Sales Invoice Automation: Milestone & Subscription
Automate the invoice creation process by setting the date and invoice type (down payment/regular)
| Environment: Enterprise |
Sales Invoice Automation: Milestone & Subscription
Automate the invoice creation process by setting the date and invoice type (down payment/regular)
| Environment:Enterprise |
STORY BEHIND THE FEATURES
ODOO BEHAVIOR
In Odoo, invoice terms management is on the products only and do not propose the options Milestone or Subscription.
For Milestone invoice terms:
The milestone feature is an important missing invoicing terms in Odoo.
For subscription invoice terms:
Odoo decided to manage subscription like an independant object, quite in parallel to sales order and not like an extra invoicing policy.
CLUEDOO BEHAVIOR
For Milestone Invoice Term:
On sales order, you can define an Invoice terms policy based on milestone (40%/40%/30% for instance), created from scratch or from a template and give the forecasted invoice date.
When the event occurs, you can define the milestone term invoice date. You will get the invoice related to the milestone automatically at the date.
For Subscription Invoice Term:
Cluedoo defines subscription invoice term as an extra invoicing policy you propose to your customer for a sales order.
For instance, for an order of 18 000€, you propose to your customer to invoice 100% at order (invoice based on ordered quantity) or you propose to your customer to invoice monthly 1 500€ (invoice based on monthly subscription). As the subscription is just an invoicing term option, we prefer to keep the management at the sales order level and not managing another object.
BUSINESS CASE
In some sales cases, we usually have payment terms split into several payment, such as Payment I : 30%, Payment II : 50%, Payment III : 20%. How to make it? How can we know how much %, we already invoiced?
The answer is Invoice milestone. We can split the invoice, schedule it, and control the % invoiced.
CLUEDOO RECOMMENDATION
To be installed for all companies using invoicing terms of type Milestone or Subscription.
Cluedoo Invoice terms do not cover the same scope than Odoo Subscription. However, in practice, if we install Cluedoo Invoice Term, we advice to avoid the use of Odoo Subscription.
Moreover, our invoice term approach is extended to purchase order and so give the flexibility to use Subscription invoice term on purchase side.
Odoo Subscription is adapted when you do not have ending date on contracts.
Tips 1: the module decided to cover the situation of invoice term is managed at the sales order level, which is the most common, and the simplest situation. However, the module is designed in a way you can decide to manage it at the sales order line level and so to give specific invoice term for each line.
Tips 2: in Odoo, you cannot have a global view of your sales, with both the sales order and the subscription. Indeed, sales order related to a subscription only include the amount of 1 subscription and not the total amount of the contract.
With Cluedoo approach, the sales order amount includes the global amount of all your contracts and so give you visibility on your real sales amount,
OUR FEATURES AS SOLUTION
Invoice Rules
HOW TO USE THIS MODULE ?
Dependencies
Invoice merge
1
Go to Sales → Configuration → Settings. Cluedoo provides configuration panel for invoice milestone
2
On Sales → Configuration → Invoice Rules Template, we can create a template for invoice rule. Set Percentage, Invoice date, and Invoice Forecast Date. We also can directly take this template by clicking Take Template button.
3
Sales → To Invoice → Invoice Rule. We directly have invoice term from the template. Give the invoice date
4
Now create a quotation, select invoice rule. On Other Info, we have Auto Run Invoice Milestone is checked automatically because we already set it on configuration panel.
5
Warning: the autorun will work best for orders with less than 10 lines. If you have bigger orders, you may have to increase the server limit for the invoice milestone to work.
INVOICE RULE INFO
On each line, we can see the information of invoice rule: next invoice, percentage, and view invoice rule
DEFAULT INVOICING TERMS BY PARTNER
1
We can set invoice rule for each partner
2
When we create a sale order and select invoice rule, it will only show the invoice rule of the partner
3
Or we can select another invoice rule by clicking 
New Invoice Rule and it will show the wizard to add another option of invoice rule template
Action After Last Milestone
1
Go to Sales → Configuration → Invoice Rule Template. On an invoice rule template, we can set formula in Python programming code.
For example, we set formula to duplicate the sale order after last milestone is done.
2
Create a quotation using the invoice rule template where we already set the custom formula (duplicate sale order)
3
Click Run Invoice Milestone
4
After clicking Run Invoice Milestone, the duplicated sale order is automatically created.
