Proforma Invoice Handling — Link & Auto-Settle Against Final Invoice

Category: Accounts Payable / Invoice Management

Description:

Currently, there is no way to handle proforma invoices in a way that reflects real-world payment workflows. This is a gap that — to our knowledge — no accounting platform on the market has properly solved.

The problem:

A proforma invoice is issued before the real invoice. The customer pays the proforma, and when the final (real) invoice arrives, it should be marked as already settled — not trigger a new payment.

Today, this results in one of two bad outcomes:

The final invoice appears as unpaid/outstanding, even though it has effectively been covered

Users manually work around it in ways that create messy bookkeeping

Proposed solution:

Introduce the ability to tag or label an invoice as a Proforma Invoice, and then link it to an incoming final invoice. When the link is established, the final invoice should automatically be marked as paid/settled based on the proforma payment — with no duplicate payment required.

Key behaviours:

A proforma invoice can be paid normally (bank match, manual registration, etc.)

When the final invoice arrives, the user can link it to the previously paid proforma

The final invoice is then marked as settled — no outstanding balance remains

The accounting entries reflect this correctly (no double-posting)

Why this matters:

This is common in industries like construction, manufacturing, import/export, and project-based services. It's a real pain point that causes manual workarounds, errors, and confusion. Solving it cleanly would be a meaningful differentiator for Ledgerbee.