1. What is a Proforma Invoice?
A proforma invoice is a preliminary bill of sale that send to buyers before service provision. As a result, items in Pro-forma invoices are not considered as revenue, and therefore can be freely changed as required.
2. How to handle a Proforma Invoice?
Create a Proforma invoice
There are 2 ways to create a proforma invoice:
- Generate from Quote tab & mark it as Invoice
- Generate from Invoice tab as below:
- Go to the Invoice app
- Choose Invoices tab
- Click + New Invoice
- Choose Proforma
- Fill in the required information:
- Invoice Name
- Billing to
- Recipient email address
- Adjust the due days
- Products
- Grouping invoice item (optional)
- Create Invoice
- Preview and Edit (optional)
Draft
After an Invoice is created either:
its status is DraftYou can do one the below options:
- Edit
- Send
- Mark as Sent
- Copy
- Delete
Send (or Mark as Sent) the invoice to the customer
Once you send or mark as sent the draft invoice:
1. The status will change from Draft to Proforma
2. The Actions list will update as below:
- Provision: Provision the invoice
- Payments: Add payment and its reference to the invoice
- Use Credits: Use the credit from a pre-issued credit note
- Edit
- Resend
- Download
- History
- Copy
- Void
Add payment to the invoice (to mark it as Paid)
There are 3 different methods to add a payment to an invoice to mark it paid:
- The invoice will be paid automatically when it is provisioned by the customer’s remaining credits.
- This is the default payment of tax invoices whether their status is:
- Provisioned & Awaiting payment
- Provisioned & Partially paid
- The invoice will be fully paid automatically when the customer tops up or when using the customer’s remaining credits.
- Auto-allocated payments can be removed.
- This is the default payment of tax invoices whether their status is:
- In case you have multiple invoices of this type, when you perform a top-up, the payments will be allocated to those invoices randomly, from oldest to latest.
- If you do not want the incoming payment to be assigned randomly, you can Disable this auto mode and manually allocate the payment to an invoice.
- This option happens when you disable the auto-allocation mode.
- Manual-allocated payment can be removed.
How to allocate a payment manually:
- You need to add a payment to the customer account from Finance app.
- Allocate the payment to the appropriate invoice(s):
- Option 1: At Finance app
- Option 2: At Invoice app:
- Select the appropriate invoice
- Click on 3 dots icon
- Choose Payments
- Select the appropriate payment to allocate
- Allocate
- You can use the Credit note to pay the invoice.
How to allocate a payment by using the credit note:
- Create an awaiting-payment Credit Note via Finance App.
- Allocate the credit note:
- Option 1: Click the 3 dot icon on the right side of the invoice and choose Use credits
- Option 2: Click the created Credit Note, then select Allocate Credit.
- Enter the amounts in the Amount to Credit fields for the unallocated credit notes you want to use. You can apply:
- Full credit amount => The invoice will be fully paid.
- Partial credit amount => The invoice will be partially paid.
- Allocate Credit
NOTES
- Payment can be removed from an invoice.
- If the proforma invoice is provisioned by Invoice app and becomes a tax invoice, the payment still can be removed.
- Proforma invoice that needs to be allocated payment must be sent/marked as sent already.
Provision an invoice
The invoice app only supports 2 types of provisioning:
- Subscription/order purchase
- Subscription extension
Subscription add-on addition is not supported as the charge varies depending on the provision date.
Subscription renewal is also not supported as it is similar to subscription extension, albeit with alignment, whose charge varies depending on provision month.
How to provision an invoice:
- Go to the Invoice app
- Select the appropriate invoice that you would like to provision
- Click the 3 dots icon
- Choose Provision
- A proforma invoice must be provisioned in its entirety, or fail entirely.
- There will be a validity check to ensure that all of the items in an invoice can be provisioned. The check will also give suggestions to resolve invalid items.
- A Pro-forma Invoice can only be provisioned if all of the following are satisfied:
- All items pass the validity check.
- The invoice is fully paid with manual payment or has enough credit to cover the unpaid amount of the invoice.
- Once finish checking, click Provision
Additional:
The invoice app will automatically provision all the items by calling the appropriate modules (Subscription, Order). There are some actions that users still need to do manually, such as assigning a number to a subscription with a number add-on.
After the Pro-forma invoice is provisioned, it will be converted to a Tax invoice. At this point, the invoice will behave as it would previously: no edit/void allowed.
Void an invoice
A Pro-forma invoice can be voided, no sending Credit Note is needed.
NOTES
- A paid or partially paid Pro-forma invoice cannot be voided. To do that, the payment must be unallocated from the invoice first.
- A tax invoice (an invoice that is provisioned) cannot be voided.