The purpose of this help guide is to provide you with some recommended best practises surrounding Invoice Processing within your business.
Attachments
All invoices and credit notes that have supporting documentation should have a copy of the original saved within the 'Attachments' tab in Purchase Plus. This is key to ensure that no paper needs to be transported around the property and that no documents need to be physically archived.
In any document, go to the [Attachments] tab then click the [Green +] button to attach your files as seen below:
Flagged Invoice verification
There are several reasons an invoice can flag outside of price or quantity variances, such as:
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Goods that have been received on-site but not recorded within Purchase Plus
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No PO/unlinked PO
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Unlinked line items
Goods that have been received on-site but not recorded within Purchase Plus
No PO/unlinked PO
Unlinked line items
Before any flagged invoice is approved, you should:
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Check for an unmatched PO number in the PDF attachment, manually link it if the PO number is cited or create a retrospective PO
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Check that the goods have been received correctly (amount received matching the amount ordered etc)
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Check for unlinked line items
Check for an unmatched PO number in the PDF attachment, manually link it if the PO number is cited or create a retrospective PO
Check that the goods have been received correctly (amount received matching the amount ordered etc)
Check for unlinked line items
Note: If your invoice is for a contracted service such as electricity, telephone etc, then none of the above applies.
Invoice Approvers
Although anyone can be set up as Operational and Financial approvers, we recommend Heads of Departments are set as Operational Approvers and a member of the Finance team is set as a Financial Approver.
Invoice Approval acts as a digital signature, removing the need for a physically signed paper invoice.
Click here for instructions on how to set up Flagged Invoice Approvers
Invoice Approval
Operational Approval:
Invoices can be approved line by line using the [Blue tick] in the [Flagged invoice lines] tab (as seen below). This screen will highlight any price or quantity discrepancies as long as the invoice has a PO linked (refer to the 'Flagged Invoice verification' section above).
Note: If PO or Invoice lines are unlinked, the PO unit value will be blank and Quantity received will display 0.
For entire invoice document approval, use the blue [Approve] button in the [Flagged] tab in [Documents] [Invoices] screen.
Financial Approval:
Financial approval is given using the blue [Approve] button in the [Flagged] tab in [Documents] [Invoices] screen.
Recommended best practise is that invoices should not receive Financial Approval before Operational Approval is granted to ensure that any discrepancies are identified by the teams that have placed the order.
Note: For ease of filtering invoices that have been received and already Operationally approved, you should use the check-box filters.
Invoice Issues
If there are any outstanding issues with an invoice or a credit note, you can use the [Park] function by clicking the yellow [Park] button in the bottom right of any Invoice. This means that you cannot accidentally process the invoice before your concerns have been addressed.
Once any concerns are addressed and the Invoice is ready for processing, click the [Reopen] button in the bottom right of the Invoice screen
Note: You can use the comments tab to keep track of any communication regarding invoice discrepancies.
Purchase Plus & AP System Reconciliation
We recommend reconciling your processed Invoices from Purchase Plus with your Accounts Payable system.
In [Dashboards] [Snapshots] run the [Accrual] report using the 'processed at' as the [Date search field.] This will give you a report of all invoices processed out of Purchase Plus within the given date range. You should then run an equivalent report from your AP system to reconcile both.
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