This module looks at Job Invoicing within Workbench.

OVERVIEW:

Workbench provides significant flexibility in invoicing with many different methods for the creation of Invoices. These methods can be used in the creation of External and Internal Invoices.

External Invoices are those that relate to an external customer and will be updated to the Accounts Receivable
System.

Internal Invoices are used where one selling job wishes to sell to another buying job within Workbench. The end result of this process is a revenue transaction on the selling job and a cost transaction on the buying job. A General Ledger Journal transaction is created to update the financials.

The External methods cover:

Quoted: Manual entry of a quoted value

Input Based: Commonly called Cost Plus or Charge Up. Allows billing of Purchase Orders in advance of receiving the Suppliers invoice

Output Based: Selling a specified Output Code at a rate agreed in a Contract Schedule

Input and Output Based: Allows a mix of Input Based billing and Output Based billing

Claim Schedule: Allows creation of Contract Progress Claims against a Contract Schedule. For this process the Contracts module is required

Note: A Job can be sold using the Claim Schedule method, or any mix of the other methods. Workbench uses the Header/ SubJob relationship to give the flexibility that is sometimes required to sell by more than one method.

The appropriate invoicing method (Charge Type and associated Billing Type) is selected under Job Maintenance. This determines the billing process to be followed.

To provide flexibility in the presentation of Invoice documents a range of standard invoice formats using Crystal Reports is provided. These can be customised as required.

INVOICING CONSIDERATIONS:

Workbench provides significant flexibility in invoicing with many different methods for the creation of Invoices. These methods can be used in the creation of External and Internal Invoices.

External Invoices are those that relate to an external customer and will be updated to the Accounts Receivable
System.

Internal Invoices are used where one selling job wishes to sell to another buying job within Workbench. The end result of this process is a revenue transaction on the selling job and a cost transaction on the buying job. A General Ledger Journal transaction is created to update the financials.

The External methods cover:

Quoted: Manual entry of a quoted value

Input Based: Commonly called Cost Plus or Charge Up. Allows billing of Purchase Orders in advance of receiving the Suppliers invoice

Output Based: Selling a specified Output Code at a rate agreed in a Contract Schedule

Input and Output Based: Allows a mix of Input Based billing and Output Based billing

Claim Schedule: Allows creation of Contract Progress Claims against a Contract Schedule. For this process the Contracts module is required

The appropriate invoicing method (Charge Type and associated Billing Type) is selected under Job Maintenance. This determines the billing process to be followed.

To provide flexibility in the presentation of Invoice documents a range of standard invoice formats using Crystal Reports is provided. These can be customised as required.

INVOICE PRINTING:

You can have an Invoice per job or a Consolidated Invoice for a number of jobs. This is all dictated by the selected Charge Type, and the Invoice format used for printing the invoice.

There is a wide range of invoices supplied as standard, with sample printouts for each.

These should be reviewed with your Support Consultant to arrive at the appropriate usage of the formats available.

CHARGE TYPES
Charge Types are used to determine the rules for invoicing of jobs. Default Charge Types are provided. These should be edited / added to once the user has an understanding of the billing processes to be used.

INVOICE TYPES
Invoice Types define the invoice print format options. Each job has a default Invoice Type allocated to it in Jobs Maintenance.

Standard formats are already set up in a new database, and can be edited as required.
Setup different Invoice Types selecting the appropriate predetermined invoice form for your requirements. The Crystal based invoice formats will need to first be setup in Reports Maintenance and also be in a Report Security Group belonging to the logged in user.

WORK CENTRES
Work Centre Codes are used to group the Activity Codes and Sales Codes data within jobs into logical phases/stages.

These codes can be generic across the entire system or be specifically maintained for individual Jobs as Job Work Centres.
Every Activity Code has a Work Centre that it defaults to. At time of data entry this default Work Centre can be over-ridden unless changes are disallowed in the Job Costing Control Parameters.

Usage of Work Centres:
You will have a Work Centre on each Activity Code which groups a number of activities together.

The most common and simplest groupings would be Labour, Purchases, Plant, Stock and Subcontractors
This may be extended say to types of labour, e.g. Design Services and Site Labour as groupings of different sets of Activities

Job Work Centres:
It is possible to customise the description of Work Centres, and to restrict their use to a limited list for a specific Job. You will have a range of standard Work Centres.

In the Job Work Centres screen you can select which Work Centres to use for this Job, and can change the Description on the Work Centre for use on this Job.
Where a Job has Job Work Centres, these are then the only Work Centres allowed on that Job. If there are no Job Work Centres defined, then all the standard Work Centres can be used on the Job.

Note that if the Control Parameter "No Change to Work Centres" is set to No then Work Centres cannot be edited during data entry.

Some typical uses of Job Work Centres would be:

Stages of a project: This gives estimates and costs on a critical path. It can be set up so that all ordering is controlled by the Work Centre critical path.
Special components of a job: It can be used as a further level of analysis below Jobs and Sub jobs.

SALES CODES
Sales Codes are predefined in the database provided, but can be changed or added to. At minimum GL Codes must be added for GL integration.

ACTIVITY CODES
Activity Codes are user defined cost codes used for recording and reporting job cost transactional data and are intended to describe the specific type of cost to facilitate effective job management and reporting. Activity Codes are required for all the different types of cost transaction used by Workbench such as: Time, Purchases, Sub Contracts, Retentions, Disbursements, Stock, Plant, Internals and Overheads.

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