Proformas and supplier deposits

A proforma is the document a supplier sends before they ship, quoting the order and usually asking for a deposit. It is not a bill. You do not owe a proforma, so recording one posts nothing to your books. It is the record of what was quoted, and everything else hangs off it.

The order this handles is the common import one: a quote arrives, you pay a deposit, the quote changes once or twice, you maybe pay a second deposit, and when it is ready to ship you get the real invoice with freight on it and pay the balance.

Start a proforma

Go to Ledger › Expenses › Proformas and click New proforma. Enter the supplier, the currency the order is priced in, the quoted total, and the Date on the proforma: the date printed on the supplier's document, not today's. Drop the PDF in at the same time.

The date is optional, and TALISK_HQ never guesses it. It is what lets TALISK_HQ suggest that an early wire was a deposit on this proforma when you build your books from a folder (see below). To add or change it later, open the row: the Date on the proforma field is at the top, with Save date beside it. The Dated column shows it for every proforma.

If the supplier's proforma arrived by email and TALISK_HQ already scanned it into your bills, do not enter it again. Open it in Ledger › Expenses and click This is a proforma. TALISK_HQ asks what the document is:

• A new proforma starts one here from it. The bill's date comes with it as the date on the proforma; if the bill had no date, the proforma has none until you enter it.
• An updated quote for an existing proforma adds it as that proforma's next revision, with the quoted total you enter (the bill's total if you leave it blank).
• A receipt or confirmation for an existing proforma files it under that proforma's Supporting documents. Use this for the card receipt or wire confirmation for a deposit that came in by email.

For the last two, pick the proforma from the list; an open proforma from the same supplier is picked for you. Whichever you choose, the document leaves your payables, where it never belonged, and nothing posts to your books. TALISK_HQ will not let you approve a proforma as a bill by mistake: approving one would record money you do not owe. When a document says "proforma" on it, TALISK_HQ marks it as one when it reads it, and Approve asks you before booking it. If you attach a proforma to the bank charge that paid a deposit on it, TALISK_HQ saves nothing and points you here: the deposit belongs on the proforma, not in your expenses.

When the quote changes

Suppliers revise proformas, often several times. Each revision goes on the same proforma, not a new one. Open the row and drop the updated PDF into the revision area, with the new quoted total and a short note saying what changed. If the revision is a screenshot, click Paste screenshot, or click in the revision area and paste it with Cmd+V (Ctrl+V on Windows).

The row then shows the latest figure, and the history underneath keeps every version with its date, its amount and its note. You can download any single revision or all of them as a ZIP.

Attach receipts and wire confirmations

The paper around an order is not always a new quote. A credit card receipt shows what a USD deposit actually cost you, and your bank's wire confirmation shows what was sent. Those go under Supporting documents when you open the row, not in the revision history, so they never change the quoted total or the revision count.

Drop the file in, or click Paste screenshot to attach whatever image is on your clipboard. You can name it first (for example "Visa receipt for deposit"); otherwise TALISK_HQ names it after the file. To rename one later, click its name, type, and press Enter. View opens it underneath, Download saves it, and Remove deletes one you attached by mistake. Once a proforma has a document, click + Add another document to attach the next one. Attaching or removing one changes nothing in your books: the deposit is still recorded by Record a payment, below.

Record a payment

When money goes out to the supplier, open the proforma and click Record a payment at the top of its Deposits section, then pick the bank or card line that paid it and click This one. You do not need a deposit first: TALISK_HQ adds the payment to the proforma's deposit, or starts one for the amount of the payment if there is none yet. If the proforma has more than one deposit still to pay, TALISK_HQ asks which one the payment is for; click Pay this deposit beside it.

The list puts lines whose description names the supplier first, marked Names supplier, then the amounts closest to what is still to pay on the quote. Each line shows the account it is on, such as your Visa card or your chequing account. A card charge is recorded against what you owe on the card, not against your bank.

This is the step that touches your books. It does two things at once:

• it records the deposit as an asset, because you have paid for goods you have not received yet, and money paid up front is not an expense;
• it reconciles that bank line, so it stops showing as unmatched. There is no separate reconciliation step to remember.

If you had already categorized the bank line, recording it here removes the entry behind the category, so the payment is counted once, as the deposit. The line keeps the category you picked, and unmatching the payment puts the entry back.

If you would rather set the amount you agreed to pay before any of it has gone, click Add a deposit and enter it in your own currency, since that is what will leave your bank account. Each deposit then has its own Record a payment for the payments against it.

Paying in instalments is normal. Record each payment against the same deposit and the total builds up. The deposit shows what you have paid against what you agreed to pay, and how much is still to go.

A deposit is always paid in the proforma's current currency. If you change a proforma's currency after recording a deposit, the next payment starts a new deposit in the new currency rather than adding to the old one.

Start from the bank or card line instead

You can also start from the payment itself, which is quicker when you are already working through your bank or card statement:

1. On Ledger › Banking › Transactions, find the payment that went out and open its details with the chevron at the start of the row.
2. Under Change what this is, click Proforma payment.
3. Pick the proforma and click This one. Only open proformas are listed, and those whose supplier appears in the line's description come first, marked Named in line.

It is recorded exactly as Record a payment on the proforma records it. For a supplier who charges in another currency, TALISK_HQ first asks how much the payment sent in that currency; replace the Bank of Canada estimate with the figure on your payment confirmation or card statement, then click Record payment. The line has to be a payment out of an account in your own currency, a credit card included, and not dated before your books' conversion date. If a receipt is attached to the line, TALISK_HQ asks you to unmatch the receipt from the line first (its Unmatch button under Ledger › Expenses): the line can be held by one or the other, not both.

When the card or bank statement already shows the charge in the supplier's currency, TALISK_HQ fills that figure in instead of an estimate.

If the supplier has not sent a proforma at all, use Supplier advance instead (next section).

Paid a supplier before any proforma arrived

Sometimes the money goes out first: you wire a supplier an advance and their proforma or invoice comes later, or never. You do not need to create anything on this page first. Record it straight from the bank line:

1. On Ledger › Banking › Transactions, find the payment that went out and open its details with the chevron at the start of the row.
2. Under Change what this is, click Supplier advance.
3. Enter the supplier and the currency they charge you in, then click Record advance.

That records the payment as a deposit with that supplier, an asset rather than an expense, and reconciles the bank line in the same step. It also starts a proforma for the supplier on this page, marked Advance, no proforma yet. When their proforma arrives, open that row and drop it in; the deposit is already underneath it, ready to apply to the bill when it comes.

For a supplier who charges in another currency, TALISK_HQ also asks how much the payment sent in that currency, exactly as it does when you record a payment on a foreign deposit below. Replace the Bank of Canada estimate with the figure on your card receipt or wire confirmation.

The line has to be a payment out of an account in your own currency. A payment dated before your books' conversion date cannot be recorded this way, because that money is already inside your opening balances.

When you build your books from a folder, TALISK_HQ does not offer a wire sent more than 30 days before a supplier's invoice as part of that invoice's payment. Money sent that early is usually a deposit on the supplier's proforma, and TALISK_HQ offers that instead (next section).

A wire that names nobody, when you build your books from a folder

A wire that shows only a reference number does not say who was paid, so TALISK_HQ asks what it was for. If an open proforma here has a date on it and the wire went out between 7 days before that date and 120 days after it, TALISK_HQ offers the answer that it was a deposit on that supplier's proforma, naming the supplier and the date. It offers at most two proformas, the nearest dates first, and only proformas that are open, have something left to pay on the quote, and whose deposit has not already been applied to a bill. A proforma with no date is never offered.

For a supplier who charges in another currency, enter what the wire sent in that currency in the field it opens. TALISK_HQ fills in an estimate at the Bank of Canada rate; replace it with the figure on your wire confirmation, then confirm.

That records the payment on the proforma's deposit exactly as Record a payment does here: an asset, not an expense, and the bank line reconciled. If the proforma has no deposit yet, TALISK_HQ starts one. Each later wire you answer the same way is added to that deposit. If anything about the payment stops it being recorded (it is dated before your books start, or the amount is not a positive number), nothing is recorded and TALISK_HQ says why. To undo it, open the proforma here and click Undo next to the payment.

Foreign orders

For an order priced in another currency, the deposit tracks both numbers: what the payment cost you in your own currency, and what it covers on the supplier's order in theirs. Those are two different facts, and the rate between them is not settled until you apply the deposit.

So when you click Record a payment for a foreign deposit and pick the bank or card line, TALISK_HQ asks one more thing: how much that payment sent in the order's currency (the field is labelled with it, such as USD this payment sent). It fills in an estimate at the Bank of Canada rate on the payment's date; replace it with the figure on your card receipt or wire confirmation, because your bank's or card's rate is not the Bank of Canada's. The deposit is worth the total of what its payments sent, never the whole quote: a 30% advance on a USD 50,000 order is worth the USD 15,000 you sent.

A foreign deposit leads with the order's currency, for example USD 9,827.00 paid · cost CAD 14,571.51, and underneath it the rate you actually paid beside the Bank of Canada rate for that day, such as Rate paid 1.4828 · Bank of Canada 1.4240. When a deposit has several payments on different days, each payment shows its own two rates instead.

The conversion fee on a foreign deposit

A bank or card that converts your dollars for you charges more than the Bank of Canada rate, and the difference is a fee, not part of what the supplier received. So when you record a payment on a foreign deposit from an account in your own currency, TALISK_HQ splits it at the time of payment:

• the part worth what the supplier received, at the Bank of Canada rate on the payment's date, is held as the deposit in Supplier Deposits;
• the markup on top is booked straight away to Foreign Transaction & Card FX Fees (account 5055), as an expense of that period.

Open the deposit to see the split, for example Held as deposit CAD 13,993.65 · Card conversion fee CAD 577.86 (booked to Foreign Transaction & Card FX Fees), and each payment underneath shows its own. On the rare payment converted at a better rate than the Bank of Canada's, the difference is shown as a Conversion credit and credited to the same account. Held against future bills shows only what is held as the deposit, so the fee is never counted as money the supplier is holding for you.

TALISK_HQ shows the supplier's currency with its code, so USD 4,500.00 is never mistaken for a figure in your own currency.

Use the deposit on the final bill

When the goods ship you get the real invoice, usually higher than the quote because it now includes freight. That invoice is a bill you owe, so enter it as an ordinary bill and approve it.

Then open the proforma, find the deposit, and click Apply to a bill. Pick the bill. TALISK_HQ moves the deposit off your books as an asset and settles that much of what you owe, leaving only the balance outstanding. Pay that balance the normal way, by matching the bank payment to the bill.

For a foreign order, this is also the moment the exchange gain or loss is recorded: the difference between what the deposit is held at and what it is worth against the bill at the bill's rate. Because the conversion fee was already booked when you paid, that gain or loss is only the real movement in the exchange rate between the payment date and the bill date. The entry is dated on the bill's date, not the day you clicked, so the gain or loss lands in the period the bill belongs to. If that period is already locked by a filing, the entry books on the first open day instead and its note carries the bill's real date.

Two rules apply to a foreign deposit:

• every payment on it must say what it sent in the order's currency before you can apply it, because that total is what it settles on the bill. An advance you paid only part of can be applied: it settles what it sent, and the bill keeps the rest owing;
• it applies in full to one bill. A deposit in your own currency can be split across several bills instead.

The balance after the deposit is usually paid in one or more payments from your own account: see "Pay a foreign-currency bill in instalments from your CAD account".

Undoing things

Everything is reversible. Undo next to a payment releases that bank line back to your unmatched list. Undo next to an application puts the deposit back and reverses the entries it made. If a deposit has already been applied, undo the application before touching its payments.

To undo a Supplier advance, open its proforma here, Undo the payment, then Delete the deposit. If you had not attached the supplier's proforma yet, the proforma the advance started goes with it, so nothing is left behind.

Seeing the whole order

Open a proforma and The full trail shows the chain end to end: the quote, each deposit, the payments that funded it, the bills it was applied to, and what is still open on them. Each payment is named by the account it left from, for example Card payment · RBC Visa ‥1424 · 2026-10-09 · CAD 14,571.51 (USD 9,827.00), or Bank payment for one from a bank account. The same trail is reachable from a bill, so you can start from either end.

The bank or card line itself says where the money went too. On Ledger › Banking › Transactions, a line that paid a supplier deposit shows a Supplier deposit ✓ pill and the supplier's name; click the pill to open that proforma here.