Skip to main content
Question

Staged billing with revenue deferred until shipment, by customer order line

  • Nov 4, 2026 3:15 PM UTC
  • 3 replies
  • 17 views
Sidekick (Customer)
Forum|alt.badge.img+7

Hi all,

We're looking for a native way in IFS to invoice and collect payment in stages during a product build, while deferring revenue until the product ships. We're on IFS 25R2.

Desired outcome:

  1. Send staged (with CO milestone) invoices to the customer throughout the build and receive payment before shipment.
  2. Hold the billed amounts as a balance sheet liability (contract liability / deferred revenue) until the product ships.
  3. Recognize the full revenue for each individual customer order line when the line ships (point-in-time recognition on transfer of control), with the liability cleared automatically at that point.
  4. Control this per customer order line (or per product), not for the whole customer order.

What we've found so far:

  • Staged Billing (customer order side) lets us bill by order line
  • Advance Invoice defers revenue until delivery, but it works at order level and requires that no stage billing is connected to any order line. 
  • We've seen that connecting the order line to a Project and using project accounting (capitalized revenue) may move the sale posting to the balance sheet, but we're not sure whether that releases automatically at shipment or works per customer order line.

Questions:

  1. Is there a standard IFS way to combine staged billing with deferred revenue that is released automatically when the order line is delivered?
  2. If not, is the recommended approach project-connected order lines, a posting control setup, or a customization?
  3. Has anyone implemented this and can share how the release at shipment was handled?

Thank you in advance for any guidance.

3 replies

Superhero (Employee)
Forum|alt.badge.img+20

Hi,

Best way I know, is to use an IFS Financial project. 

It takes a minute to set up, then you connect the customer order lines to the financial project via pre-posting. 

The financial project then manages the revenue recognition and capitalization.   In your case, transaction based would be easier, with cap rev / exp, and the option for recognize rev at project completion. 

By default, the stages in IFS affect revenue / create the same postings as a traditional customer order sale. I’ve seen a few clients attempt to use charges attached to the order lines to offset the sales and cost. These creative solutions often fail.  When they failed, I was often asked to fix a process.  For that reason, I believe the financial project with the IFS project accounting functionality is usually the best option. 

Then we would look at all the options / flexibility and decide how best to use it. Do we have more advanced needs, if so, we choose different options.  Based on what you describe, I suggested the options that could be best for your needs.  Based on frequency / needs for automation, the same financial project, with the jobs option may also be valid option. 

Advanced invoices work best to use it for what it was designed to do. Issue a document as a request for a down payment / pre-payment. Allow delivery only after the pre-payment request was paid.  Using advance invoice for other use cases, frequently run into issues. 

Best regards, 

Thomas

Sidekick (Customer)
Forum|alt.badge.img+7
  • Anna_B
  • Author
  • Sidekick (Customer)
  • Nov 4, 2026 4:07 PM UTC

Hi,

Best way I know, is to use an IFS Financial project. 

It takes a minute to set up, then you connect the customer order lines to the financial project via pre-posting. 

The financial project then manages the revenue recognition and capitalization.   In your case, transaction based would be easier, with cap rev / exp, and the option for recognize rev at project completion. 

By default, the stages in IFS affect revenue / create the same postings as a traditional customer order sale. I’ve seen a few clients attempt to use charges attached to the order lines to offset the sales and cost. These creative solutions often fail.  When they failed, I was often asked to fix a process.  For that reason, I believe the financial project with the IFS project accounting functionality is usually the best option. 

Then we would look at all the options / flexibility and decide how best to use it. Do we have more advanced needs, if so, we choose different options.  Based on what you describe, I suggested the options that could be best for your needs.  Based on frequency / needs for automation, the same financial project, with the jobs option may also be valid option. 

Advanced invoices work best to use it for what it was designed to do. Issue a document as a request for a down payment / pre-payment. Allow delivery only after the pre-payment request was paid.  Using advance invoice for other use cases, frequently run into issues. 

Best regards, 

Thomas

Thomas, 

Thanks for this quick response. 

Would each Customer Order line require it’s own Financial Project ID considering each would have it’s own deferred revenue cycle?  Or can they all be tied to the same project? 

The option “recognize rev at project completion” seems like each CO line would require it’s own ID, but perhaps that’s not quite how it works?  

Superhero (Employee)
Forum|alt.badge.img+20

No limitation. One order line or many.  Just remember if one financial project, the associated rev and cost, will be managed the same for all that is connected.   If needed - you could manage this via event-based rev rec, but you need to mange each of the events for a given financial project. 

Example, Fin Project 1.   You connect 10 order lines.    This project has 3 events 10K rev and 5K cost as the estimates.   You can run rev rec noting that event 1 is 50% completed, events 2 and 3 may have some other POC or no POC.   The rev rec process could recognize 50% cost and rev for the event 1.  The customer order lines and postings are simply entered against the 1 financial project. 

Extra work for the event-based, but do able. 

Else, all 10 order lines could be managed the same, where all cost and all rev, flow to balance sheet, then when project is completed all rev and cost move from balance sheet to actual. 

Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement