If you have an order for a complete project for which you want the customer to pay up front, you can backorder the project, and submit to bill now and ship later. Inform creates a complete invoice and bills the customer with all product details.
Inform accounts for the payment using a Miscellaneous Charge against a liability account. Because you can have both the customer sale and the physical inventory, the inventory asset is offset by this liability to the customer. Once the product ships, it moves out of the liability account.
The following procedures describe how to bill an order that will be shipped later and then how to accept payments for that order so that it is logged correctly in your general ledger.
To set up bill for backorders
- Set up a Miscellaneous Charge to account for the billing while you still have the product in inventory. For example, set up Bill for B/O–BfB as a non-taxable charge that posts to the current liability account of your choosing on the General Ledger.
For more information on setting up miscellaneous charges, see Set up miscellaneous charges.
- Configure the Company to use that charge for Bill for Backorders. Go to File > Company > Master: Sales and set Misc. Charge code for Bill Now Ship Later to the Miscellaneous Charge you created in the previous step.
To create a bill for backorders order
- Create your sales order.
- Backorder each product. On each product line item, make sure that the Quantity to Ship is 0 and the Quantity B/O is the full amount.
Note: This feature works slightly differently in version 21 of the software and in version 22+.
- Version 21: All products must be backordered to enable the Bill for Backorders feature.
- Version 22+: At least one item must be backordered to enable to Bill for Backorders feature.
- Click Save
- Click the Final tab.
- Click Bill for Backorder.
- On the Print Invoice pop-up that appears, view, print, or send the invoice to the customer.
The invoice enters the standard billing process.
To accept payment for a bill for backorder order
Use the standard procedure to receive payment for the order using Accounts Receivable > Cash Receipts Posting. See How to post cash receipts.
To ship the order and reconcile accounts
You can ship confirm by line item as the products become available. Inform will automatically adjust the general ledger to remove the liability to the customer. See Confirm shipment.
