Create and manage partial invoices

A partial invoice (German: Abschlagsrechnung or Teilrechnung) bills a portion of a project before it's complete. Use them when a single Final Invoice at the end of the job isn't workable: a heat-pump or PV install where the customer pays 30% on signing, 40% at panel install, and 30% on completion; a long commercial job billed quarterly; or a component-by-component split. Partials link to a parent Final Invoice (Schlussrechnung), pull line items from a signed offer, and settle against the parent automatically, so the math always reconciles.

Before you start

• Issuing details must be configured. An admin sets these up in Settings > Company settings > Invoicing > Issuing details once, including a prefix for Partial Invoices separate from your Final Invoice prefix (for example PA- for advance payments, INV- for finals). Until issuing details are in place, invoice creation is blocked. See Find and enable invoicing for the activation walkthrough.
• You need editor-or-higher role with invoicing enabled for your account. Viewers cannot create partials.
• Your issuer country must be supported: Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, the United Kingdom, Jersey, plus the French overseas territories (Martinique, Guadeloupe, Réunion, Saint-Martin, Saint-Barthélemy, Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, French Guiana). Partials support the same countries as full invoices.
• A parent Final Invoice for the project must exist. Partials link to a Final Invoice, so create the Final first (it can stay in Draft), then spawn partials off it. If you haven't created the Final yet, see the Issue and manage a full invoice guide in this section.
• For the fastest path: a signed offer for the residential project. With a signed offer, the Final Invoice and every partial auto-fill line items, tax rates, and currency from the offer, with no double-entry.

What a partial invoice is and isn't

A partial invoice is a billable document for a fraction of a project total, with its own number, PDF, tax breakdown, and customer email. It's one of four flavors (Advance Payment, Progress Invoice, Partial Invoice, Completion Invoice) that you pick to label what the document represents. Each partial links to a single parent Final Invoice that aggregates all partials issued against the project, and the parent's payment math automatically subtracts paid partials.

Every partial belongs to one parent Final Invoice. The running total is tracked against that parent, so partials always sum to the project rather than over-billing it. And a partial is a fully legal invoice in your country's accounting sense, not a deposit receipt, even when it bills only an early slice of work.

The four flavors

The flavor affects the PDF labelling and which number prefix is used. The financial math is set by your generation-mode percentages, not the flavor.

• **Advance Payment* — Money up front, before any work begins. The classic 30% deposit on signing. — Anzahlung* / PA- (configurable).
• **Progress Invoice* — Billed at a project milestone, for example 40% when panels are installed but commissioning isn't done. — Abschlagsrechnung* (progress) / configurable prefix.
• **Partial Invoice* — A generic interim partial labelled Teilrechnung, for example a component-style stage of a bigger system. — Teilrechnung* / configurable prefix.
• **Completion Invoice* — The final balance billed once the job is done. Closes out the partial chain. — Schlussrechnung* (completion partial) / configurable prefix.

Pro tip: German bookkeepers expect the Abschlagsrechnung → Schlussrechnung pattern for staged residential work. Use Advance Payment for the up-front deposit (printed as Anzahlung), then Progress Invoice for interim milestones, then Completion Invoice for the final balance. Or skip the deposit and use Progress → Progress → Completion. The Final Invoice on the parent is the umbrella; the partials are how you bill against it.

Create partial invoices from a signed offer

This is the path you'll use for almost every staged residential project. Spawn the partials directly off a Final Invoice that was itself created from a signed offer. Each partial inherits line items, tax rates, and currency from the offer, so what was quoted is what gets billed.

1. Make sure the parent Final Invoice exists. Open the project's Document Group in the Invoicing tab.
2. Create the Final Invoice if one doesn't exist yet, using the from-offer fast path: pick the matching offer option in the Option to import dropdown. The Final can stay in Draft for now.
3. With the Final Invoice still in Draft, open it.
4. In the editor header, open the secondary-actions dropdown and click Create partial invoice.
5. Pick the generation mode (this determines how many partials get spawned and what percentage of the Final each one covers). Choose Percentage for one custom-% row per partial (type "30%", "60%", or "remaining"), Scheme for a preset multi-row pattern such as 30/40/30 or 50/50, or Remaining to bill the open balance after earlier partials.
6. For each row in the batch, pick the flavor: Advance Payment, Progress Invoice, Partial Invoice, or Completion Invoice. The flavor controls the PDF wording and which prefix is used for that partial's number.
7. Click Create. One Draft partial is spawned per row, each pre-populated with the proportional line items, tax, locale, and currency from the offer-fed parent.
8. Edit each partial individually if needed. The editor opens for the first one, and you can switch between them from the parent's Document Group. Adjust the percentage, due date, memo, endnotes, or document locale. Line items and rebates are inherited read-only from the parent, so they can't be edited on a partial.
9. Issue each partial via the normal flow: header Finalize button, then the Review and finalize modal, then Issue invoice. Partials lock independently, so you can issue partial #1 today and partial #2 next month, in any order.
10. Send each partial via the same flow as a Final Invoice: open the issued partial and click Send via email. The customer gets an email plus PDF per partial.

Note: Decide your partial-generation plan before spawning any partials. Once any Draft or Issued partial is linked to the parent Final Invoice, the parent's editor shows a banner and edits to the parent's line items and prices are blocked. The partial math is derived from the Final's line items, so locking them keeps the partials' totals consistent. If you spot a partial-amount mistake after the parent is partial-linked, the recovery path is Void the offending partial and re-create it, not edit-in-place.

Create a partial after the Final Invoice is issued

When the Final Invoice has already been issued but the project now needs to be staged retroactively (a customer asks for a 50/50 split after the fact, or you realise a project needs re-billing in pieces):

1. Open the parent Final Invoice in the Document Group for the project.
2. From that invoice, trigger Create Partial Invoice from the same secondary-actions dropdown.
3. Pick the flavor: Advance Payment, Progress Invoice, Partial Invoice, or Completion Invoice.
4. A new partial opens in Draft, pre-populated with line items from the parent Final and a pro-rated calculation against any earlier partials. Line items and rebates are inherited read-only from the parent: you can't add, remove, or re-price lines on a partial. What you can edit is the percentage of the Final this partial covers, plus the due date, memo, endnotes, and document locale.
5. Issue the partial via the same Finalize > Review and finalize > Issue invoice flow as a Final Invoice. The official PDF is generated, its own invoice number is assigned using your configured prefix (for example PA-2026-0017 if your Advance Payment prefix is PA-), and the document locks.
6. Send the partial via Send via email.
7. Repeat for each stage. The Final Invoice's outstanding balance updates automatically as partials are issued and paid.

Calculate the partial amount

The amount on each partial comes from your generation-mode choice plus any per-partial edits.

• Percentage of the Final — pick a % of the parent's total. On a €10,000 parent, a "30%" Advance Payment becomes a €3,000 partial. Tax is computed line by line, so the partial's VAT breakdown matches the parent's tax structure.
• Fixed amount — set the partial to a specific € figure (for example "€1,500 on signing"). The line items get pro-rated against the parent's total.
• Milestone-based — use the Progress Invoice flavor. Create the partial at the milestone, set its amount to match what the milestone covers, and label it as Progress.
• Remaining balance — the Remaining generation mode bills whatever is unbilled against the Final. The open balance is computed after every earlier issued partial.

Note: Each partial rounds independently, so a multi-stage scheme can drift 1–3 cents off the parent total. When you issue the completing partial (the one that brings the running total within 3 cents of the parent), its totals are squared so the scheme sums to exactly the parent. Intermediate partials and schemes that already tie out exactly are left untouched. You don't need to hand-adjust the last partial by a cent to balance a scheme: issue it and the rounding is squared for you. A scheme that genuinely over-bills beyond the 3-cent tolerance is rejected at Issue. To bill beyond the project scope, issue an additional invoice rather than overshooting on a partial.

Customise the look

On a partial, line items and rebates are inherited read-only from the parent, so you can't re-price or re-order lines. What you can still influence:

• Line item grouping — how line items print on the PDF (each component individually, grouped by category, or a single total-price line) is chosen when you create the document, via the Line item grouping dropdown in the Create new document modal. It defaults to the same grouping as the source offer and is not a toggle inside the partial-invoice editor. Pick the grouping at create time if you want a partial that prints "30% of project total" as one tidy block rather than listing every panel and inverter line by line.
• Locale (PDF language) — switch via the editor's gear icon. DE, EN, FR, IT, and others. The language locks in at Issue, so until then you can switch freely. If your German customer needs the partial in German with the right Anzahlung / Abschlagsrechnung wording, switch the locale to DE before issuing.
• Footer text — customise the footer text, end-notes, and an optional footer-logo URL via Settings > Company settings > Invoicing > Text Templates. The PDF layout, header design, colours, and per-locale legal text follow your issuing country, and partials use the same layout and footer text as your Final Invoices.

Number the partial invoice

Each partial gets its own invoice number, drawn from a number circle specific to that document type and flavor.

• Configure the number circle in Settings > Company settings > Invoicing > Number circles.
• Each flavor can have its own prefix, for example PA- for Advance Payment, AB- for Abschlagsrechnung (Progress), TR- for Teilrechnung (Partial), SR- for Schlussrechnung (Completion).
• The actual number is assigned at Issue, not in Draft. While in Draft, the partial shows as DRAFT-PA-... or similar.
• Each number stays on file once issued. If you Void a partial, the next partial you issue takes the next number in sequence.

Pro tip: Pick prefixes deliberately the first time. Once you've issued partials with a prefix, changing it downstream complicates your audit trail, so treat the number circle as a one-way decision in practice. Talk through your prefix scheme with your accountant before configuring issuing details.

Issue and send the partial

This is identical to the Final Invoice flow.

1. Click Finalize in the editor header (DE: Finalisieren). The Review and finalize modal opens.
2. Review the PDF preview. The modal reminds you: "Once the document is finalized, editing won't be possible."
3. Optionally tick Send email to customer in the modal. Your choice is remembered for next time.
4. Click Issue invoice (DE: Rechnung ausstellen).
5. The official PDF is generated, the number is assigned, and the partial locks. Status moves from Draft to Issued.
6. If you ticked Send email, the Send-via-email modal opens automatically. Otherwise, click Send via email from the issued partial later.

The customer receives two PDFs in one email: the partial invoice PDF (numbered, locked) plus a receipt PDF with bank details and, optionally, an EPC SEPA QR code for in-app payment scanning.

Track payment on the partial

Payment state is tracked per partial, independently of the parent Final Invoice and the other partials.

1. Open the issued partial.
2. Update the payment state: Unpaid (default once Issued), Partially Paid (record the amount received plus its date), Paid (full payment received), or Uncollectable (write-off).
3. The parent Final Invoice's payment status is computed from its partials. If all partials are paid, the parent shows Paid; if mixed, it shows Partially Paid.

If the partial's due date passes and it's still Unpaid, it flips to Overdue automatically. Overdue is a visibility flag, and your collections workflow lives outside Reonic.

Note: Automatic Overdue flagging applies only to partials whose payment status you haven't manually adjusted. The moment you flip a partial to Partially Paid (or make any manual state change), automatic flagging stops for that partial permanently, even if it later goes back to Unpaid past its due date. Once you've manually adjusted, you own that partial's overdue lifecycle.

Tax and VAT on partial invoices

Tax behaviour on partials follows the same rules as a Final Invoice.

• Tax is per line. Net, tax, and gross totals compute automatically as you edit. The default is 19% for Germany; each line carries the rate it inherited from the offer or that you set.
• Country-specific VAT rules (the DE Kleinunternehmer flag, FR TVA mention, UK CIS, and so on) are applied at PDF generation time based on your issuing-details country.
• Tax basis — accrual (VAT due on invoice date) or cash (VAT due on payment date) — is a company-wide setting in Settings > Company settings > Invoicing > Taxation & Payment detail. It affects how VAT is reported but doesn't change the editor.

Note: For German installers especially, many bookkeepers expect VAT on the Anzahlung (Advance Payment) to be due in the period the partial is issued, regardless of when payment lands (accrual basis). Confirm your tax basis configuration matches your accountant's expectation. Switch it once under Taxation & Payment detail and it applies across your whole workspace.

For an early-payment discount (Skonto), add a document-level rebate labelled Skonto if paid by [date] and note the cash-discount condition in the rebate description.

Settle at the Final Invoice (Schlussrechnung)

When the project is done and all partials are issued, you settle the project at the Final Invoice level: the parent.

• The Final Invoice's outstanding balance is computed live as partials are issued and paid. If you've billed 30% + 40% + 30% via three partials, the Final shows €0 remaining.
• The Final's payment status is derived from its partials' payment statuses: Paid only when all partials are paid, Partially Paid if mixed.
• The Final doesn't need to be re-issued at the end. Once all partials cover 100% of the project, the Final has already been billed; what it shows is the umbrella record. You typically issue the Final at the start (so it can be partial-linked) and let the partials carry the actual billing.
• If you use a Completion Invoice flavor for the last partial, its PDF reads as the closing-out document while the Final stays as the umbrella.

Pro tip: This pattern (Final Invoice as umbrella, partials carrying the billing) keeps the German Schlussrechnung discipline intact without requiring you to issue a separate "final" invoice at the end. The Completion Invoice flavor is the customer-facing closing-out artifact; the umbrella Final is for your accounting.

Edit, void, or credit-note a partial

Once a partial is issued it's locked, the same audit-trail discipline as any other invoice. To correct an issued partial, you either Void and re-create or issue a Credit Note. Numbers stay on file, and a Draft partial can always be deleted from the editor before it's issued.

Void (cancel) an issued partial

Use a void when the partial should never have been issued: wrong amount entirely, wrong customer, duplicate, or sent to test data.

1. Open the issued partial.
2. Trigger Void.
3. Confirm.

A voided PDF is generated, the partial is marked cancelled, it's removed from payment expectations (the Final's outstanding balance recomputes to add the voided amount back to unbilled), and the original number is preserved. Optionally send the voided PDF to the customer so they know to disregard the original.

Issue a credit note against the partial

Use a credit note when the partial is mostly correct but the amount needs to come down: a pricing correction, scope reduction, or discount applied. Choose this path when the customer has already paid and you only need to bill or refund the delta.

1. Open the issued partial.
2. Trigger Create Credit Note.
3. Pick a reason from the fixed list: Invoicing error, Scope reduction, Equipment return, Discount applied, Pricing correction, or Tax adjustment.
4. The credit note opens in Draft, pre-populated from the partial.
5. Edit the line items, memo, and due date.
6. Issue the credit note, then Send it to the customer.

The credit note adjusts the partial's outstanding balance. The partial stays Issued (the credit note is a separate document with its own number), and the Final's payment math reflects the credit note automatically.

Archive and restore

Archive hides stale, cancelled, or superseded documents from your default Invoicing list views while keeping invoice numbers, PDFs, payment status, and accounting state intact. It's a UI-tidiness layer, not a delete. Draft or Voided money documents can be archived; to archive an Issued partial, Void it first.

There are three archive scopes:

• A single document — hides just that row (the partial, a credit note, and so on).
• A Final Invoice — cascades down to every partial invoice and credit note billed against it.
• A whole Document Group — cascades to every non-archived document in the project.

Archive a Final Invoice (cascades to its partials)

1. The Final Invoice must be in Draft or Voided. Issued blocks the action, so Void it first.
2. Trigger Archive. Because the Final owns partials and credit notes, the Portal warns you first: "Archiving this invoice will also archive its related partial invoices and credit notes. Continue?"
3. Confirm. The Final Invoice and all its non-archived partials and credit notes are archived together, stamped with the same archive timestamp.

Partials or credit notes that were already archived earlier on their own are left alone, since the cascade only touches non-archived children. Archiving a single partial or credit note on its own hides just that row and never archives the parent Final Invoice.

Restore

The one asymmetry to remember when prepping a project for restore:

• Restore a Final Invoice un-archives only the partials and credit notes that were archived together with it (same timestamp). Children you archived independently earlier stay archived, so restore those individually.
• Restore a Document Group un-archives every archived child of the group, regardless of when it was archived.

Note: Group restore is unconditional. It un-archives all of a group's archived children, including a partial or credit note you'd archived on its own before you archived the whole group. If you need a specific document to stay hidden after restoring the project, re-archive it after the group restore.

A single document's Restore button is disabled while its parent Document Group is still archived ("Restore the document group first…") or, for a partial or credit note, while its owning Final Invoice is still archived ("Restore the parent invoice first to restore documents inside it"). Restore the named parent first; restoring the Final Invoice brings its cascade-archived children back with it. Inside a Document Group's detail page, an archived filter toggle switches the partial and credit-note lists between active-only and archived-only without leaving the group.

Note: Archiving doesn't stop automatic Overdue flagging. An archived Issued + Unpaid partial keeps going Overdue. To stop it, either Void the partial or manually adjust its payment status, which opts it out for good (see Track payment on the partial above).

Lifecycle reference

`` Draft → Issued → Sent → (payment state: Unpaid / Partially Paid / Paid / Overdue / Uncollectable) ↓ Void OR Credit Note (the only ways "backward") ``

• Draft — editable, with no number assigned yet. You can edit the percentage, due date, memo, endnotes, and document locale; line items and rebates are inherited read-only from the parent Final Invoice.
• Issued — locked. PDF generated, number assigned, no further edits.
• Sent — email dispatched (with two PDFs: partial invoice plus receipt). Send timestamp recorded.
• Void — cancelled. Voided PDF generated, removed from payment expectations, original number preserved.
• Credit Note — a sibling document offsetting all or part of the partial. The original stays Issued/Sent and the balance adjusts.
• Archived — a separate UI-hide state on a Draft or Voided document; accounting state untouched (see Archive and restore above).

Payment state moves independently of document state: Unpaid (default once Issued), Partially Paid (with amount and date), Paid (full), Overdue (auto-flagged when the due date passes, and stops auto-updating after any manual edit), and Uncollectable (manual write-off). The parent Final Invoice's payment status is computed from its partials: Paid only if all are paid, Partially Paid if mixed, Unpaid if none are paid.

Things to know

• Schemes self-reconcile rounding on the last partial. A multi-stage scheme can drift 1–3 cents from independent per-partial rounding; issuing the completing partial squares it so the scheme sums to exactly the parent. You don't hand-adjust the last cent, and over-billing beyond the 3-cent tolerance is rejected at Issue.
• Line item grouping is a create-time choice. Individual, grouped-by-category, or total-price-only is set in the Create new document modal when you create the document, not as a toggle inside the partial editor. It changes presentation only, never the math.
• Line items and rebates are inherited read-only from the parent Final Invoice. On a partial you adjust the percentage, due date, memo, endnotes, and locale, not the lines themselves.
• Currency is set at draft creation and read-only thereafter. To switch currencies, void the partial and re-create it with the right currency from the start.
• Locale lock happens at Issue. Switch the PDF language before clicking Issue invoice; after that, it's fixed.
• Each partial is issued, sent, and marked paid individually. There's no list-view Issue all partials, Send all partials, or bulk-archive.
• Customers receive partials by email, as PDFs, rather than through a portal page.
• Text fields autosave and freeze at Issue. Memo, description, and end-notes save automatically about a second after you stop typing, with no Save button, and lock with the rest of the document once you Issue.
• Refresh the parent's view to see partial-driven balance changes; the parent's outstanding balance computes live from its partials' issued and paid states.
• Payment instruction is bank-transfer only. A partial carries an IBAN plus an optional EPC QR code for scan-to-pay. There's no card, direct-debit, or financing payment mode. The customer pays you offline and you mark the partial paid.

Frequently asked

Can I issue partials out of order? Yes. Each partial (Advance Payment, Progress, Completion) locks independently. If you need to issue partial #2 before partial #1 — say, to correct an admin error — you can. Issued state is tracked per partial, not per sequence.

What if my customer asks for a 50/50 split after I've issued the Final Invoice? Use the from-issued-Final-Invoice path: open the issued Final, trigger Create Partial Invoice, generate two partials each at 50%, and issue them. The balance is computed against the issued Final.

Can I bill more than 100% of the Final Invoice via partials? No. Partials roll up against the parent Final. Rounding noise within 3 cents auto-reconciles when you issue the completing partial, but a genuine over-bill beyond that tolerance is rejected at Issue. To bill beyond the project scope, issue an additional invoice rather than overshooting on a partial.

Can I delete a partial? Drafts can be deleted from the editor. Issued partials can only be Voided — they're never truly deleted, because the audit trail requires the number to remain on file.

Can I add a payment QR code to a partial? Yes. Toggle the EPC QR code in the editor, or set the default in issuing details. The QR pre-fills IBAN, amount, and remittance when the customer scans it in their banking app.

Can I send a single partial in a different language from the others? Yes. Locale is set per document at Issue time. The first partial in DE, the second in EN, the third in DE again — all fine. The language locks in when each one is individually issued.

Is there a "deposit" document separate from an Advance Payment partial? No. The Advance Payment partial is the deposit invoice. Reonic doesn't have a separate "deposit slip" or pro-forma document; the Advance Payment flavor produces a legally valid invoice for the deposit amount.

Can I add an additional service to a Teilrechnung or Schlussrechnung that's already issued? No. Issued partials are locked, so there's no "add a line" on an issued document. The recovery paths are Void and re-create (cancel the issued partial and spawn a fresh one with the extra service included) or Credit Note plus a new partial (issue a credit note that offsets the original, then issue a second partial covering the new service). Pick the second pattern when the customer has already paid the original and you only need to bill the delta. For an extra service after a Completion Invoice (Schlussrechnung), the cleaner path is usually a separate new invoice covering only the additional service.

Are the individual line items of the underlying order shown on a Teilrechnung? Yes. By default a Teilrechnung inherits all line items from the parent Final Invoice (which itself inherits from the signed offer), so every position is listed individually on the partial's PDF. If you'd rather have the partial print as a single rolled-up block (for example "30% of project total" instead of every panel and inverter line), set the Line item grouping to Total price only (or Grouped by category) when you create the document — a create-time choice in the Create new document modal, not an editor toggle. It changes the customer-facing PDF without changing the underlying math.

What happens to partials if I void the parent Final Invoice? This depends on whether the partials are still in Draft or have been Issued. Drafts get tidied up; Issued partials persist independently with their own numbers and PDFs. Talk to your Reonic account manager if you're unwinding a whole project.

Related

• Issue and manage a full invoice — the parent Final Invoice that partials link to.
• Invoicing overview — capabilities, plan and cost, accounting-partner routing, statutory requirements.

Need help?

• Step-by-step questions about a partial-invoice flow → contact your Reonic account manager.
• Feature requests / something missing → drop a note to your account manager.
• Bug reports → include the partial-invoice number (if known) and a description of what you saw in your support email.

Last updated on August 4, 2026