Creating an advance from a progress claim

Sometimes you want to have part of an assignment paid before you start your first real progress claim. Robaws does not have a separate button for that, but you can achieve the result in two ways:

1. You adjust the % total on the progress claim, so that your first progress claim invoices the desired advance percentage straight away.
2. You create a separate advance invoice and deduct it from your progress claims afterwards.

Adjust the % total on the progress claim

You can take an advance directly on the progress claim by setting the % total on the first progress claim to the desired advance percentage. You do not deduct this amount from the total progress claim later on, but build further from this percentage.

Go through the following steps:

1. Create a first progress claim for a quotation.
2. Click the '%' action button at the top of the progress claim.
3. Enter the percentage for which you want to draw up an advance.
4. Set the invoice strategy on the progress claim itself to 'Simple'. Please note: this is a different field from the invoice strategy in the settings (Simple / Cumulative / Ask).
5. Click the '€' action button at the top of the progress claim to invoice.
6. On the invoice, change the description manually to a description of your choice (e.g. 'Advance progress claim 20%').

Do you work with a separate advance invoice?

Do you want to draw up an advance invoice separately via the financial planning of the quotation and deduct it from your progress claims afterwards? Then the way of working depends entirely on your invoice strategy. You set that via settings > quotations and settings > progress claims.

Invoice strategy set to 'ask' or 'cumulative'

If the invoice strategy of your quotations or progress claims is set to 'ask' or 'cumulative', you always work with instalment invoices and you cannot deviate from that. Your advance invoice then appears automatically in the overview on your first progress claim. With 'cumulative' it is deducted from it in full; with 'ask' that only happens when you invoice that progress claim cumulatively.

You can read exactly what happens to your advance invoice, and how to adjust this if necessary (e.g. not having the advance invoice deducted in full after all), in Combining an advance invoice with progress claims.

Invoice strategy set to 'simple'

Only when the invoice strategy of both your quotations and your progress claims is set to 'simple' do you deduct the advance invoice manually yourself with VR lines. First create the advance invoice via the financial planning of the quotation, and then go through the following steps on the progress claim:

1. Add a VR line 'Advance invoice paid' with 'Predicted' set to 1, 'Previous' set to 1 and 'Unitprice' equal to the price of the advance invoice. This is purely indicative, so that the customer sees that the advance invoice is considered paid; it has no impact on your progress claim.
2. Then remove the tick in the 'VR' column on this line.
3. Add another VR line 'Reduction advance invoice' with 'Predicted' set to 1 and 'Unitprice' equal to the price of the advance invoice, but negative. With this line you deduct part of the advance invoice, progress claim by progress claim.
4. Then remove the tick in the 'VR' column on this line.

Now that the advance invoice has been processed on the progress claim, you actually deduct it in one of these ways:

• Deduct in full straight away: on the 'Reduction advance invoice' line, set the 'Current' column to 1. The full amount is then deducted in one go.
• Deduct in instalments: on the 'Reduction advance invoice' line, adjust the % of that line per progress claim, according to the instalment you want to deduct, until the percentage is at 100%.

Updated on: 08/09/2026