An Advance Payment is money the customer pays before you've invoiced them — a deposit on a quote, a prepayment on a large order, a pro-forma settlement. VentryHub records it against the sale, holds it as a customer credit, and offers it up when you authorise an invoice so you can apply it against the amount due.

Advance payments live on the Quote and Order tabs of the sale, in their own Advance Payment tab beneath the lines grid.

Before you start

• The quote must be Authorized (to record on the Quote tab) or the order Authorized (Order tab). The Advance Payment tab doesn't appear on drafts.
• Sale — Billing full access (SaleBillingFA) to add or edit; read-only (SaleBillingRO) to view. This is a billing permission, not a quotes & orders one — a salesperson without billing access won't see the tab.
• A bank or clearing account to receive the money into. Accounts are set up in the chart of accounts. Chart of accounts (link pending: admin article)

Record an advance payment

1. Open the Advance Payment tab

Open the sale on the Quote tab (or Order tab once the order is authorised) and click the Advance Payment tab next to Products & Services.

2. Add the payment

Click Add advance payment. Fill in the row:

• Date — when the money was received.
• Amount — in the sale currency; must be positive.
• Account — the bank or clearing account the payment went into (Select account...).
• Conversion Rate — shown only for a foreign-currency sale. VentryHub fetches the rate for the date; if that fails you'll see Unable to fetch conversion rate. and can enter it manually.
• Reference — receipt or remittance reference.

Unallocated shows how much of the payment hasn't yet been applied to an invoice. On a new payment it equals Amount.

3. Save

Click Save in the page header. The advance payment is recorded, a customer credit is created for the unallocated amount, and the receipt is posted. Advance payments can only be added or changed while the quote or order is authorised.

Edit or remove an advance payment

• To change the Amount, edit the cell and save. You can't reduce it below what's already been allocated to invoices — Amount exceeds the unallocated balance.
• To delete, use the row action and save. Deletion is only possible while nothing has been allocated from it — once any of the credit has been used, it can't be deleted.
  ✏ Updated after backend review (15 Oct 2026): Confirmed that a partly used advance payment can't be deleted.

Apply an advance payment to an invoice

Automatically, when you authorise an invoice

When you click Authorize Invoice on a sale that holds advance payments with an unallocated balance, VentryHub opens Apply advance payment? as soon as the invoice is authorised.

• One advance payment: the dialog reads This sale has an advance payment from ‹date› with an unallocated balance of ‹balance›. Apply ‹amount› to invoice ‹number›? The amount is the lower of the balance and the invoice's Amount due. Click Apply or Cancel.
• Several advance payments: the dialog reads This sale has advance payments with an unallocated balance. Select the ones to apply to invoice ‹number›. and shows a table — Date, Reference, Unallocated, To Apply — with each payment pre-ticked and allocated oldest-first until the Amount due is covered. Untick any you don't want to use, check To apply against Amount due, then click Apply.

Applying creates one payment row per advance payment on the invoice's Payments tab, with Paid Via reading Advance from Sale #‹sale number›. The advance payment's Unallocated balance drops by the applied amount.

Later, from the invoice

If you cancelled the dialog or want to apply a balance to a different invoice, open the invoice's Payments tab, click to add a payment, and in Paid Via choose the customer credit created by the advance payment (listed as Advance from Sale #…). The amount can't exceed the credit's remaining balance (Amount cannot exceed the available balance (‹max›).). See Recording a payment.

Related fields

• Amount — the sale-currency value received.
• Amount (base) — the same value in your base currency, shown for foreign-currency sales.
• Unallocated — Amount less everything applied to invoices so far.
• Account — the receiving GL account. Shown as the Paid Via source once applied.

What happens next

• An advance payment appears in Sale → Invoicing & Payments → Customer Credits as a credit created in this sale, with its initial and remaining amounts. See Refunds vs customer credits.
• When applied, the invoice's Paid increases and Amount Due falls; an invoice fully covered by advance payments becomes Paid on authorisation.
• Advance payments are not refunded from the sale. If the customer cancels, the balance stays as a customer credit until it's used or paid back with a Customer Credit Refund (under Banking → Customer Credit Refund; it needs Banking full access) — see Refunds vs customer credits.
  ✏ Updated after backend review (15 Oct 2026): Added the Customer Credit Refund document for paying a credit back.
  ✏ Updated after Confluence cross-check (15 Oct 2026): Added where to find Customer Credit Refund and the permission it needs.

See also

• Issuing an invoice from a sale order
• Recording a payment
• Refunds vs customer credits