A proforma invoice is an invoice that is send to the customer so that the customer gets an estimate of the products, their expected cost, and the date of delivery before confirming and processing the order. It does not support the option of making payments. For that, a real invoice is needed to be created.  The customer can either proceed with the order after reviewing the proforma invoice or refrain from buying if the order is not under their expectation. This provides more transparency for the customers to avoid any unanticipated terms and costs. But once an invoice is created, payment should be made to complete the process.

There is an incredible feature in Odoo that lets users create a proforma invoice before confirming an order. For turning on that feature go to Sales module.

Sales => Configuration => Settings

Under the Quotations & Orders section activate Proforma Invoice and save.

Let’s create a quotation to see the changes.

Go to Orders menu => Quotations => New

You can add the customer, products, and other details in the quotation. You can also see the option of sending a pro-forma invoice now or after confirming the quotation.

In the quotation above, the recurrence is left unfilled which is not valid. So, make sure to enter the recurrence to avoid any further warning messages.

Now confirm the quotation after entering the recurrence. Select Send Pro-forma Invoice option above to send a pro-forma invoice before or at the delivery of the products to the customer so that the customer can know the total amount due, the products which are to be delivered, and any additional sales terms before making payments.

Send the proforma invoice via email. The customer thus gets an overview of the quotation created to avoid any ambiguity. Note that we should create a real invoice for making any payments after delivering the products to the customer.