Business Scenario
Consider a machine manufacturing company that receives an order for a customized machine worth ₹50 lakhs.
Since the machine is built to order, customer payments are linked to different project milestones rather than a single advance payment:
- 20% at Order Confirmation
- 30% after Design Approval
- 25% after Production Completion
- 25% before Dispatch
This payment structure is common in industries such as:
- Machine Manufacturing
- Engineering
- Fabrication
- Project-Based Manufacturing
Manufacturers rely on milestone-based payments to fund raw material procurement, production activities, and project execution.
Current Challenge in Business Central
Business Central supports prepayments, but it is primarily designed around a single prepayment percentage on a Sales Order. Managing multiple milestone-based prepayments for the same order is difficult without workarounds.
In practice, organizations often resort to:
- Creating separate documents for each advance payment
- Tracking milestone payments outside Business Central (Excel or other tools)
- Performing manual adjustments during final invoicing
- Building custom extensions to manage prepayment schedules
While these approaches work, they increase manual effort, reconciliation, and maintenance costs.
Business Scenario
Consider a machine manufacturing company that receives an order for a customized machine worth ₹50 lakhs.
Since the machine is built to order, customer payments are linked to different project milestones rather than a single advance payment:
- 20% at Order Confirmation
- 30% after Design Approval
- 25% after Production Completion
- 25% before Dispatch
This payment structure is common in industries such as:
- Machine Manufacturing
- Engineering
- Fabrication
- Project-Based Manufacturing
Manufacturers rely on milestone-based payments to fund raw material procurement, production activities, and project execution.
Current Challenge in Business Central
Business Central supports prepayments, but it is primarily designed around a single prepayment percentage on a Sales Order. Managing multiple milestone-based prepayments for the same order is difficult without workarounds.
In practice, organizations often resort to:
- Creating separate documents for each advance payment
- Tracking milestone payments outside Business Central (Excel or other tools)
- Performing manual adjustments during final invoicing
- Building custom extensions to manage prepayment schedules
While these approaches work, they increase manual effort, reconciliation, and maintenance costs.
The system should be able to:
- Generate prepayment invoices based on milestone schedules.
- Track payment status for each milestone.
- Automatically apply all prepayments during final invoicing.
- Provide clear visibility to Sales, Finance, and Project teams.
- Reduce the need for customizations and manual reconciliation.
Comments
Fully support this idea. We come across this requirement very often in manufacturing and project-based businesses where customers make payments at different stages of an order. Since Business Central currently supports only a single prepayment percentage, many companies have to rely on customizations, Excel tracking, or manual adjustments.Having the ability to create and track multiple prepayments against the same Sales Order would make the process much simpler and more accurate. It would reduce manual work, improve visibility for users, and help organizations use standard Business Central functionality instead of building custom solutions. This would be a valuable enhancement for many businesses. 👍
Category: Sales