Changes to the Purchase Orders and Accounts Payable (2016.06)

Purchase Order and Account Payable Screens within a job

Setting the bank account from which to pay an invoice

You may now specify the bank account from which a Purchase Order (“PO”) and Accounts Payable (“AP”) is to be paid from.  If a PO is created with the bank account set, any corresponding invoices will preserve the same pay from account.

This allows you to set ahead of time the bank account from which you intend to make payment.

You do not have to specify the default bank account here. This bank account only needs to be specified if the bank account will be different to the job’s default bank account.

Switching between AP and PO register

The Purchase Order (“PO”) and Accounts Payable (“AP”) registers now contain a tab which allows you to switch between the AP and PO register without exiting the form.  Switching does not change the currently applied filers and selections.

Purchase Order filter changes

The PO filters now can be switched between “PO Number” and “Trans ID” (transaction ID)
 

Accounts Payable filter changes

The AP filter now also be switched between “Due From” to “Create From” by way of a combo selection next to the date fields, to allow for easy filtering of recently created AP’s:

A similar filter is available to enable filtering against either ‘Invoice No’ or ‘Trans ID’, as required:

You can search by using part of the invoice number. Entering the first few digit/letters of the invoice will bring up all invoices matching that search. EG Inv 123456, 123789. Entering 123 will bring up both invoices. To search for example using the last few digits/letters of an invoice enter the search query beinging with %. EG %789 will return the invoice 123789. 

Payment Selection Tools

The Accounts Payable register now has a tab which allows you to select invoices for payment based on age and available funds:


The invoices shown in the register will be based on the currently applied filters, i.e. practice, job, supplier and date etc.  The options are as follows:

1 <All invoices due for payment 

Select all AP entries where the due date of the AP is less than or equal to the current date.

2 <All invoices >= n days  

Select all invoices where the due date of the invoice is greater than or equal to the specified number of days.

3 <Override bank account saved in invoice and pay from: Cash at Bank

Select this option to override the bank account selected to pay from in the purchase order or the Invoice. If this is ticked funds in the default bank account will be utilised.

4 <Cleared / uncleared funds

Use the bank account ledger balance, excluding any unposted payments, in the available funds calculation. 

If you also want to take into account unposted receipts into account, then tick the ‘Inc. unposted receipts’ checkbox.

5 <Apply overdraft limits

Ticking this option will take any bank overdraft limits into account when calculating available funds. 

Overdraft expiry dates are taken into account when this checkbox is selected.

6 Once you have selected the required options, click “Select Invoices for payment based on Available funds”.  The system will then calculate which invoices can be paid based on available funds.

A progress bar will be shown in the centre of the screen.  Once that has completed, the rows which agree with the selection criteria have the amount and bank details entered.  The total number of invoices is displayed in the ‘Selected for payment’ tab:

The selection criteria or the selected AP entries may be changed at this point.  If the selection criteria are changed and the ‘Select invoices …’ button is clicked again, you will be asked to confirm that the previously selected invoices will be removed.

To clear the selected invoices, click on the ‘Selected for payment’ tab and select ‘Clear List’.

You should note that the number of rows shown in the register will not change once the “select invoices …” button is clicked: only rows where it is possible to make a payment against supplier invoices will have a value entered in the ‘Pay Now’ column.

Credit notes will be selected where

• there is an associated invoice which can also be paid, or
• there are non-associated invoices, but the value of payments exceed the value of any credit notes (i.e., there is a net payment due to the supplier).

Single credit notes will not be selected for payment (which would amount to a ‘negative payment’ which is not permitted by the system).

Invoice selection methodology

The system will select the oldest outstanding invoice first and if funds are available, select it for payment, deduct the allocated amount from available funds and proceed to the next AP and repeat the process until either no more AP’s are available for selection, or no further funds are available. 

Part payments of invoices are not automatically calculated but, once the automatic selection has been made, manual amendments can be made.

This enhancement should make it a lot easier to select invoices for payment based on what funds are available, rather than the previous manual selection method, which could fail subsequent validation due to, in most cases, a lack of funds.

If the default bank account is configured in the Job, then the AP displays in the AP register as follows.  The account is displayed but you still have to tick the invoice for payment.

The Paid from account only applies to invoicing from the PO register or invoice payment through the AP register.  The make supplier payment function cannot cater for this as you may pay multiple invoices from one account only and, although make supplier payment can still be used, it will not enforce the Paid From account selected in the invoice

Pay multiple Accounts Payable invoices from multiple bank accounts.

This is a significant change as previously in a job you could only pay AP’s from the currently selected bank account.  Now you can select an option to pay from Saved / Default account.


When this option is selected, ticking an AP with a Paid from account specified will select it for payment from the Paid from account.  Ticking an AP without a Paid from account nominated will select the default account for payment.

Alternatively you can specify another account for payment:

If this account is set, the functionality is the same as previously described, in that ticking an AP with a Paid from account specified will select it for payment from the Paid from account, except ticking an AP without a Paid from account set will use the selected account (Bank 2 in this example) for payment not the default bank account.

All the above means that you can now manually select AP’s for payment from multiple bank accounts in one go (or one batch).

Credit Notes

Credit notes can now be linked directly to an invoice.  This can be done by either right-clicking an AP entry in the register or by going into an AP and clicking the ‘Credit Note’ button. 

Standalone credit notes can still be created as before.

A linked credit note now displays grouped with its parent invoice in the AP register:

Points to note:

<Selecting the parent AP for payment will also automatically select the child CN’s.

<You can untick a child CN from payment if you want

<The CN’s invoice date, due date, age and PF account (if specified) are inherited from the parent AP.

Improved validation

Apart from the available funds validation mentioned previously, all AP register validation now has a separate column which displays the validation icon.

If the user mouse overs the validation icon, the validation error message will be displayed in a blue popup.  For example, in the screenshot below the old EFT validation where AP’s were greyed out where EFT details were entered now has an icon next to each supplier without EFT.

The same validation paradigm is applied wherever an action is performed and something fails the validation test.

Supplier terms

The counterparty record now contains details of the supplier terms.  Any AP created for that supplier will automatically use the term in calculating the invoice due date.

Users will need Counterparty administrator permissions to edit these fields.

Available funds display

Making a payment via the cashbook, MSP, journal, now displays the available funds taking into account (any) overdraft limits, unposted receipts and payments.

If an overdraft limit is specified and the transaction will exceed the overdraft, you receive a red warning icon, otherwise the available funds display turns red.

If you proceed with the payment and click Pay Now the warning will be repeated

Improved overdraft limit display

The account properties screen now displays more information regarding the current overdraft:

As previously mentioned all available funds calculations now take into account overdraft expiry dates.

The batch approval view now takes into account available funds and displays an enhanced warning.

Purchase Orders and Account Payables from the Practice

Payment of Accounts Payable invoices from the Practice using Available Funds