Accepting Final Invoices

In Interactive Billing or Batch Billing, you accept draft invoices to make them final and ready for posting and sending to clients.

Typically you run draft invoices in Batch Billing and accept final invoices in Interactive Billing, but you can also final accept a batch of invoices in Batch Billing. If invoice approvals are enabled for a project, the invoices for the project must be approved before they can be accepted. After you accept an invoice, you post the invoice file in Transaction Center.

Who Can Accept Final Invoices

To accept final invoices in Interactive Billing and/or Batch Billing, you must belong to a security role that has the following:

• Access to Interactive Billing and/or Batch Billing.
• The Allow Final Processing check box selected on the Accounting tab in Settings > Security > Roles in the "Billing Security: Interactive Billing and Invoice Approvals" section and/or in the "Batch Billing" section of the tab.
• Access to project records in order to accept invoices in Interactive Billing.

What Happens When You Accept an Invoice

When you accept a final invoice, Vantagepoint does the following:

• Automatically assigns an invoice number. If an invoice is accepted that has no current billings, but still has outstanding accounts receivable, the invoice is created with a number of <State>, indicating statement. If you used the Assign Invoice Number feature to reserve the next invoice number to be used when generating invoices for a particular project, Vantagepoint uses this assigned number.
• Prints the final invoice with the assigned number.
• Makes the invoice transaction file available in Transaction Center for posting.
• Marks the transactions included on the invoice as billed (so that Vantagepoint will not bill them again).
• Releases all Held transactions for billing if the Release Holds Automatically option is selected in Settings > Billing > Options.
• Removes all written-off and deleted detail from the Interactive Billing Labor, Expenses, and Units tabs.
• Updates previous fee billing section if billing terms are defined.
• Adds the accepted invoices to the grid on the Invoice History tab in Interactive Billing, making them available to be reprinted, emailed, or voided or have a credit memo created for them.
• Increments the next invoice number in the project’s billing terms or in Settings > Billing > Options, depending on your numbering method.
• Launches the Employee Realization Allocation form, if there are labor or employee-specific unit transactions on Bill status that are accepted with the invoice.

Use Interactive Billing to Accept an Invoice

If you use Interactive Billing to accept an invoice, before accepting the invoice you have the ability to change some aspects of the invoice transactions to be created on the Invoice Accept dialog box. For example, you can change the account number affected by the transaction. You can also insert an invoice transaction from the Invoice Accept dialog box before accepting the invoice.

Use Batch Billing to Accept Invoices

In Batch Billing you select the Final option in the Run Type section to accept all the invoices in a batch. You cannot modify the invoice contents from Batch Billing before you run a final type batch as you can in Interactive Billing.

Posting Accepted Invoices

When you accept final invoices in Interactive Billing or you create final invoices in Batch Billing, you specify a new or existing invoice file into which the invoice transactions will be added for posting. The invoice transaction file includes all invoices that were finalized during the billing session, including invoices, voided invoices, credit memos, and retainage-only invoices. When the file is posted, your general ledger, accounts receivable ledger, and project records are updated.

If your security role has the proper security for posting transactions and honors transaction entry approval rules, a Post on Accept check box displays on the Billing Session Options dialog box in Interactive Billing and Batch Billing. This check box allows you to choose whether to have invoices in a billing session post automatically when you final accept them, or not post automatically, and instead, you must go to Transaction Center > Transaction Entry > Invoices to post them. You can edit the file in the Transaction Center before you post it if necessary.

You view the posted invoice transaction files for the completed Interactive Billing and Batch Billing sessions in Transaction Center > Posting Review.