You can attach comments to outstanding invoices and have those comments appear in the AR Analysis table on the AR and DSO tab in Costpoint Analytics – Project. To do that, you enter the comments, along with the appropriate company ID and invoice number, in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet provided with Costpoint Analytics. When you load data into the Costpoint Analytics data model, the comments are included.
Loading comments is optional. The AR Analysis table does not display the Comment column if no comments exist for any of the invoices listed in the table.
The Costpoint Analytics installation copies the necessary Excel data file to the <installation folder>\Analytics\Other Data folder. The file name is ARComments.xlsx. That file has the required file name and columns in the correct format.
One approach to managing AR comments is to ask project managers periodically to review their outstanding invoices in the AR Analysis table and export that table to Excel. They can then add comments in that spreadsheet, as appropriate, remove all but the relevant rows and columns, and submit that spreadsheet to the Costpoint Analytics system administrator or other person responsible for compiling all of the comments in ARComments.xlsx.
A second approach is to make ARComments.xlsx accessible to all who may have a need to enter comments for invoices and allow them to update the spreadsheet directly.
Before you begin entering AR comments in the data file, do the following:
Review the AR comments data descriptions in AR Invoice File Format, and open and review the data file provided with Costpoint Analytics in the <installation location>\Analytics\Other Data folder.
Determine who will enter or copy the comments into the data file, and make sure they have the necessary access to open and update that file.
The invoice number in the data file must match the invoice number from Costpoint exactly, or the comment will not be linked to the invoice in the data model. If the invoice number from Costpoint has leading zeros, the invoice number you enter in the data file must have the same number of leading zeros.
To AR comments in the data file, complete the following steps:
Open ARComments.xlsx.
For each comment, enter the company ID, invoice number, and comment text. You can also enter the project ID or name, but that information is for your reference only. The data load process does not use data from the Project column.
Save the file.
After running the data load process, review the AR_Comments_Reject.txt file in the Other Data folder to identify any comments that were not loaded into the data model successfully. A comment is not loaded, for example, if the invoice number entered for the comment does not match an actual invoice ID in the Costpoint Analytics data.
Having comments in the data file for invoices that are no longer outstanding and thus do not appear in the AR Analysis table has no impact on the analytics. However, if you do not replace the spreadsheet contents completely each time you update it, you may want to review the data file periodically and remove comments for invoices that are no longer included in AR.