NetSuite administrators may occasionally need to support billing scenarios where an invoice must be created before the related sales order has been fulfilled. This can come up in advance billing arrangements, made-to-order processes, service-based sales, or orders that are delivered in multiple stages.
The behavior depends on how the account and item records are configured.
Option 1: Review the Item's Can Be Fulfilled/Received Setting
When the Invoice in Advance of Fulfillment accounting preference is disabled, the Next Bill button can still be available when the sales order contains at least one Non-Inventory Item whose Can Be Fulfilled/Received preference is set to False.
Administrators can review this setting on the item record under:
- NetSuite: Open the Item record > Preferences tab.
- NetSuite Next: Open the Item record > Main section.
NetSuite
NetSuite Next
If Can Be Fulfilled/Received is set to True, the item must first go through fulfillment before invoicing can proceed.
This configuration can be useful when certain non-inventory items or services should be billed without requiring a fulfillment step.
Option 2: Enable Invoice in Advance of Fulfillment
For accounts that regularly need to bill customers before an order is completely fulfilled, administrators can review the Invoice in Advance of Fulfillment accounting preference via:
- NetSuite: Navigate to Setup > Accounting > Accounting Preferences.
- NetSuite Next: Open the Explore menu (hamburger icon in the bottom left corner beside the home button). In the menu, go to Setup > Accounting > Accounting Preferences under Order Management tab.
NetSuite
NetSuite Next
When enabled, this preference allows invoicing before the order has been fully fulfilled, including scenarios where the order may be shipped in multiple parts.
Note: Before enabling an account-level preference, review the impact on the broader order-to-cash process. Account preferences can affect more transactions than a single item-level configuration.
As a best practice, test the setup in a sandbox account and validate the expected behavior for sales orders, fulfillment, and invoicing before making changes in production.
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