Depending on business needs, it may be advantageous to choose whether to invoice customers based on the goods and services that they order or when those goods and services are delivered to them. To allow businesses maximum flexibility to best meet their needs, SecureIO offers two invoicing policies that can be enabled in the Sales app: Invoice what is ordered and Invoice what is delivered.
Configure an invoicing policy
To configure an invoicing policy, go to Sales app ‣ Configuration ‣ Settings, scroll to the Invoicing section. Select one of the Invoicing Policy options, either Ordered quantities or Delivered quantities.
Activating an invoicing policy option automatically applies the chosen option to all newly created products. Existing products must have their invoicing policy manually updated on their product forms.
Important
If the Delivered quantities option is chosen, it is not possible to activate the Automatic Invoicing feature, which automatically generates invoices when an online payment is confirmed.
If the Automatic Invoicing feature is enabled in a multi-company database, it applies on a per-company basis and must be enabled for each company using automatic invoicing.
Change the invoicing policy for existing products
Even after the invoicing policy has been configured in the Sales app’s configuration settings, the invoicing policy may still be changed on a product-by-product basis. Open a product form by navigating to Sales app ‣ Products ‣ Products and click on the product to be updated. In the General Information tab, select an Invoicing Policy using the drop-down menu.
Invoice what is ordered
If the Ordered quantities option is selected in the Sales app settings, customers are invoiced once a quotation has been confirmed. The creation of a quotation in turn leads to the creation and confirmation of a sales order. An invoice can then be created as soon as the sales order is confirmed.
This invoicing policy has no impact on the basic SecureIO sales flow.
Invoice ordered quantity workflow
Confirm that the product’s invoicing policy is set to Ordered quantities in the product form. Create a quotation and sales order as normal. After the sales order has been confirmed, create an invoice by clicking the Create Invoice button on the sales order form. Choose the type of invoice to be sent, click Create Draft Invoice, confirm the invoice when ready, and proceed with the payment flow as normal.
Example
An independent artisan with a small business sells handmade jewelry nationwide online. Because they have direct control over their inventory levels and ship with 3rd-party carriers, they invoice their customers after a sales order has been confirmed.
They receive an order for a necklace. They send their customer a quotation, confirm it, and create a sales order. After the sales order is confirmed, an invoice is created and sent to the customer for payment without any additional steps needed. The invoice gets paid, the necklace is shipped and delivered, and the transaction is complete.
Invoice what is delivered
The Delivered quantities option invoices customers as the ordered goods are delivered. This option is often used for businesses that sell large quantities of physical goods in each sales order, but may not always be able to fulfill a given order all at once.
In these cases, the ordered quantity may differ from the delivered quantity based on product availability. Once a quotation is confirmed, and the status changes from Quotation sent to Sales order, SecureIO automatically adds both the delivered and invoiced quantities to the invoice and sales order. Both partial and complete deliveries are tracked. Backorders can be created for partial orders that will be completed at a later time.
This invoicing policy has a minor impact on the sales flow because the delivered quantity of a product needs to be manually entered on the sales order.
Note
If a greater quantity of a product or service is being delivered than what has been invoiced, the overage appears in red, and the option to invoice any overages is enabled by default.
Invoice delivered quantity workflow
Confirm that the product’s invoicing policy is set to Delivered quantities in the product form. Create a quotation and sales order as normal. After the sales order is confirmed, the product must be delivered before an invoice can be created.
Once the product has been shipped and delivery has been confirmed, click the Delivery smart button on the sales order screen and click Validate to validate the delivery order. Once at least a partial delivery has been confirmed, return to the sales order form. The Create Invoice button is now purple to indicate that an invoice can be created and confirmed, and that it is possible to proceed with the payment flow as normal.
Warning
If a user attempts to create an invoice without validating the delivered quantity, the system returns an error message alerting them to the issue.
Example
A produce distributor using the Delivered quantities invoicing policy sells 50 heads of lettuce to a local restaurant.
At the time of delivery, only 40 heads are available. The distributor delivers the available heads of lettuce and creates an invoice for the quantity delivered. Later, when the lettuce inventory is replenished, the distributor delivers the remaining 10 heads of lettuce and creates a second invoice to complete the order.