Invoicing - End to End Process – Astute Payroll Help Centre

Overview

The Invoicing module in Astute is designed in a way that most of your configuration is done in the customer profile. This makes the actual invoicing process each week (or however often you generate them) very simple. All you need to do is choose your invoiceable items, raise the invoices, review them, and then email them. This article outlines the process of generating invoices once your timesheets have been finalised.

Creating Draft Invoices

Go to Invoicing > Invoiceable Items
Choose your Report Settings based on your requirements
- If you do not want line items that are $0.00 to appear on the invoice, untick ‘Include: Items of Zero Value’ > Go'. This will allow you to easily mark these as 'Never Invoice' later
- You may like to 'Summarise By > Consolidation Method' if you'd like to review how individual line items will be consolidated into single invoices
Select all the lines you want to create invoices for
With Selected Invoiceable Items ... > Generate New Invoices > Go
- If you're using the Transaction Date function, ensure you set the correct date before generating

Manual Adjustments to Draft Invoices

Go to Invoicing > Drafts > choose your Report Settings > Go
Click on the link in the 'Invoice' column to open the Draft Invoice

On the right side, there are options that allow you to make changes to the draft invoice, including:

Edit: this allows you to make changes to nearly all details appearing in the invoice as well
as add new (manual) line items
- If some items are locked, please review the Invoice Admin Settings
Add Attached Files: will allow the attaching of a file if needed, i.e. an email conversation
with the customer, Excel files

Bulk Sending Draft Invoices

Go to Invoicing > Drafts
Tick the invoices you would like to send or select all by ticking the box in the header row
With Selected Invoices ... > Go

Bulk Mark Zero Value Invoiceable Items as ‘Never Invoice’

If you opted in the first step to exclude items of zero value, once you have generated your other invoices, you can now bulk mark these as ‘Never Invoice’

Go to Invoicing > Invoiceable Items
Tick all items on the page (they should all be $0.00)
With Selected Invoiceable Items ... > Mark as Never Invoice > Go

Options in the Invoiceable Items Report within ‘With Selected’

Add to Existing Draft Invoices: use this if you have an existing draft invoice for a customer and
want to add further invoiceable items to it (only an option if the invoice is still a draft)
- - Note: this still goes through the normal ‘Invoice Consolidation’ functionality. If the invoice consolidation would not normally combine these items, a new invoice will be created instead.
Recalculate: if recent changes were made to a job or customer profile after the Invoiceable Items were already generated, you can use this option to apply these changes. For example, if the charge rate was updated after the Invoiceable Item was created, select the relevant line/s and 'Recalculate' them
Mark as Never Invoice: used to ensure an item is not billed, i.e. a timesheet for a candidate that
did not work out and you do not wish to invoice the customer for that timesheet
- - This option removes the item from the Invoiceable Items page to ensure the item is
    not accidentally invoiced in the future - they can be searched for in the Report Settings and even restored if needed
Mark as Ready to Invoice: if you have filtered on 'Items Marked as Never Invoice' in the Report Settings, and you select one of these lines, there will be an additional option in the dropdown called 'Mark as Ready to Invoice'. This will restore a line item that has been incorrectly marked as Never Invoice, so it can be included in an invoice

Important Customer Profile Settings that Impact Invoicing

To manage the invoicing settings in the Customer Profile, go to Users > Customers > click on the customer name. We've listed some of the most frequently customised settings below:

Billing Details

Invoice Payment Terms: for example, 7 days after the invoice is sent, or 14 days after the beginning of the following month
Tax applicable on invoices: i.e. 10% GST AU

Default Settings

Invoice Consolidation: used to determine how invoice line items are consolidated when multiple jobs are linked to a single customer profile. For example, 1 timesheet per invoice, or 1 invoice per customer
Invoice Schedule: sets how frequently a customer will be billed, as this may not align with the timesheet or payroll cycles. For example, employees could be paid weekly, but the customer could be invoiced per calendar month
Invoice Send Method: determines how invoices are sent to the customer, this could be an email with a link or an email with a PDF invoice attached.
- - There is a 'Send via Post' method, which can be used to mark invoices as 'Sent' without sending them electronically. This can be used in instances where invoices are imported into a third-party software, for example.
Invoice Template: different templates can be created in Config > Invoicing, and these can be set against the customer profile.

Write-Off Options

Once an invoice is 'Sent', a 'Write-off Options' button will be available on the invoice.

There are various write-off options:

Write Off Invoice as Bad Debt: use this option if you will be writing off the balance of the invoice as a bad debt.
Do Not Re-invoice: this will credit the invoice and not reissue it. All items attached to the
invoice will be marked as never invoice
Re-issue Invoice: this will credit the invoice but then allow edits for the invoice to be re-issued as a new one. This option will take the Invoiceable Items on the invoice and automatically generate a new Draft invoice where they can be edited. The new Draft invoice will have a new
invoice number and will share the same transaction date as the credit note
Cancel Invoice: will credit the invoice but the line items will be made available for future
invoices. This option moves the items back to the Invoiceable Items report and they can be added to a new Draft.

If the 'Do Not Re-invoice' or 'Re-issue' option is selected, the original invoice will be marked as “Written-off” in green. A link to the credit note will also be added to the History audit trail of the invoice, as will a link to the reissued invoice.

By default, credit notes/write-offs do not get sent to the customer automatically and the Send Method will be set to 'Send via Post' initially. This gives you the ability to make necessary edits to the invoice and the option to:

PDF the credit note with the method set as Send via Post to simply generate a PDF copy
Send via Email, Attach PDF, or Resend to send either the credit or the new invoice electronically via email with a PDF attachment
Write Off (and rebill together with a Timesheet Adjustment)

To 'Cancel' an invoice:

Go to Invoicing > Search Invoices
Find the original invoice that you want to credit or write off
Click the link to the invoice to open it
Write Off Options > Cancel

The items that were on the invoice, will now appear in the Invoiceable Items report, ready for you to pick up once the timesheet adjustment has been finalised.

The original invoice has now been written off. The Invoice History shows that a credit note that has been created and applied to this invoice. Click the link to view the Credit Note.
When a credit note is created in the system, it does not automatically email to the billing
contact, so if you want to send the customer a copy of the credit or write-off, you will need
to change the Send Method to ‘Send via Email’ and ‘Attach PDF’ and Resend to the customer so they receive a copy.
Once the adjusted timesheet has been finalised the adjusted items will appear in Invoicing > Invoiceable Items
You can now select all line items (including the Adjustment) and With Selected Invoiceable Items ... > Generate New Invoices > Go
Go to Invoicing > Drafts, click into the new invoice to review it (and make any manual changes that you may want to make), and then (top right) you can send the new invoice to the customer.

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