Ways to create customer invoices

• A confirmed sales order — every route works best born from one, and the BOQ route requires it.
• Billing access for standard invoices; the BOQ Invoice User group for the BOQ screens (without it the BOQ menu and buttons are invisible).

The deciding question is whether the customer will receive one bill or a series of claims against a running total. A villa owner buying twelve windows, a hardware top-up, an AMC visit — standard invoice, once, for the delivered amount. A contract with an advance on signature, monthly progress certificates the consultant reviews, ten percent held back until handover — that arithmetic (what was already claimed, what advance remains to recoup, what retention is held) is exactly what the BOQ route computes for you, and doing it by hand in standard invoices is how projects end up over-billed. Do not mix routes on one contract: once a BOQ claim exists on an order, later claims must go through the BOQ so the running totals stay true.

One nuance on deposits: the standard Create Invoice dialog also offers Down payment options. They are fine for a simple order's deposit — but on a BOQ-managed contract, take the advance through Advance Payment using BOQ instead, so the advance enters the contract's own recoupment machinery.

• Create a standard customer invoice — both entry points, confirming past credit control, sending, printing bilingually, and taking payment.
• Send a pro-forma invoice — the pre-invoice document for letters of credit and customs, and what it is not.
• Bill contract progress with a BOQ invoice — progress certificates, the deduction cascade, retention, approval, and revisions.
• Take a contract advance through a BOQ invoice — billing the advance and recovering it across later certificates.

The BOQ buttons and menu are missing — you are not in the BOQ Invoice User group; an administrator grants it. The standard route needs only billing access.

Which route produced this invoice? — open the invoice: one created by a BOQ claim links back to it (and the sales order's BOQ Invoices smart button lists every claim); a standard invoice links only the order.

"Cannot post invoice: … has an active Credit Hold." — both routes pass the same credit control; release the hold from the customer's follow-up report first.

• Billing a progress contract with ad-hoc standard invoices "just this once" — the BOQ's previous-progress figure no longer matches the ledger from that point on.
• Taking a contract advance as a standard down payment, then wondering why the BOQ's recoupment suggestion finds nothing to recover.
• Sending a pro-forma when the customer actually needs a tax invoice — a pro-forma is not an accounting document and carries no invoice number.