Thank you and I understand your suggestion also realize why you are defending this approach and agree with you. Here’s what I mean: in the context of sales orders here, I am not referring to sales orders in their traditional sense, but rather the use of the sales order feature in the Manager application as a specific way to record customer deposits.
Sales orders can have various statuses, such as fully invoiced, partially invoiced, and not yet invoiced, which helps track which customers have used their deposits for transactions, which ones have requested refunds, and which ones still have a balance. According to the method of tax application—whether cash is received first or goods/services are received first—a sales invoice should indeed be created since sales orders here are understood as sales transactions.
However, sales orders/quotations can be custom modified in the title and supported with other documents to transparently explain why this needs to be recorded as a customer deposit. This practice, though, is not always easy to explain to tax authorities and cannot always be applied to all types of business models and business processes. Therefore, other actions need to be taken outside of the sales orders/quotations feature in Manager, which, in essence, is only used as a tool to record customer deposits with status notifications.
Rather than talking about taxation, We should return to the discussion about the outstanding balance feature that can be displayed for certain transactions to track which transactions have a pending balance and trace the initial transactions if there is a resolution, clearing, or write-off, similar to sales/purchase invoices. This way, I do not need to use sales orders, which might create different understandings for others. So, this is not specifically a discussion regarding customer deposits or taxation but a broader use of the outstanding balance feature to be maintained easier.
We actually dont ask for specific feature for customer deposit but is there a feature in manager related to maintaining outstanding balance easier similiar to sales/purchase invoice that can show outstanding balance if there is no payment/receipt yet or just partial.
Maybe my mistake is giving example in customer deposits managament using sales orders feature that triggers any diverse understanding especially discussion about illegal/legal in taxation. But feature for maintaning outstanding balance can be used for others example maintaining prepaid balance, maintaining other liability balance that not related to purchase invoice (that need supplier database first) if it provided.
It is of no benefit to anyone if an unqualified participant interprets the legal procedure incorrectly. That should be the domain of suitably qualified professionals engaged by a separate means. It is not appropriate for those judgements to be made on this forum.
A possible solution may be to differentiate between customers that pay deposits in advance and normal customers.
In relation to the customers paying in advance you can through Settings-Control Accounts-Customers create a new control account that is classified as a liability. Deposits received in advance will be accounted for as a liability and when you issue a Sales Invoice the amount will transferred to the applicable income account.
When you set up the customer it will need to be assigned to the new control account.
I have no intention of offering legal or even accounting advice.
I have no objection of those on the forum without professional legal qualifications expressing an opinion of the appropriateness of a design addition to Manager. Modification to support tax evasion is a reasonable concern imo.
