In AR Entry, there is a field on the Summary tab called ‘Less Advanced Billed’. How is this field calculated or how do we create an advanced billing on a Shipment invoice? Based on the field help below, how are advanced billings placed against the invoice?
Less Advanced Billed (from Field Help)
The advanced billing amount that was placed against this posted invoice. These are amounts that the customer pays through installments before the invoice is due. The sum of these advance payments appears in this field.
The advanced billed value is the prepayment the customer makes against the sales order - through Payment Entry. There may be other ways to pre-pay an invoice, but Payment Entry, against an open sales order, is the commonly used by my company for customers who’s payment terms are “Cash in advance”.
When the Invoice is created via “Get Shipments”, the prepaid amount appears in that field.
Edit: You asked about advanced billing, keyword “Billing” which suggests you want to pre-bill the customer in advance of the shipment. In AR Invoice Entry, you can create an AR Group, then create either an Advance Billing or a Deposit Billing type invoice (from the “New” menu"). These are tied to the open sales order as opposed to the shipment - which hasn’t occurred yet.
Edit 2: After pre-billing, assuming there’s still a balance on the sales order total, you can create your shipment invoice, using get shipments, as normal.
So if I’m understanding correctly, you create an advance billing in AR Entry against that sales order and line first, then create a shipment against that same sales order and line. Then you should be able to see the advance billing on the shipment invoice?
That is correct. It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these myself (I’m the IT guy) and I’ve spent time w/Epicor support on these various invoice types on behalf of my Finance department.
The sequence is accurate - I believe you have to post that advanced billing invoice prior to your “get shipments” invoice.
If you’ve got a couple minutes free, set it up in your test environment first. I’m fairly confident on this one, but you may want to test it first.
EDIT: Also, run the edit list to make sure that what is happening is exactly what you expect to happen. Since you’re posting information to the GL, definitely preview or print the edit list for both invoices (and do this in test) before creating and posting in live. Fixing posted financial transactions is messy.
I will have to test this in our Test environment. The issue we are seeing is that these zero dollar Advanced Billed Shipment invoices when posted, are not posting to any GL accounts. We would expect it to be posted to a “deffered revenue” GL account even if is a zero dollar advanced billed shipment invoice.
Interesting, I don’t know if the Advanced Billing invoice actually posts anything to the GL, it may just “stay out there” until the shipment invoice is created and posted, at which time, all dollars hit the appropriate GL accounts. This is just my thinking. When you test, it would be great if you post your findings.
However, if @aidacra has any inside info to share…
We noticed that Advanced Billing invoices do hit the GL but not the Shipment invoices that have a ‘less advanced bill’ that makes it a zero dollar shipment invoice. It’s sporadic but we are expecting all invoices to hit the appropriate GL accounts.
Wow. The only similar issue I’ve encountered involved a very specific set of circumstances; an attempt to post a zero value invoice for a pre-payment customer failed. Coincidentally, the customer was on credit hold because the AR balance was greater that the customer’s credit limit.
The Epicor supplied workaround was to increase the customer’s credit limit, post the invoice, then reduce the limit. It worked. This clearly is very different from your situation but I post it in case it triggers some thought or idea.
Othws, I’ve exhausted my knowledgebase on this topic. Hopefully someone else chimes in.
@cchang, I think Dora is saying the Advanced Shipment invoice can be made to hit the deferred revenue account if that checkbox is selected. The checkbox is interactive ONLY for this type of invoice.
According to the help text for that field, the subsequent Shipment invoice will hit the Sales account. The checkbox for Deferred Revenue cannot be modified.
Regarding the BAQ question, I’m not aware of any transaction tables that you could inspect, but I have not looked until just now and I’m not seeing any.
Yes, but unfortunately there are a few times when Advanced Billed Shipment invoices are not hitting the deferred revenue account even with it check. I am not able to duplicate the issue but we are seeing it happen and trying to figure out why.
It looks like you can link the Invoice (Header or Detail) to the GLJrnDtl table by the InvoiceNum field.
Within the GL Journal table, you can see the transactions for the invoice and the GL accounts that are credited/debited.
An import note on Advanced payment and Misc invoices…
When starting a new invoice, you can enter a customer ID or an Order number. If you start with the Cust ID, the invoice won’t be linked to the order. Always start by entering the Order number. The invoice will then retrieve the customer info from the order AND link the Invoice to the Order.
