Creditors#

The Creditors feature allows you to manage the entities that send invoices to your institution - typically publishers, service providers, or other organizations you pay for publication-related costs. Creditors are essential for organizing invoices and tracking financial relationships.

Overview#

You can access the Creditors page from the Finances section in the navigation menu. The overview displays all creditors in your system, showing their names with links to detailed information.

You can search for creditors by name using the search box at the top of the page.

Understanding Creditors in CODA#

A creditor is any organization or entity that sends invoices to your institution for publication costs or related services. Common examples include:

  • Publishers: Sending Article Processing Charge (APC) invoices

  • Publishing platforms: For hosting or publication services

  • Aggregators: Organizations managing payments on behalf of multiple publishers

  • Service providers: For editing, proofreading, or other publication-related services

Creditors help you:

  • Organize invoices: Group invoices by who sent them

  • Track relationships: See all financial activity with each creditor

  • Standardize naming: Ensure consistency when creating invoices

  • Analyze spending: Understand which organizations you pay most frequently

Creditors vs. Publishers

While publishers and creditors often overlap, they serve different purposes in CODA:

  • Publishers are used for journal and publication metadata

  • Creditors are used specifically for invoice management

  • The same organization (e.g., “Springer Nature”) might exist as both a publisher and a creditor

Creating a New Creditor#

To add a new creditor:

  1. Navigate to the Creditors page from the Finances section

  2. Click the New button

  3. Enter the Creditor Name (e.g., “Elsevier B.V.”, “Taylor & Francis Group”)

  4. Click Save

That’s it! Creditors in CODA are intentionally simple - just a name to identify who is billing you.

Viewing Creditor Details#

Click on any creditor from the list to see its detail page, which shows:

  • Creditor Name: The official name as stored in CODA

  • Related Invoices: A complete list of all invoices from this creditor

Editing a Creditor#

To update a creditor’s information:

  1. Navigate to the creditor’s detail page

  2. Click the Edit button (if available in your CODA version)

  3. Update the creditor name

  4. Click Save

Note

Editing a creditor name updates it for display purposes, but existing invoices retain the association. All invoices linked to this creditor will show the updated name.

Using Creditors in CODA#

Once you’ve created creditors, they integrate with the invoice management workflow:

In Invoice Creation#

When creating a new invoice:

  1. One of the required fields is Creditor

  2. Select from the dropdown of existing creditors

  3. If the creditor doesn’t exist yet, you’ll need to create it first

  4. The selected creditor appears on the invoice detail view

This ensures every invoice is properly attributed to the organization that sent it. You can use the serach field in the invoices section to filter by creditor.

Relationship with Publishers#

Many creditors will also exist as publishers in CODA’s publisher database. Here’s how they differ:

When to Use Each#

Use Publishers when:

  • Creating journals

  • Recording publication metadata

  • Managing contracts

  • Linking journals to publishing agreements

Use Creditors when:

  • Creating invoices

  • Recording who sent a bill

  • Tracking payment recipients

  • Managing financial relationships