Downpayments

Maximo needs to be able to handle downpayments in the PR, PO and Invoice applications, at a minimum for all line types. Ideally, Contracts and RFQs would also include some functionality to handle downpayment terms.

Some vendors require downpayments for certain products, for example, items that need to be fabricated to custom requirements. There is currently no good way to trigger a downpayment since no invoice can be generated against an unreceived PO line. One workaround is to:

1. Create a PO for the item at full cost.

2. Create a "downpayment" PO line and a negative "downpayment credit" PO line

3. Receive the "downpayment" PO line, generating an Invoice against the received "downpayment" line

4. Manually process payment against the invoice to bypass payment terms

5. Receive the item at full totalcost (on the original PO) AND receive the "downpayment credit" PO line, generating an invoice against the net of the full item cost and the downpayment already paid. (This allows the item to be valued at full cost in inventory and avoids retaining a balance in RNI.)

This workaround has some limitations:

1. PR approvers may not clearly recognize that a deposit is to be paid (with immediate impact on cash flow and other financials).

2. Payment terms are applied at the vendor level to downpayments which should always be paid immediately.

3. It relies on Receiving teams to correctly receive both the item and the downpayment credit in a single transaction (if ERS is enabled).

4. The process is complicated if there is a payment schedule rather than just a single downpayment.

5. It's a kludge-y manual process that cannot participate in Maximo automations.

6. It complicates reconciliation of Maximo purchasing against financial reporting.

This is one of several challenges prompting company leadership to explore moving purchasing and inventory operations out of Maximo to the ERP.