How Pre-Invoices Work with Other Invoices

Time and Material Invoicing

The process for creating T&M invoices is affected by pre-invoices on a job. When a T&M invoice selection is approved, Maconomy also selects pre-invoices on this job for cancellation. When the T&M invoice is printed, the pre-invoices are reported on the print-out and cancelled.

Printing a T&M invoice changes the pre-invoice status from pending payment to cancelled. A cancelled pre-invoice is removed from on account reconciliation of T&M invoices and no customer payments can be reconciled against it.

Once pre-invoices are reported on the T&M invoice, they are not reported on future invoices. New pre-invoices may be raised after a T&M invoice is printed. They will be reported on future T&M invoices.

A pre-invoice and a regular invoice (whether time and material or on account) differ in nature – the former is a non-binding request for payment, while the latter has full accounting consequences; they also differ in their lifecycle in terms of crediting, cancellation and payment.

Due to these differences, you cannot combine a pre-invoice with a time and material on a single invoice.

Multiple pre-invoices may be created before a Time & Material invoice is created. Those that are paid may take part in the reconciliation as with regular invoices on account.

Crediting of Time and Material Invoices

A new field Restore Pre-Invoices is added. This field is used with the Invoice to Credit Memo action. If you select this field when running the action, then the credit memo restores cancelled pre-invoices to a pending payment state.

The credit memo includes a list of the pre-invoices with reversed cancellations.

Note: If a pre-invoice was already cancelled when the T&M invoice was printed, and the pre-invoice was just reported on the T&M invoice, then the credit memo does not un-cancel that pre-invoice.

Approving a draft credit memo for a T&M invoice being credited with “Restore Pre-Invoices” selects the relevant pre-invoices for un-cancellation on that draft. The pre-invoices are “locked” and they cannot be un-cancelled manually or reported on another T&M invoice until the draft credit memo is removed.

Crediting of Pre-Invoices

Pre-invoices cannot be credited if they are pending or cancelled. In particular, there are no “pre-credit memos” for pre-invoices.

Once payment is received for a pre-invoice, it is credited as an invoice on account. The resulting credit memo is a regular on account credit memo.

Blanket Invoicing

Pre-invoice drafts cannot be combined into a blanket draft with other drafts, including other pre-invoice drafts. That does not preclude a job that uses pre-invoicing from sharing the same blanket invoice collection as other jobs.

Pre-invoice drafts can be printed in batch and blanket invoicing windows, such as Job Invoicing or Blanket Invoice Selection, but they always result in a separate invoice.

Note: Pre-invoices for which payment was received can take part in reconciliation of a T&M blanket invoice.

Split Billing

A job can be set up for both split billing and pre-invoicing.

In this case, approving an amount for invoicing on account and printing the invoice produces an independent pre-invoice for each bill to customer. Each split-bill pre-invoice has its own invoice number and can be paid or cancelled independent of the others.

When an invoice selection for a T&M invoice is approved under split billing and pending payment pre-invoices exist on the job, then each split-bill T&M draft only cancels and reports the pre-invoices that match the bill to customer and appropriation of the T&M draft. If a pre-invoice exists that doesn’t match any of those, then it is not selected for cancellation and/or reporting.