Populating Invoice Header fields

Background

Once you have raised an invoice, the system automatically creates an invoice and navigates you to the invoice detail form, where you need to populate the invoice before you can progress it further.

Populating the invoice is essentially a two stage process:-

• Completing the Invoice Header fields
• Adding all required charges onto the Invoice Lines tab.

This topic is concerned with the former of these two stages. See Populating Invoice Content for instructions on the latter.

The Invoice Header fields are shown in the below screen-shot within the brace:-

Invoice Header fields record basic but vital information about the order, such as:-

It is essential that this information is recorded fully and accurately to ensure that the invoice can be processed efficiently and without errors

It is worth noting that some of these header fields are automatically populated with data harvested from the underlying job orders when the invoice is initially raised..

About this Task

This topic outlines the steps necessary to accurately populate the Invoice Header fields on a invoice record that has been raised.

Prerequisites

Ensure that you have raised an invoice before proceeding. When you raise an invoice, you will be automatically navigated to the invoice detail form.
This topic assumes that you are at that point.

Procedure

1. The Contact field, records the name of the person at the client company to whom the invoice is directed. If the invoice was raised from a job order or fulfilment, then this should be automatically be populated with the contact harvested from that record. If it is not populated, or you wish to change it, click in the Contact field you activate the contact picker dialog.
   Use this functionality to locate and select the client contact.
   
   Note:
   When created, a Contact must be associated to a single Company within strokeone. Therefore, when you select a contact,the Company field will automatically default with the corresponding company which the contact is associated to.
   
   
2. The Company field records the organisation to whom the invoice is due. Like the contact field, It should have automatically populated with the Company name from the job order or fulfilment record that the invoice was raised from . Alternatively, if you selected a client contact in step 1) it will be populated with the company that the client contact is associated to.
   
   Note
   a) It is possible to populate the Company field before populating the Contact field. If you click within Company field you will be taken into a filterable look ahead search dialog. to find and select the Company.
   
   b) However, as a Company can have one or more contacts, the corresponding Contact field does not automatically populate. Therefore if you populate Company first, you must return to the Contact field to select the corresponding client contact.
   
   Given this, it is recommended wherever possible to populate the contact first.
   
3. The invoice number is automatically set when the invoice is raised, and is the next unique sequence number from the internal counter. It cannot be altered.
   
4. The Job Number field will be automatically populated with the job order number that the invoice was raised from.
   
   TBC: This allows you to select any job (including a differing customer - what is the reason for this ?
   
   Note: the contents of the Job Number field cannot be manually overwritten - if you need to overwrite the contents of this field use the Job Number Manual field
   
   
5. The Job Name field automatically populates with a concatenation of the category and description fields from the corrresponding job order set in the Job Number field.
   Note: like Job Number, the contents of the Job Name field cannot be manually overwritten - if you need to overwrite the contents of this field use the Job Name Manual field.
   
6. The Customer PO field can be populated with the purchase order number from the customer which originated the job order.
   
7. the Customer Reference field is a free form text field used to record the customer's internal reference for their order.
   This reference will almost certainly be used by the client, both in recognising the order and in communicating any information or assets related to the order to Strokeone Software Limited, so it is an important field to record.
   If the invoice has been raised from a job order, the value here will have been automatically harvested  from the value from the customer reference field on the corresponding job order. You can manually enter the reference number here if the field is blank.
   
8. The Address, Town, Country, Post Code and Country fields define the Billing Address as to where the Invoice should be physically sent. They are automatically populated from the billing address field values held on the record for the Company populated in step 2)
   Tip: You can manually overwrite these if necessary
   
9. In the Accounts Contact field, you can use the select from the drop-down pick list the member of staff in the accounts department who is responsible for, and can be contact with any questions in regard of, the invoice.
   TBC: Enhancement: this should be a derived field based on accounts contact attribute on a company record ***
   
10. Similarly, the Sales Contact field is used to record the salesperson responsible for the customer job order which the invoice relates to.
    
    TBC: This should default from the job order  / company record - it doesn't **
    
11. The Date Raised field is automatically date stamped with the calendar date when the invoice was raised. It cannot be altered by users.
    
12. The Date Sent field is automatically date stamped, when the Invoice is marked as sent. This date is used to determine aged balances.
    
13. The Type field automatically populates with Invoice
    TBC:  is this needed ?? *
    
14. By default, the Job Name Manual field is populated with the value in the Job Name field. However, unlike Job Name, you can edit the contents of this field, and alter it if required. For example, you may wish to change the contents from the defaulted concatentation  of the <Job Name> & <job category> values to one which is more helpful or meaningful to the client receiving the invoice.
    Note: Any value that you enter in this field will backfill to the Job Name field. - click for an example
    

     

    n the below screenshot,the Job Number Manual field is auto populated with the value recorded in the non editable Job Name field
    
    A user wants to add a more helpful description of the job to whjch the invoice relateds, and so adds a suffix of T -Shirt to Job Name Manual.
    
    Once the user clicks out from the Job Name Manual field (which commits the field's value), Job Name field is backfilled with the revised value
    
    

15. The Job Number Manual field functions in an identical way to Job Name Manual, with the exception that values entered here backfill the Job Number field.
    When an invoice refers to multiple underlying jobs or fulfilments, it can be useful here to populate this field with a more explanatory reference.
    I

The rest of the fields in the header section are not user populated, but for reference are outlined below:-

Next Steps

Once the Invoice header fields have been successfully populated, the next steps of processing the invoice is to populate its content with charges

Related Topics

Populating Invoice Content