Businesses operating in regulated industries may issue warnings to customers who are not complying with legal or regulatory requirements. If a customer has a history of late payments or non-payment, a warning may be issued to remind them of the consequences, such as late fees or service interruptions. If a customer repeatedly violates the terms of service or policies of a business, warnings may be issued to inform them of the specific issues and potential consequences if the behavior continues. Managing Customers is one of the crucial aspects of a business.

Not only for customers, but businesses also give warnings to suppliers, products, partners, etc., if they are found not operating per the company policy. This helps businesses to avoid negative consequences that may arise.

The Accounting Application in the Odoo 17 ERP Software provides the feature of setting warnings for customers who do not comply with the business while Invoicing. To activate the feature, let us navigate to the Accounting Settings.

Accounting Module => Configuration Menu => Settings => Customer Invoices Section => Warnings => Save

After saving the settings, we can go to the ‘Customers’ Menu in the Accounting Application to view all records of the customers configured in the Odoo system.

From here, we can select the specific customer for whom we need to give a warning.

Go to the ‘Internal Notes’ tab in the Customer form. Here, we can see the ‘WARNING ON THE INVOICE’ section in which we can select ‘No message’, ‘Warning’, or ‘Blocking message’. In this case, as we are giving a warning, we can select the ‘Warning’ option. After selecting either the warning or blocking message option, we can enter the required warning message just below it. This message will be displayed as a warning while creating invoices for this customer.

After providing the warning message and saving the changes, we can see how the warning is displayed when creating an Invoice for Deco Addict. To create a Customer Invoice in the Accounting Application, follow the path below:

Accounting Module => Customers Menu => Invoices => New

The ‘Invoices’ window displays the Invoice Number, Customer, Invoice Date, Due Date, Activities, Tax Excluded, Total, Payment, and Status. Now, select the ‘New’ option in the window to create a new customer Invoice.

In the draft invoice soon as we select the ‘Deco Addict’ in the ‘Customer’ field, a warning pop-up appears. The user has the discretion to either proceed with the Invoice or cease the processing of the invoice.

If we are proceeding with the Invoice for Deco Addict, we can close the warning, confirm the draft invoice created, and register payment as usual. Else if you are refraining from invoicing the customer after seeing the warning, you can do that also.