How do I invoice an advance or in instalments from the financial planning?

With the financial planning of a quotation you invoice the quotation in instalments: for example an advance of 20% on signing, 50% at the start of the works and the rest on completion. Robaws keeps track of which instalments have already been invoiced, and deducts them on the final invoice. If you then invoice with progress claims, also read How do I deduct an advance invoice from my progress claims?

Navigate quickly to:

• invoicing an instalment
• the final invoice
• simple or cumulative
• settings
• the Advance invoice tick box on an invoice

Invoicing an instalment

You find the financial planning in the Financial planning tab of the quotation. If the quotation is linked to a project, you also find it on the project.

1. Click Add and create a phase per instalment. Give it a clear Name, for example 'advance on signing'.
2. Per phase, choose in the Invoice column how you invoice it:
3. • Percent: a percentage of the quotation, which you fill in in the Percent column
   • Fixed price: a fixed amount, which you fill in in the Fixed price column
   • Final invoice: the rest of the quotation, see The final invoice
   • None: you do not invoice this phase
3. Hover your mouse over the phase and click Invoice. Do you want several phases on one invoice? Then tick them and click Invoice at the bottom.

Robaws creates the invoice and puts it next to the phase in the Invoice column. Via the icon next to it you open the invoice.

Did you already create an invoice, outside the financial planning? Then tick the phase, click Assign invoice and choose the invoice. The invoice must be addressed to the customer of the quotation.

If you work with a discount or surcharge on the quotation, it is carried over to your instalments as follows:

• a percentage: on every instalment
• a fixed amount: only on the final invoice

The final invoice

Set the last phase to Final invoice. When you invoice it, Robaws puts all quotation lines on the invoice, and deducts all earlier invoices of that quotation. They are in the Advance invoices and installments block of the final invoice. This always happens, whichever strategy you have chosen.

Example: your quotation amounts to 100,000 euros. You invoiced an advance of 20% (20,000 euros) and an instalment of 50% (50,000 euros). The final invoice shows the quotation of 100,000 euros, deducts 70,000 euros and your customer still pays 30,000 euros.

Simple or cumulative

For the instalments between the advance and the final invoice, you choose what the invoice looks like:

• Simple: the invoice only shows this instalment, for example 50% of the quotation. Robaws deducts nothing.
• Cumulative: the invoice shows all instalments so far, and deducts the previous instalments. In the example above, the second invoice therefore shows 20% and 50%, minus the advance of 20,000 euros. In both cases your customer pays 50,000 euros.

On the PDF of a cumulative invoice, your customer sees an overview of the previous invoices at the bottom.

Settings

Via Settings > Quotations, Settings card, you set up the financial planning:

The Phase billing cumulative strategy setting for the quotations only applies to invoices from the financial planning. For your progress claim invoices, the same setting exists for the progress claims. How they work together is explained in How do I invoice a job in parts: advance, progress claims and cumulative?

The Advance invoice tick box on an invoice

If you switch on Enable advanced invoices in the invoice settings, you get the Advance invoice block on an invoice. In it you tick Advance invoice or Final invoice and fill in an Advance %. With an advance invoice Robaws only charges that percentage of the invoice, with a final invoice the rest.

Updated on: 06/11/2026