Invoices
Contents
- 1 Before You Start
- 2 Where You Are At In The Process
- 3 What is an Invoice
- 4 Invoice Status
- 5 Manually Close Invoices
- 6 Preview Invoices
- 7 Invoice Integrity
- 8 Invoice Naming Convention
- 9 Invoice Number
- 10 Invoice Dates
- 11 Invoice Line Items
- 12 Invoice Groupings
- 13 Reprocessing an Invoice
- 14 Rounding
- 15 Emailing Invoices
- 16 Related
Before You Start
Where You Are At In The Process
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What is an Invoice
An invoice, bill or tab is a commercial document issued by a seller (you) to a buyer (the client), relating to a sale transaction and indicating the products or service, quantities, and agreed prices the seller had provided the buyer.
All invoices generated (Open, Closed and Failed) are displayed here. If an invoice does not reflect, it means the billing process is not complete (Refer to "Billing Processing").
Invoice Status
- Open
These invoices are Pro-forma invoices and have not been posted to your accounting system. These invoices can be reversed and billing records deleted, invoice template changes made, client information changes made, product and pricing changes made as well as tenant detail changes made before reprocessing this invoice and finalising it. - Closed
- These invoices have been posted to your accounting system and contain an invoice number as returned from the accounting system. These invoices can also contain a [rounding] figure as calculated after posting this invoice to the accounting system. It is recommended that a closed invoice not be reversed as it will not generate a credit note in the accounting system.
- This could also be a manually closed invoice in which case the invoice remains in a proforma state and will not contain an invoice number.
- Failed
These invoices have failed to post to the accounting system. Refer to [Error Resolution] to resolve the failure. These invoices can be opened to repost to the accounting system. These invoices can also be reversed and billing records deleted, invoice template changes made, client information changes made, product and pricing changes made as well as tenant detail changes made before reprocessing this invoice and finalising it. - Credited
These invoices have been posted to the accounting system and then reversed. A matching Credit Note can be found under Invoices, Credit Notes.
Manually Close Invoices
Invoices are usually closed when invoices are [posted to the accounting system]. Should you not wish to post a specific invoice, you could manually close the invoice by selecting the invoice and actions, close selected. The [status] will be updated to Closed, but the invoice will remain a proforma invoice without an invoice number.
Preview Invoices
All invoices (Open, Closed, Credited and Failed) can be [| viewed online] or [| downloaded] in PDF format.
When viewing the invoice online, it allows you or your client to expand the line items to view the underlying billing data relating to the line item. The Record ID of your billing record is displayed to your client when expanding the line item.
Invoice Too Large
This would occur if the invoice contains more than 1,000,000 transactions (not line items). The viewer then has the option to download a usage report containing the transactions relating to the invoice.
Internal Server Error When Selecting "View Online" Of an Invoice
This would occur when the "View Online" of an invoice PDF is selected, but the invoice has been reversed and the invoice no longer exists in Varibill.
View Invoice Online
Your customer will receive a PDF invoice via [email] which will contain a link that will allow them to view itemised billing per line item. The look and feel of this link depend on how the View Online Icon is set up under Admin, [Document Template]. Once the invoice opened in the user's browser they can select the + sign to expand line items, or the – to collapse line items. Once the line item is expanded the user can view the transactions that made up the line item.
Download Invoices
Invoices can be downloaded in PDF format. The naming convention of the PDF depends on your setup of the File Naming Convention under Admin, [Document Template].
Invoices can be downloaded individually by selecting the download icon next to the specific invoice.
Invoices can also be download in bulk by selecting the invoices and Actions, Download Selected. An email will be sent to your registered email address once it has completed. The download will be available for up to 24 hours after the request has been submitted. If this period lapsed, then a new request would need to be submitted by following the same steps described. The user requesting the download will be able to log in where after a zip file containing the downloaded PDFs will be generated.
Invoice Integrity
Varibill takes a snapshot of your Tenant Details, the clients' details, pricing, products, billing data, etc. when generating the invoice. This ensures that previously generated invoices are not updated when changes are made on Varibill.
Invoice Naming Convention
The Invoice PDF name is determined by the File Naming Convection of the Invoice Template. This can be easily changed by updating the Invoice Template.
Invoice Number
If an invoice does not contain an invoice number, the invoice has not yet been posted to your accounting system, or the posting of this invoice failed.(See [Error Resolution]
You can run the accounting connector to post your invoices to the accounting system. ([Post to the accounting system)]
Varibill receives the invoice number from the accounting system once the invoice has been posted.
Invoice Dates
Invoice Date This depends on the [billing cycle] configuration of the invoice date.
| Option | What It Means | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Billed Cycle End Date | What you have known to date – last day of the billing cycle is the invoice date. | Cycle = 24-09-2019 to 25-10-2019
Billed Cycle End Date = 25-10-2019 Invoice Date = 25-10-2019 |
| Processing Day | The date on which invoices are processed is the invoice date. | Cycle = 24-09-2019 to 25-10-2019
Invoices processed on 28-10-2019 Invoice Date = 28-10-2019 |
| Calculated Invoice Date | The billing cycle day plus or minus an amount of days is the invoice date. | Cycle = 24-09-2019 to 25-10-2019
Offset = 2 Invoice Date = 27-10-2019 OR Cycle = 24-09-2019 to 25-10-2019 Offset = -3 Invoice Date = 22-10-2019 |
| Specific Day | The first occurrence of the specified date after billing cycle start date is the invoice date. | Cycle = 24-09-2019 to 25-10-2019
Billed Cycle Start Date = 24-09-2019 Specific Day = 3 Invoice Date = 03-10-2019 |
Due Date - Is calculated using the Invoice Date plus the payment terms of the contracts for which this invoice was generated. E.g. If invoice date = 30-11-yyyy and payment terms = 30 days, then due date = 30-12-yyyy.
Line Item Date - See Invoice Line Items (below).
Invoice Line Items
How is My Line Item Determined?
- A line item is displayed:
- Per Product
- Per Period,
Multiple line items for the same product, but differing dates indicate broken periods. This will occur if a product is set to Average, Discrete, or Maximum and was provisioned later in the billing cycle, or ended earlier and was therefore not provisioned for the entire billing cycle. This could also occur where a product was upgraded or downgraded during the billing cycle.
- If the products' billing principle is set to Average, Discrete, or Maximum, Varibill will determine the first- and the last date on which a billing record was collected and display the line item based on these dates. Varibill will automatically assume that the record was seen up to the end of a billing cycle if the record was collected in the next billing cycle and was collected at the point in time that the billing validation was performed. Varibill will similarly assume that the record was seen from the start of the billing cycle if the record was collected in the previous billing cycle and another record was collected later on in the billing cycle or a next billing cycle (that has been validated already). </p>
If the products' billing principle, for which the line item is generated, is set to Cumulative or Delta, Varibill will always display a full billing cycle irrespective of the dates on which the billing records were collected.
- Per Price Applicable,
An additional line item for the same product could also be displayed where a price increase/decrease occurred during the billing cycle, which will create a new line item for each new rate applicable.
How Is My Line Item Quantity Calculated?
In Advance
- The quantity of the [contract service] determines the quantity of the in advance line item.
In Arrears
- Varibill calculates the quantity per record (transaction) as explained below, and then sums the quantities of all transactions per [line item], to determine the quantity of the line item.
Collected Quantities Determined -> Billing Principle of Product applied -> Conversion Rule of Product applied -> Rounding Option of Product applied
- Product Billing Principle = "Average"
The average quantity of each record of a specific product for the specific period is calculated. This is done by summing all quantities collected, divided by the count of records collected. This quantity is then converted based on the conversion rule of the product. If your rate is in Mb, but your data is collected in Kb, Varibill will convert the average quantity to Mb's. Rounding is then done based on the rounding option and decimal selected for the product.
*The example is based on a full calendar month. Calculation: Sum all quantities (138.80), multiplied by the days on which records were seen in the billing period (23). Day 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Line Item Quantity Collected Quantities 5.00 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.20 6.20 6.20 6.20 7.00 7.00 7.00 7.00 7.00 6.03
Product Billing Principle = "Cumulative"
The billing records' quantities related to a product, for a specific period is summed. This quantity is then converted based on the conversion rule of the product. If your rate is in Mb, but your data is collected in Kb, Varibill will convert the average quantity to Mb's. Rounding is then done based on the rounding option and decimal selected for the product.
*The example is based on a full calendar month. Calculation: Sum all quantities (138.80) for the billing period. Day 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Line Item Quantity Collected Quantities 5.00 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.20 6.20 6.20 6.20 7.00 7.00 7.00 7.00 7.00 138.80
Product Billing Principle = "Delta"
The billing records' quantities for a specific product is calculated by determining the accumulated usage at the end of the period and subtracting the accumulated usage at the beginning of the period. This quantity is then converted based on the conversion rule of the product. If your rate is in Mb, but your data is collected in Kb, Varibill will convert the average quantity to Mb's. Rounding is then done based on the rounding option and decimal selected for the product.
*The example is based on a full calendar month. Calculation: The delta (difference) in quantity between each day collected is calculated and then summed. Example: (Day 12 less Day 11) 6.00 - 5.50 = 0.50 Day 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Line Item Quantity Collected Quantities 5.00 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.20 6.20 6.20 6.20 7.00 7.00 7.00 7.00 7.00 Delta Calculated 0.00 0.50 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.50 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.20 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.80 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 2.00
Product Billing Principle = "Discrete"
The maximum quantity of each record, per day, of a specific product is determined. This quantity is then converted based on the conversion rule of the product. If your rate is in Mb, but your data is collected in Kb, Varibill will convert the average quantity to Mb's. Rounding is then done based on the rounding option and decimal selected for the product.
*The example is based on a full calendar month. Calculation: Sum all quantities (138.80) based on a maximum quantity collected, per day. Day 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Line Item Quantity Collected Quantities 5.00 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.20 6.20 6.20 6.20 7.00 7.00 7.00 7.00 7.00 Day 1 - Day 1: 5
Day 2 - Day 11: 5.5
Day 12 - Day 18: 6
Day 19 - Day 24: 6.2
Day 25 - Day 31: 7
- Product Billing Principle = "Maximum"
The maximum quantity of each record of a specific product is determined for the period. This quantity is then converted based on the conversion rule of the product. If your rate is in Mb, but your data is collected in Kb, Varibill will convert the average quantity to Mb's. Rounding is then done based on the rounding option and decimal selected for the product.
*The example is based on a full calendar month. Calculation: The maximum quantity collected for the billing period Day 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Line Item Quantity Collected Quantities 5.00 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.20 6.20 6.20 6.20 7.00 7.00 7.00 7.00 7.00 7.00
In Arrears Over-Usage
- If an In Advance [contract service item] has been set up to bill over-usage, then the actual [in arrears] usage that has been collected from the [provisioning source] for the same period is compared to the in advance billing line item of that same period. Should the actual usage be for a longer period than the contract service or the quantity be greater than the contract service, then over-usage will be charged.
How Is My Line Item Total Calculated?
- Varibill calculates the total, per transaction, and then sums the totals of all transactions, applicable to a [line item], to determine the line item total.
- If proration is active for a product, then Varibill will calculate a pro-rated rate based on the amount of days that the record was seen during the billing period. This is done by dividing the selling price or contract price by the amount of days of the billing cycle, multiplied by the amount of days of the line item. If proration is NOT active for the product, and usage occurred during the cycle, then the usage will be billed for a full billing cycle.
- Example
- Billing cycle is 25 Dec to 24 Jan. This means the cycle is 31 days long (including both the start date and the end date of the cycle)
- Full Period Price (Selling or Contract Price) = R124. This means the total to be billed per day is R4 (R124 / 31 days of the cycle)
- Records seen 27 Dec to 05 Jan. This means the records were seen for 10 days during the cycle.
- The total unit price for the line item is R40 (R4 * 10 days that the records were seen)
- The quantity of each record (transaction) of a specific product is multiplied by the selling price (unit price) or, where applicable, the contract price (unit price) to calculate the transaction value. Mathematical rounding is applied when calculating the transaction value, line item value and total invoice value will and always be rounded to two decimals (i.e. the third decimal is used to determine what the second decimal should be).
Invoice Groupings
Invoice groups allow you to group usage by a defined group. This group could represent a specific area, branch, sub-client, etc. A client can be set up to process invoices with groupings, without grouping, per grouping or per contract. When the client is set up to process invoices with defined groups, multiple invoice groups can be specified. Once the invoice group has been captured, one / more contracts can be allocated to this group. The invoice group name will be displayed on the clients' invoice and contracts allocated to this group grouped together and sub-totalled.
| Consolidated invoice with no defined groups | Consolidated invoice with defined groups | Invoice per defined group | Invoice per contract |
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Reprocessing an Invoice
Should you wish to re-post a "Failed" invoice to the accounting system without regenerating the invoice, select the invoice/s, followed by "Actions" and "Open Selected". This allows you to run your accounting connector again in order to post the selected invoice/s to your accounting system.
Should you wish to regenerate an Open or Failed invoice, this invoice needs to be reversed. To reverse an invoice, select the invoice/s, followed by "Actions" and "Reverse Selected". By reversing invoices, all selected invoices, not the underlying billing data, are deleted. This allows you to correct any setup-related errors and delete billing records you don't wish to invoice for and re-run your billing.
Should you wish to regenerate a Closed invoice, this invoice needs to be reversed. This will generate a Credit Note for the invoice. The status of the invoice is then updated to Credited. Additional actions will become available on these credited invoices (Rebill Credited Invoice and Reinstate Credited Invoice).
- Rebill Credited Invoice
This option allows you to rebill all the billing data related to the invoice. The billing records for the selected invoice will be updated to pending and made available for reprocessing for the applicable billing cycle. This action is irreversible and the records would need to be deleted manually should you not wish to reprocess them.
- Reinstate Credited Invoice
The invoice will be reinstated to a Closed status and related Open credit notes will be reversed.
Rounding
Varibill may calculate transaction, line item or document totals in ways that are slightly different from other applications. No one approach is correct (or incorrect). What is important, is that the approach selected is consistently applied.
Because of this, a rounding figure may in some cases be displayed on invoices processed. This is the case if the [Invoice Template] has been set up to display rounding and will appear if rounding has been calculated for the specific invoice.
When invoices are processed, Varibill provides a rate per line item to the accounting system (This depends on what the accounting system accepts via their API - explained in more detail [here]. The accounting system then calculates the totals for the invoice and in some instances recalculates the line item totals. Varibill compares the invoice total excl. VAT calculated by the accounting system with the invoice total excl. VAT calculated by Varibill. The difference is displayed as a rounding figure on the invoice. This is done to ensure the invoice total displayed on the customers' accounting system statement and accounting system invoice matches the invoice value in Varibill.
Example
Varibill Pro-Forma Invoice Line Item Quantity Unit Rate Total excl Tax Line 1 18.52 1.02 18.89 Line 2 116.42 0.38 44.25 Line 3 5.13 1.02 5.23 Total excl Tax 68.37
Accounting System Invoice Line Item Quantity Unit Rate Total excl Tax Total incl Tax Line 1 18.52 1.02 18.89 21.53 Line 2 116.42 0.38 44.25 50.44 Line 3 5.13 1.02 5.23 5.96 Total incl Tax 68.36 Total Tax 9.57 Total incl Tax 77.93
The Accounting System in this example calculated the total inclusive of Tax per line item. Thereafter the Total including Tax is calculated as a sum of all line items including Tax. Based on the Total including Tax, the total excluding Tax is calculated and the difference as total Tax.
Varibill Final Invoice Line Item Quantity Unit Rate Total excl Tax Line 1 18.52 1.02 18.89 Line 2 116.42 0.38 44.25 Line 3 5.13 1.02 5.23 Rounding Difference -0.01 Total incl Tax 68.36 Total Tax 9.57 Total incl Tax 77.93
The Accounting System returned "Total Excluding Tax", "Total Tax" and "Total Including Tax" is displayed on the final Varibill invoice. The "Total excluding Tax" calculated by Varibill is subtracted from the "Total excluding Tax" returned by the Accounting System to calculate the "Rounding Difference". This is displayed as a line item to ensure the sum of all line items equal the "Total excluding Tax" displayed.
The difference is usually due to:
- The step at which the accounting system calculates Tax - per line item or per total invoice value,
- The step at which the accounting system performs rounding - per line item or for the total invoice value,
- The decimal point (number of digits after the decimal symbol) used by the accounting system when rounding figures,
- The decimal indicator/symbol of the server, and user, from which the Accounting Connector was run (Number and Currency regional settings) differ from the accounting system decimal symbol.
- Examples of various scenarios which result in different outcomes
Tax calculated for the total invoice Description excl Tax Line 1 14.25 Line 2 25.26 Total Excl Tax 39.51 Total Tax (@10%) 3.95 Total Incl Tax 43.46
Tax calculated per line item Description excl Tax Tax (@10%) Rounded Tax (to two decimals - Mathematical Rounding) Total Incl Tax Line 1 14.25 1.425 1.43 15.68 Line 2 25.26 2.526 2.53 27.79 Total 39.51 3.96 43.47
Tax calculated per line item Description excl Tax Tax (@10%) Rounded Tax (to two decimals - Rounding Down) Total Incl Tax Line 1 14.25 1.425 1.42 15.67 Line 2 25.26 2.526 2.52 27.78 Total 39.51 3.94 43.45
Tax calculated per line item Description excl Tax Tax (@10%) Rounded Tax (to one decimal - Mathematical Rounding) Total Incl Tax Line 1 14.25 1.425 1.4 15.65 Line 2 25.26 2.526 2.5 27.76 Total 39.51 3.90 43.44
Tax calculated per line item Description excl Tax Tax (@10%) Rounded Tax (to two decimal - Bankers Rounding) Total Incl Tax Line 1 14.25 1.425 1.42 15.67 Line 2 25.26 2.526 2.53 27.79 Total 39.51 3.95 43.46
Emailing Invoices
All invoices can be emailed to your clients by selecting the invoice/s, followed by "Actions" and "Email Selected". The Last Email Date is populated once the specific invoice is emailed and will be populated from 06/08/2019.
Documents (Invoices or Credit Notes) are sent from the "Billing From" email address specified on Tenant Details to the client’s finance contact person(s) specified on the [[manage_clients|Client's] details. They will receive an email containing a PDF. This PDF can be viewed online and allows the client to drill down to view the records (transactions) making up the line item. This also enables the client to save the invoice or credit note in different formats.
The finance contact person’s contact details can be edited using the “Clients” screen. You can send an invoice or credit note to a recipient other than the finance contact person by temporarily changing the recipients’ information when you’ve selected to send the invoice/credit note.
The email template can be edited using the Email Template screen.
