Sales Order > Advance Billing > Create Advance Billing

The Advance Billing function allows you to create an advanced bill for your customers prior to shipment of the inventory items in a sales order. Creating an advance bill will generate a document for the billed inventory items in a sales order; however, it is not a valid invoice until the billed items are shipped using the Ship SO function.

You can create multiple advance bills for an inventory item in a sales order. Each advance bill is treated as a separate invoice during shipment of the billed items.

To amend an advance bill, please see the discussion in the Amend Advance Billing topic.

Notes:

•Advance bills are numbered by the same numerical sequence as AR invoice numbers. You can set the invoice number sequence in the AR Module Setup function.

•Although advance bills share the same numerical sequence as AR invoices, you cannot print advance bills in the Print Invoice function until after the advanced billing is shipped.

To create an advance bill, perform the following steps:

1.Access the Advance Bill function from the Advance Billing group in the Transactions menu in the Sales Order module. Click the New button to create a new advance bill.

Note: If the Advance Bill function is accessed for the very first time and there are no existing advance bill records, the Create New screen is automatically displayed; otherwise, the Search screen is displayed. In the Search screen you can search and locate an existing advance bill.

2.In the SO # field, enter the number of the sales order for which you want to create an advance bill. Alternatively, you may click the List box button to display a list of sales order numbers with open items that are not yet completely billed; then, click a sales order number to select. Once you have entered a sales order number, the sales order details will be displayed in their respective fields.

3.In the Warehouse field, accept or amend the default warehouse code. You may click the Lookup button to search for the warehouse record that you want to use. Warehouse records display are those which are not restricted for you to use; then, click to select a warehouse.

Note: The line items that will be displayed on the grid will only be those coming from the warehouse entered in the Warehouse field above the Line Items grid.

4.Accept or amend the date entered in the Bill Date field. The default date is the current computer date.

5.In the Line Items page, enter the line items that you want to include in the advance bill. Also, enter other required information pertaining to the line items included in the advance bil. For more information, refer to the Line Items Page section.

6.Access the Attachments page to attach files, documents and URLs to this transaction record. Refer to the Attachment Page section for more information.

7.View or update the customer activities in the Activity page. Refer to the Activity Page section for more information.

8.When you are done entering the details for the advance bill, click the Save button in the function toolbar to proceed. In the Advance Billing save confirmation window that is displayed, perform the following steps:

•If the User Input (Numeric) option is selected in the AR Module Setup function, follow these steps:

8.1. Enter a number in the Advance Billing # field.

8.2. Click the Save button to save the transaction; otherwise, click the Cancel button.

Note: If the Automatic option is activated for Invoice Numbering in the AR Module Setup function, AccountMate will automatically provide an advance billing number in the Advance Billing # field, which follows the same number sequence as that of the sales invoices. Both the Save and Cancel buttons are also disabled.

9.When you have saved the transaction, you can choose to perform any of the following options:

oPreview

Click the Preview button if you want to view the advance bill before you print it.

oPrint

Click the Print button if you want to print the Proforma Invoice. Printing of this report, however, is subject to validation of the user's access right to this report.

oE-mail

Click this button if you want to send the report as an attachment to an email. Click the List box button to select the file format of the report that will be attached to the email.

oExport

Click the Export button if you want to export the report. Click the List box button to select the file format in which you want to export the report.

oNew

Click the New button to create another advance bill transaction.

oClose

Click this button to close the save window and close the transaction function screen. Alternatively, you may click the [X] button at the upper right corner of the save confirmation window.

Note: The Preview, Print and New buttons are enabled only if the user has the necessary access rights to these functions. To manage user access rights, use the Groups access rights function in the System Administrator module.

Q. Can I amend advance bills?

A. Yes, you can amend an advance billing as long as the items in the advance bill are not yet shipped. Refer to the Amend Advance Billing discussion for more details.

Create Advance Billing

Create Advance Billing

See Also