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Invoicing Workflow

Now, let’s look at the invoicing workflow.

1. Invoices can be created manually (either from scratch or from a PO or POL), from an Excel file uploaded into Alma, or loaded as an automatic data load, or EDI
2. Invoices go through a system validation and review (if there is any missing or inaccurate data) after creation
3. There is also a step for staff review, and manual or automatic approval.
4. Then, finally, the invoice is paid.
5. Once the invoice is paid, Alma automatically marks it as Closed.

Again, there are many similarities between creating invoices for one-time and continuous materials. We’ll use a one-time order to show the general process, and look more closely at specifics in the Continuous Materials segment of this module.

Creating an Invoice Manually

To create an invoice:

1. Go to Acquisitions >> Create Invoice
2. Choose how you want to create the invoice:
   1. Manually: you manually input all of the information
   2. From PO: you can create an invoice for all items on a purchase order (PO); Alma will use the information from the PO to automatically fill in many of the fields on the invoice, saving you time and preventing transcription errors.
   3. From File: these are EDI Invoice loads, and will be managed by the Dataloads team
   4. Note the Handle Receiving ticky box. If you mark this box, Alma will seamlessly move on to the receiving process after the invoice is created. See the preceding video on Receiving for more about this.
   5. Let’s go through a Manual invoice creation process, so you see all the steps involved. Click the button next to Manually, then click Next.
   6. This is the Invoice Details page. Fields marked with a red asterisk are required by Alma to be successful; other fields may be required by Harvard as well. See the Invoicing documentation on the wiki for a list of all fields and whether they’re required or not.
      1. Many of these required fields are what will be autofilled by creating an invoice From PO.
      2. A few critical changes you need to make:
         1. Owner: This defaults to Harvard University and must be manually changed to the PO Owner. Finance will not accept invoices that have incorrect information in this field.
         2. Payment Method: Choose from the drop-down
            1. Accounting Department: for regular invoices that will be sent to Finance for approval through the automated feed
            2. Adjustment: use this method for Adjustment invoices, such as Pcard purchases, approval plans, or any invoice that will be sent to Accounts Payable via the staff Oracle Financials interface
            3. Wire Transfers: use this for wire transfer payments
3. Once you’ve entered all the necessary details, click on Save and Create Invoice Lines.
4. Now, you’ll add all of the separate invoice lines for this invoice.
   1. If there’s only one item on the invoice, you’ll add that one item as an invoice line here. If there are multiple items on the invoice, add them all here as separate invoice lines.
   2. First, click on Add invoice line
   3. Choose the type of invoice line payment this will be:
      1. Regular is the cost of each item.
      2. Shipment is the shipping costs.
      3. Use the other types if needed
5. If your item has a POL, use the PO line field to search for it by POL number or by clicking on the menu icon to find via the vendor information
6. Add additional information as needed, such as the Price, Quantity, or Reporting codes, any Notes we might want to add, then click on the Fund to add the fund.
7. If you want to add another invoice line for another item, click Add and it will re-open this box to add another invoice line.
8. If this is the only invoice line on the invoice, click Add and close.
9. If there isn’t enough money for executing the desired transaction, Alma will let you know and you can choose a different fund. (I’ll delete my other fund.) Now click Add and close and the invoice line was added.
10. If I had shipment costs, I could simply click on the Shipment line and edit that. You can ignore any other blank invoice lines like these that Alma has helpfully added for you in case you need them.
11. Before you click on Save and continue when you’re done, return to the Summary tab because there, you can make sure that the total invoice lines amount equals the total amount. If these two are different, this would be an alert that Alma will put on this invoice and it will need to be In Review.
12. If the totals match, click on Save and continue

If your invoice was successfully submitted, you’ll go straight to the Waiting for approval invoices list. The invoice you just finished should be on the Unassigned tab; these invoices are awaiting approval by Finance. You can find your invoice by limiting using the facets on the left or by searching by invoice number.

If your invoice was not successful, you’ll go to the In Review Invoices screen with your invoice at the top of the list. This means there were errors on your invoice; you must correct these errors and resubmit by clicking on Save and continue.

Creating an Invoice From PO

The process for creating an invoice from a PO is the same, except that you’ll skip the first Invoice Details page and move straight to adding or editing Invoice lines, and the POLs on that PO will be there already.

So, if I go back to Acquisitions >> Create invoice >> From PO, then I would click Next, type or paste in the PO number, and proceed with editing invoice lines.

As I mentioned, the most relevant information will be automatically added by Alma from the PO (including the correct Invoice Owner), but again, there are a few critical changes:

• The default Invoice number will be the PO number. You will need to manually change that on the Summary tab to the actual vendor invoice number.
• You may need to add Fund information for some invoice lines, if these weren’t identified during the ordering process.
• You can leave the Discount, Insurance, and Overhead invoice lines at zero, unless you have information to add there.

When you’re finished updating the invoice, you’d click on Save and continue and proceed as you did with the Manual creation.

Receiving EDI Invoices

Finally, there are EDI invoices, which you may need to receive. If a vendor is set up to send EDI invoices, these invoices will load with an In Review status.

There are two ways to find your EDI Invoice:

1. Go to Acquisitions and Review under Receiving and Invoicing
1. Click on the Unassigned tab
2. Use the facets on the left, the internal search at the top, or sort by the different column headers to find the invoice you want, based on what you know about it.
1. All the EDI invoices will have EDIteur Invoice Message in the Creation from column. That’s one way to know. You can find that under Source = EDIteur Invoice message and limit the list to just these invoices.
3. Once you find the invoice in the list, choose Edit from the row action item list and proceed as before.
2. You can also get to this list by doing a search in the search bar:
1. Use the Invoices search type and then something like Vendor name to search on.
2. Now, you can use the facets on the left to limit it to the invoice types that you’re looking for. For Amalivre, I would look for the 16 In Review invoices, and of those, 14 are EDI invoice loads. Now I can quickly look for the one that I need.
3. Once you find your invoice, go to the row action item list and choose Go to task list
4. This will open the Unassigned tab of the In Review Invoices list, with just your invoice on it
5. Go to the row action item list there and choose Edit to update the invoice.
6. Click on Save or Save and continue as we saw earlier.
7. Please note that once you choose Edit, the invoice will become Assigned to you, and you can find it on the Assigned to me tab of the In Review listuntil you complete it.

A few things to note about EDI invoices:

There is no option to Handle receiving as part of the invoice process; however, you can simply call up the POLs on the EDI invoice in the Received items list by entering the invoice number, and that way you can receive them all at the same time.

The shipping/postage line item may have the Type of Overhead: this is a configuration anomaly and you don’t need to change it. The Financial office will accept this line item with type Overhead.

The EDI invoice line items will each display a Note field that includes a summary of information from the vendor: there is no need to delete this summary info.

Invoice Statuses

Once an invoice has been created, it may have a number of different statuses. If I turn off In Review, I will see:

• In Review - The invoice was created but not yet reviewed.
• In Approval - The invoice is waiting for manual approval.
• Ready to be Paid - The invoice was approved and is ready to be sent to the ERP.
• Waiting for Payment - The invoice was approved and sent (or skipped the ERP process if it’s not part of that).
• Closed - The invoice is paid and closed.

As the invoice moves through creation, review, and approval, Alma will automatically update the status as needed.

In the next segment of this module, we’ll move on to order maintenance, including claims and dealing with post-receiving work like binding.