Invoice Management

Invoices are created by posting XML messages to the Comergent eBusiness System. See the Comergent eBusiness System Implementation Guide for information on how this can be implemented. CHAPTER 34, Invoice Administration covers all the enterprise tasks associated with invoice management and Invoice Administration by Partners covers all the partner tasks associated with invoices.

Each invoice may or may not be associated to an existing order in the Comergent eBusiness System. If there is an associated order, then users can view the invoice from the order page and can navigate to the order from the invoice (if their entitlements permit this: see Access to Invoices).

A single order can have more than one associated invoice: for example, the enterprise may generate one invoice for each line item in an order.

Two groups of users work most closely with invoices:

• Financials enterprise employees: these users work for the enterprise and are responsible for ensuring that invoices are paid by their customers and that disputes regarding invoices are handled quickly. These users can view and modify all invoices in the Comergent eBusiness System. Typically, these users are referred to as accounts receivable users.
• Financials customer employees: these users work for partners of the enterprise and are responsible for ensuring that invoices are paid by the customers and to initiate any disputes regarding the payment of invoices. These users can view and modify all invoices owned by users that belong to their partner. Typically, these users are referred to as accounts payable users.

Invoice Statuses

Each line item of an invoice has two statuses: these reflect the status of the line item as viewed by the customer and enterprise.

TABLE 4. Invoice Line Item Statuses 

Customer Status	Enterprise Status
New	New
Paid	Payment Received
Disputed	Disputed

In addition, the invoice as a whole has a status: it provides a summary of the line item statuses as follows:

TABLE 5. Invoice Status

Invoice Status	Combination
	Customer Status	Enterprise Status
New	New	New
Partially Paid	Paid, but not for all lines	Payment Received, but not for all lines
Paid	Paid for all lines	Any
Disputed	Disputed on at least one line	Any

Access to Invoices

When an invoice is created in the Comergent eBusiness System, it may be viewed by appropriate users of both customers and the enterprise as described in this section.

Invoice Ownership

• If an invoice is associated with an order in the Comergent eBusiness System, then ownership of the invoice is inferred from the associated order.
• If the invoice is not associated with an order, then the owner of the invoice is set to the user key of the ERPAdministrator user (used to authenticate the inbound post). As a result, enterprise Financials employees can view and modify the invoice, but no customer users can view or modify the invoice.

Viewing and Modifying Invoices

The owner of an invoice can always view an invoice.

• Financials employees of the customer may view an invoice to verify or modify its customer status at the enterprise or to contest some aspect of its payment.

Financials employees of the enterprise may view any invoice for any customer to verify or modify its enterprise status or customer status.

Credit and Debit Memos

You can associate memos with invoices: these are financial adjustments to invoices. Typically, you use these to record changes made to invoices as a result of negotiations made between invoice parties (the enterprise and the partner to whom the invoice has been submitted).

A credit memo is used to reduce the amount owed on an invoice whereas a debit memo is used to increase the amount owed. See Memo Administration for more information on the tasks associated with invoice memos.

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