Business processes - Sales - Down payments

Down payments

Particularly in the case of contracts for work and services in the capital goods and plant construction sectors, it makes sense to demand advance payments as a guarantee for the fulfilment of the contract or as short- or medium-term financing. This interest-free loan granted by the debtor is agreed on the payment plan condition in the order confirmation. Since payment plans are transaction-specific data, the master payment plans are only valid as a template and are copied and thus inserted locally when inserted into an order. Consequently, general data - such as the word description, etc. - are not included. - are copied into the order and specific data - such as payment dates - can be adjusted for each order.

The next step is now to request a partial payment. An overview of the pending payments can be seen in the order header statistics, where the confirmed but not yet invoiced orders are displayed. In the columns "Status down payment" and "to" you can now see for which orders a partial payment has been defined and which is the next payment plan event on which date. If a payment request has been made for a partial payment, the next payment plan event is automatically displayed in the column.

The most effective way to request a down payment is now via the payment plan, which is accessed via the corresponding order. In the list of payment plan amounts, you can now see on which events a payment has already been requested and which is the next one. By selecting this payment plan amount and pressing the button "Create customer down payment request", the editing mask of the down payment request is opened and the data of the order and the payment plan are transferred. By saving the down payment request is now created. After checking the data, the entry can be completed by posting the down payment request.

Booking is important in two ways. Only after posting does the down payment request appear as a noted item in the customer's open item account and can only then be assigned to a received down payment. Secondly, only posted down payment requests participate in the dunning run. When the dunning proposal list is created, due open down payment requests appear together with the open items and can therefore be dunned in one.

Advance payments received are recorded in the financial accounts and allocated to the advance payment request.

Advance payments are offset against the final invoice.