The cycle of the documents¶
A sale leaves a paper trail. The module arranges it in four pieces that follow one another — the quotation, the order, the invoice, the settlement — and a fifth one that repairs: the credit note. This page says in which order they come and what each one adds.
The ordinary chain¶
| Piece | What it commits | What it produces |
|---|---|---|
| Proforma invoice (quotation) | Nothing: a priced proposal | A purchase order, if the customer accepts it |
| Purchase order | The sale: the customer has committed | Invoices, deliveries, deadlines |
| Invoice | The claim: the customer owes you | Settlements, a deadline |
| Settlement | The cashing | The balance of the document it aims at |
Every piece keeps the link to the one it was born of: an order names its Source quotation, an invoice names its Source document, a settlement names its Document. The chain therefore reads both ways.
Three possible entries¶
The quotation is not compulsory. The module knows four origins to an order: direct entry, a quotation or proforma, the point of sale and the online sale.
- You start from a quotation when the price is negotiated before the commitment — see Create a quotation.
- You start from a purchase order when the agreement is already there — see Create a purchase order.
- You start from a cash receipt when the sale happened at the counter — see Cash receipts and the Cash register.
Invoicing is not all or nothing¶
An order does not necessarily give one invoice. It gives as many as are needed: down payment, advance, situation, balance invoice, final invoice or partial final invoice, as an amount or as a percentage. The order therefore carries an invoicing status of its own — Not invoiced, Partly invoiced, Fully invoiced — apart from its settlement status.
See Generate an invoice.
Where the credit note fits in¶
The credit note does not come after the invoice in the chain: it comes against it. It is a piece of the opposite sense, backed onto an original invoice, repairing what that invoice said too much of.
The module knows seven natures of it: the full cancellation and the partial cancellation of an invoice, the rabais, the remise, the ristourne, the escompte and the correcting credit note.
Two consequences are worth remembering:
- A credit note lowers the turnover — except the escompte, which is a financial discount for early payment and not a commercial reduction: that one stays out of the computation.
- An invoice a credit note repairs is not wiped out. Both pieces remain, and it is their balance that says what is left owed.
A ristourne may also be born on its own, with no original invoice, out of the list of the credit notes. See Create a credit note.
What is settled, and what is balanced¶
A settlement is allocated to a document — order, invoice or receipt — and tracked until the balance is nil. The module tells the cashing from the refund: refunding means recording a settlement of the opposite sense, never deleting the one that was received.
An order carrying a payment condition further bears deadlines, each with its due date and what is left to collect. See Track the deadlines.
What next?¶
Changelog¶
- 1.0 (August 27, 2026): document created.