Billing
Definition
Invoicing (from Latin-Spanish factura for invoice) is a process in accounting where an invoice is issued to a customer for goods and/or services that have been delivered and/or provided (in rare cases, foreseen). Invoicing also involves posting the business case to appropriate accounts.
Process
The invoicing process begins with the entry of the order. When creating the order items, a rule is used to determine which items are given the billing status. Only items that have this status can be billed. So if a sales set has the billing status but not the lower parts, only the sales set can be included in an invoice. A single sub-item can therefore neither be invoiced nor credited.
| Example for the assignment of the billing status: An order item does not receive billing status in the order if the item: |
There are two ways to create the invoice. Firstly, the quick delivery/invoicing module can be called up from the order. Various options can be used here to control how an invoice is to be created. However, it is always the case that all order items that have not yet been invoiced are included in the invoice. Another way is to create the invoice manually. This way, individual order items can be transferred to the invoice via the invoice module.
Invoice items always have an order item as predecessor. It is also possible to generate an invoice from a delivery note (e.g. via the quick invoicing module). This is useful, for example, if partial deliveries are to be invoiced individually. In this case the invoice item has the delivery note item as predecessor and this in turn has the order item.
The registration is the end of the registration of the invoice. At this point, the invoice is pre-assigned and frozen. If the invoice cannot be assigned to an account, either the account assignment rules must be adjusted or manual account assignment must be carried out. Invoices which have the status "registered" can be transferred to the financial accounting via the outgoing invoice book. The commercial part of the invoicing process is now complete, unless the invoiced goods need to be credited.
Status
Invoices with the status "Created" can be cancelled. In order that balance sheets cannot be manipulated, invoice numbers must be consecutive. Thus, even empty invoices must not be deleted, but must be cancelled.
If an invoice is being processed, i.e. it has items etc., it receives the status "Not registered".
If an invoice does not change to the status "Not assigned to account" after registration, the initial account assignment could not be carried out correctly due to the defined account assignment rules or the complete gross value was not assigned to an account during manual account assignment.
"Registered" invoices can be booked into the financial accounting via the outgoing invoice book. Once this has been done, they receive the final status "Transferred to financial accounting".
The order items and the order header also have a billing status, which is determined via the invoiced quantity. Therefore, if an order item of three pieces has an invoice item of also three pieces of at least one registered invoice as successor, the order item is also considered to be invoiced. If this is not the case, it assumes the status "not billed" or "partially billed". An order is considered as invoiced when all its items, which have the billing status, have been invoiced.
However, there are exceptions to this, as there are three types of invoices. Up to now, the type "Itemised (normal)" has always been assumed, which causes the behaviour mentioned. In contrast, invoices of the type "Itemised (flat rate)" have no effect on the order status. This type is used, for example, if additional costs are to be invoiced for an item, but the normal invoicing of the item still follows. The same applies to credit memos if the credit memo for an item should not result in the order item having to be re-invoiced. A third type is the invoice type "order-related". Here no order item is shown in the invoice but only the order header itself. This case is used for additional costs which cannot be assigned to an item or also for flat-rate credit notes.
An invoice which results in the order changing to the status "Invoiced" automatically receives the Final invoice indicator. However, this indicator can also be set manually. This indicator is important for the order cost evaluation in order to be able to determine the closing period of an order.
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