Projects:Intercompanyinvoicing/Specifications
Contents |
Inter-company Invoicing - Functional Specifications
Overview
Purpose
The purpose of this document is to describe the functional specifications for an extension module, to be develop in top of Openbravo ERP 2.50, to support inter-company invoicing.
Scope
The module will provide the following functionality:
- Ability to create a matching purchase invoice for any sales invoice created for a business partner associated to an organization having a type marked as legal entity.
- Ability to drill from the purchase invoice to the sales invoice
Design Considerations
While the initial scope of the module is limited to inter-company invoices created from sales invoices, the design of the solution should allow to enhance it in future versions to support additional flows and inter-company documents:
- Inter-company invoices initiated from purchase invoices.
- Inter-company orders initiated either from purchase orders or sales orders.
Constraints
None.
Functional Requirements
User roles & profiles
This specification applies to two roles:
- AR Staff: back office staff members that belong to the Finance function of the enterprise and that specialize in managing the receivables documents.
- AP Staff: back office staff members that belong to the Finance function of the enterprise and that specialize in managing the payables documents.
Business process definition
A sample inter-company invoicing process is described in the picture below.
The AR Staff creates sales invoices and complete them as usual. During the completion process the system evaluate the invoice and, if it is of type inter-company, it creates the corresponding purchase invoice.
The AP Staff of the corresponding organization can review the automatically created purchase invoice and, if their privileges allow them to do so, can drill to the sales invoice.
The above sample illustrate the process initiated from a sales invoice; other supported flows can be initiated from a purchase invoice, a sales order or a purchase order.
The complete list of supported flows is:
- Inter-company sales invoice generates inter-company purchase invoice
- Inter-company purchase invoice generates inter-company sales invoice
- Inter-company sales order generates inter-company purchase order
- Inter-company purchase order generates inter-company sales order
User stories
Micro-toys Co. is an enterprise made of several subsidiaries. Each subsidiary is modeled in Openbravo as a legal entity. Micro-toys Holding is the parent company while Micro-toys Spain, Italy and North America are subsidiaries; North America has two divisions, one for USA and one for Canada.
- On June 28th, Maria – a member of the AR Staff of Micro-toys Holding – creates sales invoice having Micro-toys Spain as business partner. When the invoice is complete, the system creates a corresponding purchase invoice in organization Micro-toys Spain, having Micro-toys Holding as business partner. The purchase invoice has a link at header level to the sales invoice and when Javier – a member of the AP Staff of Micro-toys Spain – queries it, he can use this link to drill into the original AR invoice.
- On June 29th, Javier creates a purchase order having Micro-toys Holding as business partner. When the order is complete, the system creates the corresponding sales order in Micro-toys Holding. That sales order generates a sales invoice but that sales invoice, although it has Micro-toys Spain as a business partner does not automatically generate a purchase invoice. The purchase invoice is generated from the purchase order instead.
- On June 29th, Maria – a member of the AR Staff of Micro-toys Holding – creates sales invoice having Micro-toys Italy as business partner. According Micro-toys Co. policy, the corresponding purchase invoice in Italy needs to be created manually. Maria emails a copy of the document to Cecilia, a member of the AP Staff of Micro-toys Italy that enters the transaction manually.
- On June 30th, Javier creates a sales invoice in Micro-toys Spain having Micro-toys North America as business partner. As by policy Micro-toys Co. does not allow subsidiaries to trade with each other, the system prevents this invoice from completing.
Functional requirements based on business processes
Configuration
| Num | Requirement | Importance | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.1 |
Users should be able to identify specific document types as being inter-company documents. For those, they should be able to identify which source and target organizations allow inter-company trading and which ones, among them, trigger the creation of an automatic matching document in the target organization. This can be achieved by adding an IS_INTERCOMPANY flag to the document type and a new child table that, for inter-company documents, allow users to specify the source and target organization pair and their corresponding matching inter-company document. For instance:
While in most case document types will be defined at * level, the application allows user to define them at lower organizations level. This designs allows for both the definition of the main documents at * level and the specification of the source and target organization pairs at lower level and the definition of documents at lower level in the hierarchy. For example, a valid configuration to meet the above user stories is:
Please notice that the invoice from Spain to North America is not allowed as this is not an explicitly declared allowed pair. An alternative valid configuration is:
Please notice that the invoice from Spain to North America is not possible since there is not inter-company sales document declared within Spain.
See screen mock ups. | Must have | Planned |
| 1.2 |
There should be two seeded default inter-company documents, defined at * organization level:
Please notice that these documents might need to be delivered by a separate module in order to be instantiated during the initial client setup if the user wants it. Please also notice that the rationale for having IS_INTERCOMPANY set to N for Inter-company Purchase is that the current scope of this document only covers the flow that is initiated from the sales invoices. | Should have | Out of scope |
Transactions - Invoices
| Num | Requirement | Importance | In scope? |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2.1 | The following additional columns are created in the C_INVOICE table:
Please notice that the above names are indicative only. The actual column names need to respect the modularity naming convention for columns added to a core table and need to embed the module prefix. | Must have | Planned |
| 2.2 | Whenever an invoice is saved the system should validate that if a document type having IS_INTERCOMPANY set to Y has been selected, the business partner is mapped to an organization.
If this validation fails an error should be raised. | Must have | Planned
|
| 2.3 | Whenever an invoice is completed, as part of the completion process, the system should validate whether the invoice is an inter-company invoice and, if so, create the corresponding invoice when appropriate.
The logic of the process is as follows:
When creating the corresponding invoice, use the following characteristics:
| Must have | Planned |
| 2.4 | In case the organization of the invoice and the organization of the business partner do not form a valid source and target combination for the original document type, the following error should be presented and the original document cannot be completed:
| Must have | Planned |
| 2.5 | The above logic can complete in error in case one of the following conditions are met:
Under these circumstances, the inter-company invoice cannot be created. In this case, users should not be able to complete the original sales invoice and should be presented with an appropriate error message. | Must have | Planned |
| 2.6 | The Purchase Invoice window should be modified so that the ORIGINATING_DOCUMENT_ID filed is added as to the Header tab as a read-only field with the label "Originating Invoice"
This field is added as the last row before Status. See screen mock ups. | Should have | Planned |
| 2.7 | The Sales Invoice window should be modified so that the ORIGINATING_DOCUMENT_ID filed is added as to the Header tab as a read-only field with the label "Originating Invoice"
This field is added as the last row before Status. See screen mock ups. | Should have | Planned
|
Transactions - Orders
| Num | Requirement | Importance | In scope? |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3.1 | The following additional columns are created in the C_ORDER table:
Please notice that the above names are indicative only. The actual column names need to respect the modularity naming convention for columns added to a core table and need to embed the module prefix. | Must have | Planned |
| 3.2 | Whenever an order is saved the system should validate that if a document type having IS_INTERCOMPANY set to Y has been selected, the business partner is mapped to an organization.
If this validation fails an error should be raised. | Must have | Planned
|
| 3.3 | Whenever an order is completed, as part of the completion process, the system should validate whether the order is an inter-company order and, if so, create the corresponding order when appropriate.<P>
The logic of the process is as follows:
When creating the corresponding order, use the following characteristics:
| Must have | Planned |
| 3.4 | In case the organization of the order and the organization of the business partner do not form a valid source and target combination for the original document type, the following error should be presented and the original document cannot be completed:
| Must have | Planned |
| 3.5 | The above logic can complete in error in case one of the following conditions are met:
Under these circumstances, the inter-company order cannot be created. In this case, users should not be able to complete the original sales invoice and should be presented with an appropriate error message. | Must have | Planned |
| 3.6 | The Purchase Order window should be modified so that the ORIGINATING_DOCUMENT_ID filed is added as to the Header tab as a read-only field with the label "Originating Order"
This field is added as the last row before Status. See screen mock ups. | Should have | Planned |
| 3.7 | The Sales Order window should be modified so that the ORIGINATING_DOCUMENT_ID filed is added as to the Header tab as a read-only field with the label "Originating Order"
This field is added as the last row before Status. See screen mock ups. | Should have | Planned
|
Technical Requirements
| Num | Requirement | Importance | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3.1 | The process of creating inter-company invoices should be developed in Java leveraging DAL if possible. | Nice to have | Out of scope |
| 3.2 | The invoice completion process should support modular extensions like the one required to support inter-company invoices | Should have | Planned |
Screen Mock ups
Document Type Window
The Document Type window is modified at header level to add the Inter-company check box as below.
Also a new tab is added to specify the inter-company relations.
Purchase Invoice Window
The Purchase Invoice window is modified to add the Originating Invoice field as below.
Sales Invoice Window
The Sales Invoice window is modified to add the Originating Invoice field as below.
Purchase Order Window
The Purchase Order window is modified to add the Originating Order field as below.
Sales Invoice Window
The Sales Invoice window is modified to add the Originating Order field as below.
Open Discussion Items
- In inter-company relations tab in document type window, in the target document type drop down list, only intercompany document types available for the target organization will be displayed.
- The only actions allowed for the documents are complete, unlock and close. None of the documents can be reactivated, neither the manual nor the generated.
- If the document is not generated, that is, if originating order/invoice field is black, the field will not be displayed.
- The currency of both pricelist of both business partners involved must be the same. Otherwise the following message will be displayed: The currency of the price list of the matching business partner must be the same as the one used in this document.
Closed Discussion Items
- Should the inter-company invoice be created by a background process or by the Invoice Complete process?
We had originally opted for a separate background process that can be scheduled to run at regular intervals (every day, every hour, every minute) but we have reversed this decision and opted to go for an on line extension of the Invoice Complete process.
- Should we provide a way to search for inter-company invoices? Or should that be left as a configuration to be executed by the implementor?
Searching for inter-company invoices should be an implementation configuration since not many people would consider this a main selection criteria.
- Is the linking of inter-company invoices at header level enough? Should it be at invoice lines level? We assume that header level is appropriate since the two invoices must fully match and there cannot be discrepancies at line level.
Yes, it is enough.
- Should we restrict the functionality only for invoices across organizations of type legal entity or should it be open to any type of organization?
The funcitonality should work for any type of organizations, as long as they are mapped to a business partner.
- Are the parameters of the background process needed? Do they present technical difficulties?