This article describes how to work with payment plans for clients in Next Project.

Permissions

To use the Payment Plan, you need Read or Full rights to the Payment Plan. You can adjust this under Admin > Users/Permissions > Groups/Permissions.

Select the group to grant rights to (in the example below we've selected the group admins). Then, on Module Permissions under Project,  check Full permission and save.

Using Payment Plan

The Payment Plan is a sub-tab under the Project tab.

Create Payment Plan

Use the "green plus icon" to create the payment plan. The plan applies to the entire project, and you can only have one payment plan per project.
 

1. Choose a customer contact from the client/buyer in the Contact Buyer field. Using the button with three dots, you can add a customer contact for the customer in the customer registry and select the newly created contact. Note: This requires the Admin Right Customers.
2. Fill in the contract amount in the Contract Amount field.
3. Change the percentage in the Withheld, % per period, if necessary. This value is used to calculate amounts to be included per lift.
4. Change the percentage in Max withheld, % of contract, if necessary. This value is used to calculate the maximum amount that can be included, calculated on the entire contract amount.
5. Select the VAT type to be used for invoice bases created from the payment plan.
6. Optionally, fill in the Note field. This note can be a maximum of 2000 characters and can be chosen to be included under the payment plan in the report, the payment plan saved as a document, and the payment plan sent via email.
7. Fill in the Number of lifts/periods. This value is used to create 1 lift per month from the start date in the payment plan.
8. Choose the Start date. The lifts will be added on the same date every month until the number of lifts is reached. If the start date is the 31st of a month, the following lift date will be the last day of each month.
9. Choose the type of payment plan:
   • Straight plan with out partial progress lifts
   • Time and performance bound plan
10. Add activities with names and amounts.
11. Dates are created based on the number of lifts and start date and can be adjusted as needed.
12. Press Save to create the Payment Plan.

Import Basis

When creating a payment plan, you can choose to import activity posts via the Create activities from button in Create/edit payment plan view.
 

Straight plan

When you create a Straight plan plan without partial progress payments, as many activities as the specified number of periods are automatically created. You can rename the activities once they have been created.
 

Changing a Payment Plan

Changes to the payment plan can be made directly in the payment plan, where you can change the lift percentage or lift amount per date and per activity.

Changes can also be made via the Edit payment plan button in the toolbar. 

Note that you can only make changes to the Payment plan before the final invoice base has been created.

What can be changed at each stage

Financial Follow-up in Project Overview:

The project overview shows an overview of revenues from the payment plan for the project (revenues from the client/buyer).

• Payment plan amount show Total lifts/partial lifts from the payment plan for the project.
• Payment plan withheld amount shows the Withheld amount from the payment plan for the project.
• Payment plan outcome (visible if both Payment Plan and Purchasing Module are used) shows Payment plan revenues minus Payment plan purchases.

All Payment Plan columns also have corresponding period fields controlled by the interval filter. The interval filter uses the lift date from the payment plan for procurement and the lift date from the payment plan for the project.

• Payment plan amount period (visible if the Purchasing Module is used)
• Payment plan int. period
• Payment plan withheld period
• Payment plan outcome period (visible if both Payment Plan and the Procurement Module are used)

Limitations

Payment plan view

If you specify a percentage for lift with more than one decimal place, it will be presented in the payment plan view with only one decimal place.

Special case: If you specify two decimals, and the second decimal is a five, it will sometimes be rounded up and sometimes down.

Tips for Use

Straight Plan

By default, the lift percentage is not displayed in straight payment plans. If you want to display the percentage (%) column, uncheck Show compact view.

Time- and Performance bound Plan:

By default, the lift percentage is displayed in time- and performance-bound lifting plans. If you want to hide the column with percentage (%), check Show compact view.

Document Type for Payment Plan Documents:

Use the document type "Payment Plan" when saving the payment plan as a PDF document. The document type is set up under Administration - Settings - Types - Document Type.

Avoid

Do not delete or credit invoice bases for a lift period that occurred earlier than the last lift period for which invoice bases have been created. The reason for this recommendation is that the withheld amount cannot be recalculated in these cases, which can lead to incorrect invoicing to the client/buyer.

If possible, instead, make an adjustment to the final invoice. Alternatively, if the invoice bases that come after, in lift period order (seen from left to right in the payment plan), can be deleted, you can do so, followed by either removing or crediting the invoice base that needed to be handled. Then recreate the remaining invoice bases in lift period order.

Troubleshooting

Create payment plan - Couldn't save the entry

If you switch between straight and time- and performance bound types of lifting plans several times in a row, you may encounter the error message "Couldn't save the entry." Close the dialog box and use the "Delete" button to remove the payment plan. Then, start creating the payment plan again using the "Add" button (green plus sign).