Creating an advance invoice

In Robaws you can create an advance invoice from the financial planning that is linked to a quotation. The financial planning keeps a history of the advances already charged, and those advances are then deducted from the final invoice.

Financial planning

The financial planning is a section that is linked to a quotation. You can consult this financial planning on the quotation and on the project.
In this financial planning you can create various phases that you can invoice according to the settings you have entered.

To invoice from the financial planning, you go through the following steps:

1. Create a new phase via the 'financial planning' tab on the quotation or the project. You do this by clicking 'add'.
2. Choose the way in which you want to invoice (percentage, fixed price, final invoice).
3. If you want to invoice 1 phase, you can click the orange 'invoice' next to that line to create the invoice.
4. If you want to invoice several phases, you can select the phases via the checkbox and click 'invoice' at the bottom to create the invoice.

Once you have gone through the steps above, an invoice is created and you will also see it as a link in the 'financial planning'.

If you have already drawn up an invoice, you can also assign it to a phase manually. The condition is that the invoice is addressed to the customer/end customer that also has a link with the quotation.
To assign an invoice that has already been created in the financial planning, you go through the following steps:

1. Select the phase to which you want to assign the invoice.
2. Click 'assign invoice'.
3. Choose the invoice you want to assign and click 'assign'.
4. The invoice is linked to the phase in the financial planning.

If you work with a discount or surcharge on the quotation, it is carried through to the advance invoice as follows:

• Net percentage discounts/surcharges: these are carried through to the advance invoice as-is.
• Net fixed amount discounts/surcharges: these are only carried through on a final invoice.

Additional settings

Via settings > quotations > settings you can make additional settings relating to the financial planning.

An advance invoice can be drawn up on the basis of 2 invoice strategies:

1. Simple: only 1 line is shown on the invoice, with the amount of the percentage or fixed price entered in the quotation.
2. Cumulative: this strategy indicates how much may be invoiced so far, and reduces that amount by the previous advance invoices. This is shown clearly both in Robaws and on the invoice PDF.

If you only want to choose an invoice strategy at the moment you draw up an advance invoice, select 'ask' in the settings. When you invoice a phase, you are then asked which invoice strategy the invoice may be drawn up in.

Creating an advance directly in the invoice

This is an outdated way of working that is strongly discouraged. It is described below for the sake of completeness, but it is not recommended.

In a sales invoice you have an 'advance invoice' window. To get this window, you have to activate the 'advance invoice possible' function via settings > invoices > settings.
In this window you can indicate which invoice it concerns (advance invoice or final invoice) and enter the corresponding percentage.
In that case, the amount that has to appear on the PDF as an advance is calculated during the conversion to the PDF.

The disadvantage of this way of invoicing is that no history is kept. If you later change something in the invoice so that the invoice amount changes, the amount invoiced earlier is not taken into account when the final invoice is created. This method is therefore very error-prone, because only a percentage of the current invoice amount is invoiced.

Updated on: 09/09/2026