This topic will discuss the invoicing options, both for short term invoicing as well as reasons for long term invoicing of rental agreements.
Invoices can be produced at any stage during the life of a started or finished agreement. Although normally invoiced at the end of the hire you may wish to produce an interim invoice for many different reasons. This can be accomplished by pressing the letter I on the reservations form. The agreement must be at O or R status before invoicing is allowed.
The long term invoicing facility enables users to generate regular batch invoices for those agreements opened originally with long term tariff types, and which are still within their period of validity. All postings made will be reflected on the agreements as well as within the accounts module via the invoice buffer. The long term invoicing option will bill customers for hire and regular charges as well as one off charges which have not yet been invoiced. As soon as a long term invoicing routine is run the only outstanding charges on the rental agreement will be future rentals and any items which are billed on a factored basis which have a zero in the quantity column.
Any items invoiced will appear on the Invoiced form in the agreement record. If an interim invoice is produced the values on the Prices form will be reduced by the amount invoiced, which will appear on the Invoiced form. Thus the total value of an agreement is not only that which is shown on the Prices page, you should add the figures from Prices and Invoiced forms together to gain and overall picture of the value of the agreement.
You will always be prompted to invoice and agreement when you go through the Finish Rental routine. However there will be instances where this may not be convenient, or where you want to produce an interim invoice. Press the letter I on the reservations form to initiate the invoice procedure. (You will also use this option to produce the final invoice from a long term agreement to give you the chance to enter mileage and fuel readings for the last invoice.
Note: This option is not normally available on an agreement that has a group code set up to operate long term invoicing unless you are producing the final long term invoice. If you tries to produce an invoice for such an agreement, the form will inform them that it is not a valid operation for a long term agreement.
Double click the Invoice option while in the Reservations form and the process can be initiated.
The display will refresh and the form will ask for the number of the agreement to be invoiced. Use the search facility to identify it if required. You will be asked to complete odometer and fuel and damage details, remember you may want to include these on your invoice. If you do not want to establish charges based on these then duplicate the out mileage and leave it to be correctly recorded on a final invoice.
Once the agreement is selected, the form will offer a number of options.
Cancel: This will return you to the Reservations form without printing the invoice. No changes will be recorded against the agreement.
Prices Tab: This will allow you to make any amendments required to the detail held on the Prices form. Once the changes are made this ring menu will re-appear. See the section below which deals with interim invoicing.
Comments: This will allow you to record any comments, or simply view comments already made on the agreement. If any service swaps have taken place on the agreement the form will initially show you which agreement this one was linked to. You may choose to add comments which will appear on the invoice. If this is the case then make sure that one or more of the comment text lines have been included on your rental invoice format. Contact your system manager or ADP support if you need to amend your invoice so that it will normally print selected comment lines.
Print: This will print the invoice on the currently selected printer. Once the invoice has been printed, a further ring menu will be displayed.
Print invoice - Continue: This will return you to the Reservations form. The invoice detail will be processed through to the invoice buffer in the accounts module. The details of the transaction will also be posted through to the hire transaction log.
Print invoice - Reprint-invoice: This will give you a chance to reprint the invoice, this may be required if the paper jams in the printer or if the stationery was not aligned properly. It can be taken several times if necessary to obtain several copies of the document.
After reprinting the invoice, use the Continue option to return to the Reservations form.
Returns: If the agreement has had vehicle transfers during the hire you is able to take this ring menu option to view the details of the previous vehicles. Once viewed you will be returned to the invoicing ring menu.
If you want to print an invoice which shows only part of the hire then you should follow this interim invoicing procedure. Double click the Invoice option as before and the invoicing ring menu will appear. Take the option Edit prices´ and you will be taken into the prices page of the agreement. You may now edit any of the prices you want to, you can zero out all rental quantities for instance, clear all charge code quantities and add just one charge code, maybe to charge for a broken mirror, and then produce the invoice. The only item which will appear on the invoice will be the one you have added. If you cleared the others they will not be considered for this invoice.
You must be a little careful when editing the invoices. You will find that the system will keep a very careful track of the quantities that have been invoiced at any time, it will also archive a copy of the invoice once it has been produced. At a later stage this will allow you to view the invoices via the review option and also will prove invaluable if credit notes have to be produced at a later stage. If you produce an invoice for a customer which charges for fewer days than the actual length of the hire, the days which have not been invoiced yet will not be forgotten. The correct way to produce such an invoice would be to reduce the number of days being charged for by amending the charge to date while maintaining the return date as an accurate reflection of when the vehicle was actually returned. This must be done by editing the agreement prior to the invoice being printed.
If an agreement is set to run for six weeks you may want to produce an interim invoice for the first four weeks. To do so you simply have to initiate the invoice procedure with the letter I on the reservations form, edit the invoice to reflect four weeks worth of rental and charges, and then print the invoice.
Note: Please note that you have NOT edited the agreement as such. If you review the agreement you will see that all of the charges and rentals you cleared out are still there on the prices page waiting to be invoiced. You can produce a separate invoice for them later as required. Any items that you did invoice will appear on the invoiced form.
Warning: BEWARE. If you want to produce one of these partial invoices then you should only clear the QUANTITY column on the affected charges. If you change the UNIT PRICE the new unit price will be applied to the whole of the agreement. Thus if the rental is originally £20 per day for 10 days, you may edit it to charge for 7 days at £18 per day and produce an invoice. When you review the agreement you will find 3 days left to be invoiced at £18 per day instead of £20 per day. This facility is in place because of individual deals which may be negotiated after the agreement has started.
If an agreement has been incorrectly set up and invoiced, then it can be credited and then re-input to allow correct charging to take place. In order to avoid any confusion, a decision has been made to only allow full credit on an invoice. Thus if only one invoice has been produced the whole amount that has been invoiced will be reversed and the agreement will show that nothing has been invoiced. If several invoices have been produced for an individual agreement you can credit then individually, but only in the manner described below.
If you have printed invoice numbers 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105 and 106 on an agreement, you may find that you want to credit invoice 104. If this is the case you will have to credit all invoices produced after 104 before you can do it. Thus you must credit invoices 105 and 106 first. The system will lead you through the correct procedure, so you do not have to worry about having to remember which invoices have to be credited. Double click the Credit option while on the reservations in order to initiate the credit procedure.
The form will ask you for the agreement number you want to credit, enter the number or use the search routine to find it. Once selected the system will check the invoice log and show details of the invoices already produced. Select the one you want to credit, or credit back to. The form will then ask for confirmation that you want to produce a credit note for the selected invoice. If more than one invoice has to be credited you will be prompted to produce a credit note for each of them in turn, in reverse invoice order until you get to the one you want. The agreement can now be edited as required in order to establish a corrected charge and then the invoicing procedure can be re-selected in order to produce a corrected invoice or a series of invoices.
