Contract Billing Process

Contents 1 Contract Invoicing 2 Invoicing Sales Orders Linked to a Contract 3 How to Include Sales Orders to be Invoiced When Invoicing a Contract 3.1 Single Invoice Including Contract and Orders 3.2 Creating Sales Invoices from Sales Orders (not linked to contract) 3.3 Contract Invoicing Background Process 3.4 Add a preferences to automatically send invoices by email

Contract Invoicing

Contract invoicing can be launched in Contract billing process window.

Before launching the invoice process, some filter can be applied in the window:

1. Business partner: Launch invoicing only for a business partner
2. Organization: Launch invoicing only for a single organization
3. Contract: Launch invoicing only for a single contract
4. Product: Launch invoicing only for a single product

Leaving filters in blank will launch invoicing including all the active contracts in the system.

Also, a description can be added. This description will be included in all the invoices generated through the process (i.e. “February 2013 membership”)

Set the period to be invoiced: All the invoice plan lines with a invoicing date within defined period will be included in the invoicing process

Check off following checkboxes:

1. Current: Is checked by default. Includes due sales orders or contracted services dued in the current period (regardless the time period selected)
2. Previous: It includes due sales orders or contracted services previous to the period indicated in the window.
3. From contract: Includes contract lines
4. From order: Includes sales orders (previously linked to contracts)

Launch the invoicing process, and the invoice proposal is automatically opened in a new window.

In contract window now this invoice plan line is shown as “Fully invoiced”, and the invoice is also displayed in Invoicing History tab

Invoicing Sales Orders Linked to a Contract

Apart from invoicing the services and products included in a contract, it is also possible to create sales orders in the system linked to a contract (i.e meeting room reservations, catering services, facilities rentals for short time periods...). Depending on the configuration, those sales orders can be invoiced including them into the contract billing, or invoiced directly from the sales order.

Sales Invoice window allows to browse information about all sales invoices registered in the system and manually create new invoice documents. It is useful if execution of some specific scenario is required that is not managed by automatic invoice generation processes like creating invoices from orders.

How to Include Sales Orders to be Invoiced When Invoicing a Contract

In order to include sales orders into contract invoicing, you must:

1. Link the sales order to an active contract
2. Header data in both Contract and Sales Orders must be the same (in order to group invoice headers during the process). Note! The system takes contract header data as default data to be used in invoice header, so if there are different values between contract and sales order header, those in contract header will be used to create grouped invoice.

In order to link sales orders and contracts, contract accounting dimension needs to be displayed in sales order form. Accounting dimensions display is configured at client level:

Sales orders can be easily linked to contracts using the Contract field in Dimensions field group in sales order header.

Also, linked sales orders are shown in contract window, in Orders History tab.

Note that the order above has as Invoice Term “Contract billing” option defined. This is mandatory if we want this order to be taken into account by contract billing process.

Single Invoice Including Contract and Orders

Because of the configuration described in precedent steps, the system will group in a single invoice a invoice plan line and all the orders in the system pending to be invoiced.

When launching Contract Billing Process, all not invoiced sales orders in the period can be included into billing process. Just check "From orders" checkbox in Contract Billing Process window.

The invoice proposals group the charges for that period both from contract and from orders:

To convert invoice proposals into sales invoices select the invoice proposal and click on Create Invoices. Check in contract how the new invoice is linked in Invoicing History and also how the status of the order is now “Fully invoiced”

Creating Sales Invoices from Sales Orders (not linked to contract)

Customer invoices can be registered, booked and managed in the header section of the sales invoice window.

Header lists main terms and conditions related to the sales invoice that will be used in the heading of its printed copy and further in its collection process.

In majority of the cases main (and the only) field needed to create a new sales invoice document is the Business Partner field. All other fields will be pre-filled automatically based on the selected Business Partner.

Some other fields to note are:

1. Transaction document defaulted as "AR Invoice" or Sales Invoice document type which can be manually changed to either "AR Credit Memo" or "Reversed Sales Invoice".
   1. "AR Credit Memo" and "Reversed Sales Invoice" document types can be considered credit sales invoices, the difference between them is that:
      1. the "AR Credit Memo" type must contain either an "Invoiced Quantity" > 0 or "line Net Amounts" >0
      2. and the "Reversed Sales Invoice" type must contain either an "Invoiced Quantity" <0 or "line Net Amounts" < 0
2. Invoice Date: the date the invoice is issued. Is used to calculate when the payment of the invoice is due. Defaulted to the current date.
3. Accounting Date: date to be used in the posting record of the Sales Invoice to the general ledger. Defaulted to the Invoice Date field.
4. Payment Method: indicates how an invoice should be paid. Defaulted according to the Customer tab of the Business Partner window.
5. Payment Terms: defines when a sales invoice needs to be paid. Defaulted according to the Customer tab of the Business Partner window.
6. Sales Order: reference to an order that is being invoiced. If Sales Invoice includes products from several Sales Orders field is left empty (still trace-ability is present at Lines level).

There are 3 ways of entering lines into the sales invoice, two from the invoice header and the last one from the Lines tab:

1. Selecting products from pending to be invoiced orders (meeting Invoice Term criteria of the Sales Order) using the Create Lines From button. This option can be used several times to group several orders and / or shipments in one invoice. This is a most common approach.
2. Copying all products from the chosen invoice selected in the history of all invoices for different business partners using the Copy Lines button.
3. Manually, line by line in the Lines tab. This option is used if the underlying document (Sales Order or Shipment) does not exist in the system prior invoicing takes place.

Complete button finishes the creation of the invoice document with the fulfillment of the Payment Plan tab and the Payment Monitor section in the Header. If there are non-stockable BOM products in the lines and they have not been exploded, the Complete button will explode them automatically.

Contract Invoicing Background Process

Openbravo for coworking also includes the option to fully automate the contract billing process.

This process is not active by default, so in order to activate it we need to request for a new process in the system.

Contract invoicing process does:

1. Launches Contract Billing Process based on the defined schedule
2. Sales invoices are created and completed (no invoice proposal)

Contract invoicing process does NOT:

1. Created invoices are not automatically sent by email to customers

Login as organization Admin role and go to Application || General Setup || Process Scheduling || Process Request

Click New and set the new process:

1. Organization = Select an organization
2. Process = Contract invoicing
3. Timing = Schedule
4. Active = Y
5. Security based on role = Y.

When “Schedule” value is selected in Timing field, the Scheduling field group is displayed. Configure the scheduling as follows:

1. Start date = Today (select the date in which the process will start running)
2. Start time = Select an starting time
3. Frequency = 04 - Daily
4. Daily options = Every n days
5. Daily interval = 1
6. Finishes = N

Finally, click on Schedule Process button to activate the process.

Process execution can be monitored using the Application || General Setup || Process Scheduling || Process Monitor screen and logged in as organization Admin user.

To learn more about this topic please read Process request article in our Wiki.

Add a preferences to automatically send invoices by email

Before sending invoices by email, you will need to ask to your System Administrator configure an outgoing email account in Client window.

Following Preferences can be activated in order to send sales invoice by email automatically:

1. Contract Billing Background: Send by Email : The background billing process will automatically send by email the generated invoices. This preference will work in addition to Contract Billing background process, that automatically runs Contract Billing Process". Using Contract Billing background process in addition to this preference fully automates your invoicing process (invoice creation and sending).
2. Contract Billing Manual Process: Send by Email : The manual billing process will automatically send by email the generated invoices. This preference will run when Contract Billing Process is launched manually.
3. Contract Billing: Attach PDF to invoice when sending email : The generated PDF file sent to the business partner by email will be automatically attached to the Openbravo's invoice record (background and manual processes).

By default these preferences are deactivated.