Pre‑payments allow you to request and collect payment before an order items are booked out or invoiced. This workflow helps manage risk, improve cash flow, and control order fulfilment.
Pre‑payments are requested and managed on orders and are governed by company settings and user privileges.
System Configuration
Before using pre‑payments, the following system settings apply:
Company Settings
A default pre‑payment percentage can be defined at company level.
This percentage is used as the default when a user requests a pre‑payment.
The default value is 100%, but can be adjusted as required.
User Privileges
A privilege controls whether a user is allowed to override pre‑payment requirements. Users with this privilege can convert a provisional order to a full order, even when a pre‑payment request is still pending.
Quote Stage
Orders in Quote status do not support pre‑payments.
No pre‑payment options are available at this stage.
Provisional Order Stage
When an order is in Provisional status:
The requested amount defaults to the company pre‑payment percentage
A proforma invoice can be created, showing:
Requested pre‑payment amount
Relevant order details
If no pre‑payment is requested, the order can be freely converted to a full order
If a pre‑payment is requested:
The order is blocked from being converted to a full order until the amount you put in "request payment" is received, unless you have the override permission enabled as per earlier.
If you go back to a quote, if a pre-payment is on the order, you are blocked until its cancelled / refunded.
When you are in an order if you go back to a provisional order, the pre-payment requested value is reset.
Managing Pre‑Payments Before Order Confirmation
If a pre‑payment exists and the order needs to be cancelled at this stage:
The pre‑payment request must be set to 0
The received payment must be refunded
Only after the refund can the order be cancelled
Proforma Invoicing allows you to request a payment from a customer prior to an order being set to active, at the provisional stage. When you're in a provisional order the Proforma Invoice document is visible.
Account Types in Scope
If you have an account that has "can take payments", they will be in scope of being able to take the pre-payment and proforma invoice process.
The process is as follows:
1: Create a Provisional Order
The order must be a provisional order to start with. You must set the customer account flag "can take payments" to enabled.
2: Request the Payment
Whilst the order is at provisional status, click on Actions > Request Payment.
3: Enter the amount for the Proforma Invoice
A new window will pop up, you can enter the amount to put on the Proforma Invoice here. The amount displayed will be inclusive of tax. The amount displayed will be based on the line totals on the order - if you are using an estimated return date or the non-open ended order then it will be the projected rental line totals up to that date.
4: Send the Proforma Invoice to the Customer
When creating the proforma invoice document, the amount entered will show.
You'll see on the top of the screen a notification will appear indicating the payment has been requested, a shortcut icon will open the Take Payment window.
The payments section on the right hand panel is updated with the "payment outstanding" indicating the amount that you input on the request payment box.
You can take a payment for less than the total amount required for the total order value - it's up to you to decide which amount is appropriate to progress from a provisional order.
If you put in £100 in the request payment screen and you change your mind and instead want to request £50, then the amount outstanding will adjust accordingly.
5: Take the Payment
The next step is to take the payment - either click the shortcut on the yellow payment box or click on Actions > Take Payment.
The amount in the Take Payment window will be the same as that which you entered in the Request Payment flow - you can then send the customer a payment link with Klipboard Money, via Card Terminal or via another payment method.
You can enter more than the amount and warning messages will appear if you entered too large an amount (eg you put £33 on the proforma invoice and you enter £100 on the payment screen). You can take a larger amount however if needed, for example if the customer may add more items to the order later or things change.
Once the payment has been received from the customer, this is recorded as a pre-payment on the order.
The pre-payment is held against the order as a holding payment as no invoice has been created yet.
If you try and cancel the order at this stage, a warning message will appear:
This process is in place to ensure that the pre-payments are refunded before the order can be cancelled.
6: Convert the Provisional Order to Order status
Once the pre-payment has been paid, you can convert the provisional order to a full order - the pre-payment is still recorded against the order and remains as a pre-payment. You can click the "Request Payment" button again and reduce the amount required for the pre-payment if needed.
7: Book out the items on the order
Booking out the items is essentially handing the items over to the customer. An actual invoice can be raised once one or more of the items on the order are booked out.
Note: If you want to cancel the order at this point, reverse and movements or booked out items, refund the pre-payments and then the order can be cancelled.
8: Raise a draft invoice
When a draft invoice is raised, the pre-payment amount is applied to the invoice.
9: Confirm the invoice
When the invoice is confirmed, the payment type will change to a Payment. You can now post the invoice to your accounting package and post the payment.
Note: If you void the invoice after it's been confirmed and not posted, the payment will return to a Pre-Payment.