and saving on the project Inventory tab	Blocked (buttons hidden)	Allowed
Raise and save an invoice directly	Allowed	Allowed
Commit an invoice raised directly	Blocked *	Blocked *
Send the invoice to Xero	Not offered	Allowed

info * Users with Accounts Receivable set to Admin, and full system administrators, may proceed. They still see the reason on screen, in amber.

Tips & Notes

A credit limit of 0 means unlimited. If you want to stop an account from being invoiced at all, use Stop Credit — don’t set the limit to 0.
Stop Credit and Credit Limit are independent. An account can be on stop credit with an unlimited limit, or under its limit and still frozen. Both are checked separately.
Neither setting is retrospective. Quotes, projects, invoices and dispatches that already exist stay exactly as they are — the controls only affect what people can do from now on.
Clearing an account is immediate. Set Stop Credit back to No (or raise the limit) and save; the next page load in sales or projects is unrestricted.
A held invoice is only held at Commit. If you find a draft invoice you cannot commit, save it and leave it — once the account is cleared, open it again and press Commit. The invoice keeps its number, its lines and its dates.
Because both fields are on the Billing/Pricing tab and hidden from non-admin users, an estimator who reports “the Create Invoice button has vanished” is almost always looking at a stop-credit or over-limit account — check the account before investigating further.

Accounts (Suppliers and Customers) — creating the account these settings live on.
BOM Requisition — one of the project Inventory tab actions hidden by stop credit.
Creating Projects — the Create Project function that stop credit blocks.
Invoicing a Project — invoicing routes and how they behave.