This guide provides information about automating invoices. It is intended for system administrators.
The workflow for a sales order typically moves from taking the order, preparing and shipping the products, then preparing and sending the invoice. To streamline this workflow, aACE can automatically generate records according to the preferences you set.
To review how to manage invoicing preferences, see the Configuring Automation Settings for Invoicing guide.
The following scenarios clarify how some aACE invoicing settings can support your workflows by linking related invoices.
Append Auto-Generated Items
Suppose you have the Billing preferences flag marked to 'Auto-generate invoices on shipment'. This means that when a shipment's status changes to Shipped, aACE automatically creates the corresponding invoice. Your Billing preferences also have an important flag to 'Leave auto-generated invoices pending'.
If you must send items in multiple shipments (e.g. an item is on backorder), you can use the two subsidiary flags to control how aACE manages invoicing for the subsequent shipments. For aACE to automatically append invoices, the invoice record must be in Pending status.
Appending by Order
This option consolidates invoices that are related to a single order.
Suppose you have a sales order that includes ten units of an item, but you only have five units in stock. The customer asks you to immediately send the available items (instead of waiting for you to receive additional units and send all ten in a single shipment). Your staff ships the five units and aACE automatically generates the invoice. Before you send that invoice, however, four of the backordered items arrive. Your staff quickly prepares and sends those additional four units in a second shipment.
Because the initial invoice related to the order is still in Pending status, aACE will append the second shipment to the initial invoice:
At this point, you open the initial invoice and send it to the customer.
When you receive the final unit and ship it out, there isn't a pending invoice. aACE will generate a new invoice. The order is completed with three shipments and two invoices.
Appending by Customer
This option consolidates invoices that are related to a specific customer.
Suppose your customers place a lot of orders, but they prefer receiving invoices that each include a batch of orders (e.g. billing once for all orders placed during the month).
When a customer's order is shipped, aACE automatically creates a pending invoice. aACE also searches for other pending invoices for that customer and links them together in a master-invoice. This master-invoice displays the LICs and quantities from all the linked pending invoices. It also calculates the sum for the customer's current outstanding shipments and displays this total on the Invoicing tab for each order.
When you receive payment on any one of the consolidated orders, aACE updates the master-invoice:
- Receive the full amount — The master-invoice is moved to Closed status, and the Invoicing tab for each consolidated order is updated.
- Receive a partial amount — The received amount is subtracted from the current total, then the master-invoice is moved to Open status. This prevents subsequent invoices from being added to this batch.
Note: Do not use this feature if the customer will have different billing terms or payment methods on orders that are open at the same time. Shipments that will be invoiced together should all have identical terms and methods.