Invoicing partial payments from an estimate or costs

[rmccafferty]

I have a client with an issue I have not seen before.

He will produce an estimate for material that is to be invoiced to his client at $10,000. He will bill half of that up front to the client and the other half to be invoiced upon receipt of the material by the client. So far, easy stuff. We issue an invoice with one line item for the material and tax is computed accordingly by QB.

That the item is taxable is the heart of his problem. The feds have audited him and insist that all of the sales tax must be paid by him as soon as he issues the first invoice. (Their logic is that the sale is valid at that point and the tax is due and whenever he gets paid by the client is irrelevant).

Cash flow, of course, is an issue for the client. He sells a limited number of material items, but all are very expensive and he cannot afford to pay all of the sales tax up front unless the client pays it all to him up front.

I do not see a way to break the estimate into 2 payments with the one item being billed for only half on the first invoice (the item being sold), but the sales tax (or even a second line item if we compute the tax manually) being invoiced in full. That is, whatever percent of the estimate we want to invoice, that percentage must apply to every part of the estimate.

Is there a QuickBooks designed way to do what my clients needs to do?