So it seems. I was beginning to question myself if I understood the person I’ve spoken to from the Dutch Tax Authority correctly. So I did some searching and found the following Dutch law: wetten.nl - Regeling - Wet op de omzetbelasting 1968 - BWBR0002629
Which says:
Artikel 34c
1 Iedere ondernemer zorgt ervoor dat door hemzelf dan wel, in zijn naam en voor zijn rekening, door zijn afnemer of een derde, in de volgende gevallen een factuur wordt uitgereikt ter zake van:
…
d. de vooruitbetalingen die aan hem worden gedaan voordat een van de in de onderdelen a en b bedoelde goederenleveringen is verricht;
e. de vooruitbetalingen die door een andere ondernemer of een rechtspersoon, andere dan ondernemer, aan hem worden gedaan voordat de dienst is verricht.
As your Dutch is probably a little rusty I will translate it as:
Aticle 34C
1 Every entrepreneur ensures that by himself or in his name and for his account, by his customer or a third party, an invoice is issued in the following cases concerning:
…
d. the advance payments made to him before any of the supplies of goods referred to in parts a and b have been made;
e. the advance payments made to him by another entrepreneur or a legal entity other than the entrepreneur before the service is provided.
So maybe it’s typical Dutch to demand this but it would surprise me if other European countries would have completely different demands.
I did some testing, trying if my suggested workaround could work.
And it seems to work. I was concerned that I couldn’t get a reliable sales report anymore. but I just discovered that I can also use the SO or the DN as the basis to project the sales figures. Also, my concerns that the inventory management would become unusable is not trough as it is controlled by the Delivery notes and Purchase receipts.
The only issue or call it inconvenience I had is that I can only link one SINV to a SO. As soon as I made the first SINV which contain all the items plus the item that reflects the payment term, the status of the SO changes to To deliver and I can’t add anymore SINV to it.
I tried a second time with a little different approach which seems to solve most of my issues. I’m doing the following:
- Make a SO with all the items and at one extra item called Payment term and give it a value of 0
Let’s say that the payment terms are as follow: 30% at order, 50% before delivery and the remaining 20% within 30 days after delivery.
Item, QTY, Rate
Item1, 1, €5.000,-
Item2, 1, €5.000,-
Payment Term, 1, €0,-
- From the SO make a new SINV. Remove all items except for the Payment Term item. change it’s value to the amount of the first down payment and change the description to reflect the current payment term the invoice addresses.
Item, QTY, Rate
Payment Term Down Payment 30% at order, 1, €3000,-
Submit the invoice. it will be linked to the SO, the SO still has the status of “To Bill” which is good.
- Same steps as at step 2.
Item, QTY, Rate
Payment Term Down Payment 50% before delivery, 1, €5000,-
- It’s time for the last and final invoice. make a new invoice from the SO but this time leave all items in it. Change the value of the Payment Item to the total amount of the previous down payments and change qty to -1
Item, QTY, Rate
Item1, 1, €5.000,-
Item2, 1, €5.000,-
Payment Term Down Payment already paid, -1, €8000,-
After submitting this last invoice the status of the SO will change to Billed.
I might have to fine tune this a little further but for the time being this seems to work.