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Agree @Xero Team - please can you maker this a priority. I think you will find an enormous amount of companies would require this particularly bespoke manufacturing and construction supply chain. Any comments?

Proforma invoices are an essential element to businesses that have a lead-time to their work. Is there any way to expedite this feature? It would be a huge plus for all contractors who receive part payments at stages throughout the work they are doing.

You can assign a quote to a Project guys. From the project you can partially bill progressively

on the flip side, proforma feature for purchase/supplier payments would be helpful too.
i.e., upload a proforma which can be paid ahead of receiving the invoice. Once the VAT invoice is received from supplier, Xero allocates the invoice against the proforma document to show its been paid. this way we can see what proforma's are outstanding, what has been paid and awaiting a VAT invoice, and also avoids the possibility of paying a proforma and then paying a VAT invoice again once received.

any news if this can be expedited? its a major pain point for us and there is a gap in the software market to handle this properly. we would likely change to any provider that can provide for this properly

Is there any other way to allocate receipts to draft invoice for example?

I think this option should be part of the accounting system especially as the option of issuing a receipt isn't available when you receive a deposit before an invoice is raised.

This is such a basic necessity. More important than making xero look better. Please add as soon as possible. Thanks.

Customers need the ability to add payments to quotes as we receive them. We invoice in phases so use may have multiple line items (around 25) for the entire quote but only bill 3 or 4 line items at a time. We need a way to add those payments and see the remaining balance from their quote. Currently, the only way to do this is to copy the entire quote to an invoice and then add payment to the invoice. The problem is that we do not want to invoice the entire amount because it will mess up our books. We just need to be able to see the remaining balance at a glance as customers pay.

This is another basic accounting function that Xero doesn't have. Why isn't anyone from Xero commenting as to whether this is in development?

We need proforma invoicing as we have multiple stage payments on each contract, having proforma invoices allows up to measure cash forecasting without the tax implications.

not having this as a major flaw

We send pro-forma invoices to customers who then wish to pay by credit card. It would be extremely helpful if they could click a link and pay by stripe as you can on an approved invoice.

Just seems to be a complete miss from Xero. Draft invoices provide a 'kind of' pro-forma but without then having online payment, creates significant issues for customers. It would be incorrect to raise a real invoice prior to actually completing the actions - for us a service sector company, we would not invoice prior to carrying out the service and our auditors would have a field day if we did as there's no evidence to support the invoice.

Need this simple feature adding please guys.

Proforma invoicing is a significant weakness in Xero for businesses who make to order, require prepayment (avoiding credit issues) to trigger the order acceptance, then potentially deliver several weeks after a proforma is paid.

On a related note, functionality is required to trigger an order acceptance. Once a proforma is paid, we currently use a work around of draft invoices (relabelled proforma) and second templates and copying quotes to generate an order acceptance, but this is messy.

This fudge working is not sustainable and will likely be the reason for moving away from Xero to an alternative solution. Unfortunately, if we moved, there would be no motivation to return to Xero.

We have to manually raise proforma invoices regularly for parts / accessories for payment in advance of goods being shipped. This is quite time consuming as we are duplicating work by raising a pdf document that then has to be raised on Xero once payment is received.

Ha! So there is guide to proforma invoices on the xero public website

https://www.xero.com/nz/guides/what-is-a-proforma-invoice/

But no way to actually create one in Xero, when it is needed by their clients .. Interesting...

We haven't needed this since the last year and have had to do off system work arounds. It would be helpful to have this functionality in Xero

We are evaluating other options because it is critical for our company.

Been using Xero for years and never been asked for a proforma until today and there isn't a facility for one, which surprised me (and others, it would seem!)

We use Draft invoices as proformas, and need to have online payment links enabled. Why is it not possible to have this functionality?

A card payment link for pro forma invoices should be standard practice, this is where Xero is lacking the understanding business requirements, just another IT company!