Proformas and supplier deposits

A proforma is the document a supplier sends before they ship, quoting the order and usually asking for a deposit. It is not a bill. You do not owe a proforma, so recording one posts nothing to your books. It is the record of what was quoted, and everything else hangs off it.

The order this handles is the common import one: a quote arrives, you pay a deposit, the quote changes once or twice, you maybe pay a second deposit, and when it is ready to ship you get the real invoice with freight on it and pay the balance.

Start a proforma

Go to Ledger › Expenses › Proformas and click New proforma. Enter the supplier, the currency the order is priced in, and the quoted total. Drop the PDF in at the same time.

If the supplier's proforma arrived by email and TALISK_HQ already scanned it into your bills, do not enter it again. Open it in Ledger › Expenses and click This is a proforma. That moves the document here and takes it out of your payables, where it never belonged. TALISK_HQ will not let you approve a proforma as a bill by mistake: approving one would record money you do not owe.

When the quote changes

Suppliers revise proformas, often several times. Each revision goes on the same proforma, not a new one. Open the row and drop the updated PDF into the revision area, with the new quoted total and a short note saying what changed.

The row then shows the latest figure, and the history underneath keeps every version with its date, its amount and its note. You can download any single revision or all of them as a ZIP.

Record a deposit

Open the proforma and click Add a deposit. Enter what the payment will cost you in your own currency, since that is what will leave your bank account.

Then, when the money actually goes out, click Record a payment and pick the bank line. This is the step that touches your books. It does two things at once:

• it records the deposit as an asset, because you have paid for goods you have not received yet, and money paid up front is not an expense;
• it reconciles that bank line, so it stops showing as unmatched. There is no separate reconciliation step to remember.

Paying in instalments is normal. Record each payment against the same deposit and the total builds up. The deposit shows what you have paid against what you agreed to pay, and how much is still to go.

Foreign orders

For an order priced in another currency, the deposit tracks both numbers: what the payment cost you in your own currency, and what it covers on the supplier's order in theirs. Those are two different facts, and the rate between them is not settled until you apply the deposit.

TALISK_HQ shows the supplier's currency with its code, so USD 4,500.00 is never mistaken for a figure in your own currency.

Use the deposit on the final bill

When the goods ship you get the real invoice, usually higher than the quote because it now includes freight. That invoice is a bill you owe, so enter it as an ordinary bill and approve it.

Then open the proforma, find the deposit, and click Apply to a bill. Pick the bill. TALISK_HQ moves the deposit off your books as an asset and settles that much of what you owe, leaving only the balance outstanding. Pay that balance the normal way, by matching the bank payment to the bill.

For a foreign order, this is also the moment the exchange gain or loss is recorded: the difference between what the deposit cost you when you paid it and what it is worth against the bill at the bill's rate.

Two rules apply to a foreign deposit:

• it has to be fully paid before you can apply it, because it settles the exchange difference on the whole amount at once;
• it applies in full to one bill. A deposit in your own currency can be split across several bills instead.

Undoing things

Everything is reversible. Undo next to a payment releases that bank line back to your unmatched list. Undo next to an application puts the deposit back and reverses the entries it made. If a deposit has already been applied, undo the application before touching its payments.

Seeing the whole order

Open a proforma and The full trail shows the chain end to end: the quote, each deposit, the payments that funded it, the bills it was applied to, and what is still open on them. The same trail is reachable from a bill, so you can start from either end.