Reserve invoice

Use it when the customer pays, or commits to pay, for everything at once but takes the goods in parts. A building-materials store is the usual case: a contractor buys the drywall, screws and paint for the whole house and picks them up as the job moves along.

Creating one

1. Open Sales › Invoices › New.
2. Next to the number and status, check Reserve invoice. You can only choose it while the invoice is new or a draft.
3. Enter the lines and save.

It is stamped like any invoice and posts to the customer's account right away, so it counts for their balance, credit and payments. It moves no stock: what was invoiced stays committed in each line's warehouse until it is delivered.

Use your usual invoice series. The printout says "Reserve invoice".

Delivering in parts

On the invoice, Copy to › Delivery brings what is still to deliver. Change the quantities to what leaves today and save. That delivery:

• reduces stock and releases what was committed;
• creates no new receivable and is never invoiced again;
• can only carry lines of the reserve invoice.

You can also deliver from Goods delivery: reserve invoices show on the board and the delivery station creates the delivery for you.

Each line of the invoice shows how much was delivered and how much is left. When nothing is left, it closes.

Payments, credit memos and cancelling

Payments apply to a reserve invoice like to any other. A credit memo copied from it gives back what was not delivered and returns no stock, because those goods never left.

It cannot be cancelled while it has deliveries in force. As in SAP Business One, cancel or return the deliveries first and then cancel the invoice.

With an ERP

In SAP Business One it goes up as a reserve invoice (ReserveInvoice) and each delivery goes up based on it. NetSuite has no reserve invoice, so it goes up as a regular invoice, which reduces stock there at once; its deliveries are not sent again. With stamping on, the invoice waits for its stamp before going up.