Proforma Invoices¶

A proforma invoice is not a real invoice.
It is a document that is sent to a customer to enable payment to be made by that customer prior to goods being manufactured or despatched for that customer.

In Blindata proforma invoices are entered as quotations.

Customers can be set up a ‘proforma’ by setting the following field to true in Sales Files > Customers.
If you try to enter an order for a customer that is flagged as a proforma, you will be advised to enter the order as a proforma first via quotations.

Order Processing > Quotations

When a proforma is entered as a quotation, if the customer selected has ‘Is Proforma Customer’ switched on, then the quotation will be created as a proforma.

Once the quotation has been entered, it can be printed out and will print as ‘Proforma Invoice’ instead of ‘Quotation’.

This proforma invoice cannot then be processed until payment has been received. When the payment is made, it has to be recorded in Blindata in Order Processing > Paid Proforma.

You can enter a proforma value in the 'Totals' tab as shown below:

And print proforma:

Also, it is then possible to change the status of the proforma to ‘Paid’.

Once this has been done and saved (‘Save’ button in the bottom left), the paid proforma can then be converted into an order by going to Order Processing > Quotations and using the ‘Create Order’ button.
The order can then be processed as normal and an invoice created.

Previously we made a change to stop people from editing orders if they have been converted from proformas.

This is now a parameter called 'Allow Proforma Edit'.
If it is set to true, then the order can be edited if it has been converted from a proforma.

We made a change so that orders that had been proformas could not be edited, and we then added a parameter for it.
If ‘allow Proforma Edit’ = false, this was locked down a bit too tightly as you were unable to flag these orders as checked.
A change has been made so only blind detail lines are locked down, and the header is still editable.
There is also an advanced permission flag so only certain users can edit the header record.
It is called ‘Edit proforma order’.

If ‘Allow Proforma Edit’ in Administration > Parameters = false and ‘Edit Proforma Order’ = true, the user is allowed to edit ALL the fields in order (as if it was a normal order).
If ‘Allow Proforma Edit’ in Administration > Parameters = false and ‘Edit Proforma Order’ = false, it is not possible to edit a proforma order.