Pro-forma Invoices and On-Account payments to Suppliers

Question asked by Arham Syed 7 years ago

Hi, I was wondering if someone can advise me on the following issue regarding Supplier Pro-forma Invoices.

Scenario: Lets assume a Supplier issues a Pro-Forma invoice with X amount . He then requests a partial advance payment 'On Account'. I enter this payment and allocate it to the Pro-forma Invoice number. However later on the supplier issues a final invoice with a different number and different amount Y. (The amount is different often due to actual freight etc charges which are more than the estimated one mentioned in the Pro-forma)

Now the Pro-forma issued earlier by the supplier becomes void.

Questions:

1- How do i manage the above scenario in Clearbooks? 2- Is there a way to allocate a payment to a supplier 'On Account' and later on allocate it to a particular invoice?

I am not an accountant by profession and really hope someone can guide me on the above issue.

Regards

Syed

5 Replies

Hi Arham,

If the payment is indeed a payment on account, until the work is complete and the invoice is finalised then the funds should be allocated to the Trade Debtors account code when being explained on the system. This can be done both if the funds are explained from a statement or manually using the Money In feature.

As a reference please see the guide linked below. https://support.clearbooks.co.uk/support/solutions/articles/33000203244-how-to-create-a-payment-on-account-for-a-supplier

Hopefully this helps

Thank you very much Paul, that certainly cleared quite a few things for me. Much appreciated.

Warm regards

Arham

Hi Arham

Just to expand on what Theo has advised, by using CB's payments on account feature, the money is held against the supplier's name ready to allocate to the final bill when you have entered it.

In other words it is "unallocated cash" and, once you have processed it as such from the bank import (as described above) you can see it sitting on the "Money>Unallocated cash" screen.

As and when you enter the final bill from the supplier there are two ways of allocating the payment against it. You either do it from the Unallocated cash screen or, once you've entered the bill, you will see an "Allocate payment" button on its screen.

With regard to the pro-forma bill you receive, this is not a formal bill and so you should not enter it as such and neither should you allocate payments against it, in effect, it's a demand for payment.

Instead, if you want to enter it as a record and reminder, enter it as a draft bill, ie use the "Save draft" button. You can then see it in the Bills screen under the Draft filter button. The added benefit of this is that you can then edit it when the final bill arrives and save it as the final bill.

You can do exactly the same with sales invoices only there's a specific pro-forma option under the Sales>Quotes screen. Go to create the Quote and you'll see a "Quote type" option where you can chose "Proforma invoice".

Hi, Thanks for your reply.

It makes sense. However what would be the procedure in case I import a bank statement through a CSV file. The bank statement would be showing the amount debited from my bank - but I would not have an invoice to allocate it to.

Same goes for incoming payments - ( on Account Payments from Customers). How do i allocate them ?

Sorry im a newbie at this and still trying to learn.

Regards

Arham

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