Cycle Invoices [U0302]

 

Introduction

The Cycle Invoices update interactively selects and invoices a lease or a selection of leases. This interactive update is intended to allow the user to produce an invoice for an individual lease. For example, when a newly booked lease is back dated and payments are already due, the user who booked the lease may want to create an invoice immediately. Another example is producing a copy of an invoice lost in the mail. There is the option to invoice for a selection of leases or for all leases in the entire LeasePak system.

When the Off Lease Billing module is purchased and an assessment has been added via the Assessment [U0105] update to a paid-off or terminated lease/asset, an invoice will be created and due in 30 days from the date entered.

The Cycle Invoices update is normally automatically run during the End of Period process [U04] according to predefined cycles. These cycles are specified through the Predefined Cycles Customizations option of the Portfolio update [U0212].

Cycle Invoices may also be performed interactively, without affecting the normal End of Period operation. The update can be accessed through the LeasePak Update menu, Predefined Cycle option or by entering U0302 into the Fast Menu <F2>.

The invoicing process performs the following functions:

The following reports are produced by the Cycle Invoices update [U0302]:


Normal invoicing for the portfolio is performed during the End of Period process, according to an invoicing cycle specified through the Predefined Cycles Customizations option of the Portfolio update [U0212].

Leases that are pre-booked, i.e., leases booked with a commencement date in the future, are not invoiced until one month before their commencement date. An accounts receivable record is established at the time of booking, but it is not processed until the invoice is to be sent out.

 

Group Billing

Related leases may be consolidated and billed on a single invoice or group bill. This group bill is printed on regular 8 1/2 by 11 inch paper, instead of the formatted mailer of the individual invoices. Therefore, much more information can be printed on the bill. This is useful for lessees which may require more information.

To activate group billing, customer and group designations must be established for the leases. The customer information is set up through the Customer update [U0205] and group information through the Group update [U0209]. Leases may then be attached to the appropriate group, either

through the Group update [U0209] or when the leases are booked through the Book Lease option of the New Lease update [U0101]. Group billing is activated as soon as a lease is attached to a group.

There may be up to 999 groups for each customer. The customer address functions as the billing address. Therefore, if one customer requires several different consolidated bills, a customer number should be established for each billing address and groups added for each customer. Leases should then be attached to the appropriate groups.

 

Technical Issues

Invoice processing involves 2 stages.

The first stage includes lease selection and necessary file updating by the invoicing process. Information to be printed on the invoice is assembled and written to an output scratch file for the actual formatting of invoices in the second stage. The invoice scratch file may be generated from the LeasePak interactive function [U0302] or from execution of an End of Day. The name and location of the scratch file depend on how the scratch file was created. If the file was created from [U0302], the name of the scratch file will be LPU0302A.SCR and the file will be in the default directory of the user who generated the invoices. If the scratch file was created from an End of Period process (such as End of Day), the scratch file created will be EOP:Pxx__LPU0302A.SCR where EOP: is the logical name for the End of Period directory, and xx is the portfolio number for the End of Period (Example: EOP:P1__LPU0302A.SCR). Thus, there will be an invoice scratch file for each portfolio for which an End of Day is executed.

The second stage uses the file(s) created during the first stage to produce formatted invoices.

This 2-staged approach allows greater customization of invoices:

 

Invoice Items

The output file(s) created by the first stage of the invoicing process contain a number of informational items for each invoice that may be used to customize the invoice. These items are:

Contact a client services representative at MSI for more information on developing a custom formatting program.

 

Cycle Invoices

This screen is used to select the lease or selection of leases to invoice.

 

This screen is used to enter the range of payment due days to invoice and the date to be printed on the invoice as Invoice Date.

The values in the START DAY and END DAY fields are initially defaulted to include all possible payment due days (1 through 31), but may be changed to produce a narrower range. If only leases with a particular payment due date are to be invoiced, both START DAY and END DAY may be set to the same value.

 

Cycle Invoices - Individual Invoice Billing Register

The Individual Invoice Billing Register [U0302C] reports at the lease level and provides the following invoice information for each individual lease invoiced:

 

Cycle Invoices - Group Invoice Billing Register

The Group Invoice Billing Register report [U0302E] reports at the group level and provides the following invoice information for each group invoiced:

 

Cycle Invoices - Invoice Exceptions

The Cycle Invoices Exception report [U0302A] reports at the group and individual lease level and provides messages for each group and/or individual lease that failed to invoice: