| | | Warning: there may be cases where these notes are inaccurate, so care should be taken to get better information as available for your specific use. These notes are not intended as hard and fast guidance but as an indication of what kinds of guidance might need to be sought. | |
| Catalogue | form zip | The Catalogue document type might be regarded as either a 'list of products' or a 'price list'. The validity of the prices might be either general, specific to a particular customer or specific to a particular country or a set of other conditions such as period of time or a certain project. | Italian (Catalogo) zip Spanish (Catálogo) zip |
| Request For Quotation | form zip | Having selected an item or set of items, and possibly specifying some relevant conditions, a request may be made with the Request For Quotation (RFQ) to a seller (or other party) for an actual quotation which might include more than just the prices (might include tax, etc). It might be necessary to specify the delivery address or country as this may be relevant to the quote. (This version of the request for quotation document type requires that the currency in which the quotation amounts are to be provided is explicitly stated in the request.) | Italian (Richiesta di Offerta) zip Spanish (Solicitud de Presupuesto ) zip |
| Quotation | form zip | A Quotation might include details of tax and delivery, etc but is otherwise a set of prices for selected items given by one party to another (not necessarily seller to buyer). | Italian (Offerta) zip Spanish (Presupuesto) zip |
| Order | form zip | Depending on regional laws, an Order may become a binding contract once an order response is sent to that effect or perhaps when the order response is received. (It should be essential to have this clarified and mutually understood before placing an order.) This might be specified in the sales or order conditions or terms. Consideration might be given to the amounts and totals stated and whether they include tax. For ordering between one country and another it may be important to ensure that the country of the customer is clearly stated and other such requirements may apply. It is likely that an agreement will need to be made between buyer and seller regarding how an order is to be accepted or rejected, modified or cancelled. Essentially this amounts to ageeing both contractual arrangements and business processes. Additionally, technical considerations and agreements might have to include how an order response is sent - whether it must be in such a way that the sender can be sure that the message has been received in such a way that the receiver cannot repudiate this (called 'non-repudiation'). | Italian (Ordine) zip Spanish (Pedido) zip |
| Order Response | form zip | Sometimes an order requires a comprehensive Order Response which caters for substitution of an ordered item with another item for some acceptable reason, perhaps within terms agreed between buyer and seller. Consideration might need to be given to whether, perhaps according to sales terms, agreements, contract or laws, the order is to be regarded as binding when the order response actually includes such amendments to the original order or whether the order is only part accepted and the amendment to be treated as a kind of quotation. It might be that this type of order response is deemed unsuitable for showing full acceptance or full rejection of the order and that the 'Order Response (Simple)' document should be used for this instead. Such things may need to be clarified, agreed and stated when drawing up a trading partner agreement and specified clearly in conditions of sale. | Italian (Risposta Ordine) zip Spanish (Respuesta a Pedido) zip |
| Order Response (Simple) | form zip | The full acceptance or rejection of an order can be shown with the Order Response (Simple) document but not a partial acceptance of or amendment to an order. In some legal systems the sending or perhaps the receiving of this document constitutes the point at which the order becomes binding (perhaps with what is termed 'non-repudiation' in the way the message is sent - see Order, above) . | Italian (Risposta Ordine Semplice) zip Spanish (Respuesta a Pedido Sencilla) zip |
| Invoice | form zip | The Invoice is a request for payment, usually for some kind of sale (though there are other invoice types) and may be a document which carries weight legally, requiring either payment (according perhaps to previously agreed terms) or an acceptable dispute and possibly strict tax requirements. A dispute in some countries may require that there be not a resending of a changed version of the invoice but some other means of adjustment such as a credit note for the full amount of the invoice and a new invoice. This may vary between countries and regions. Sometimes special requirements are imposed as legally mandated constraints on the way an invoice is completed, sent and processed and this is especially likely when an invoice also acts as a tax document. | Italian (Fattura) zip Spanish (Factura) zip |
| Credit Note | form zip | The Credit Note document type is especially useful for specifying that a certain amount can be deducted from the amount of a payment, perhaps to cancel in full the amount of an invoice by allowing that the credit note amount be offset against the invoice amount in the payment. Sometimes there are problems arising when it is not well understood and agreed that a credit note might be taken against a payment which does not include the actual invoice payment to which the credit note relates. Sometimes the credit note is wrongfully used in this way without any payment of the invoice. Sometimes the credit note is useless (except as documentation) when the invoice has already been paid and there are no further payments due against which the credit note may be offset (in which case a debit note or invoice might be raised against the seller by the buyer, say, and credit note cancelled in some way). Sometimes a credit note is used when an invoice has been paid twice in error or paid by mistake (such as to the wrong payee). It is not always possible to give an invoice reference and some other reference might be more appropriate, | Italian (Nota di Credito) zip Spanish (Nota de Crédito) zip |
| Statement | form zip | The Statement is used to summarise to a payee the payment amount outstanding (positive or maybe even negative, such as when a payment has been made twice in error or to the wrong payee or a credit note is outstanding) and to provide a breakdown of that payment along with information by way of appropriate document or payment references. Usually there is no separate statement of tax amount but a summary of the total debit or credit amount alone is provided, both for each item and for the grand total. Balance information is also provided and often a brought forward balance (the latter, in this case, shown as a separate line with an indicator that it is the brought forward balance amount). There is usually a statement date or date range provided. If the date is a date range then it might be that the items are only those applying between those dates and that previous items are indicated by the balance brought forward. | Italian (Estratto Conto) zip Spanish (Extracto) zip |
