The fastest way to go broke is to overpay your creditors. Databuild for Windows has a series of sophisticated controls and balances to ensure that you pay only what you have to
At Invoice Posting:
A graphical bar chart is shown showing Invoice to date (including the invoice being entered, budget and orders on the job/cost centre being posted. This gives a fast graphical representation of the situation: If the invoice column is the highest, you've got problems.
You can set the Invoice Checking Criteria. Invoices are checked on the fly against the criteria you have set, and if they fail, the appropriate action is taken.
The system includes an orders screen where details of each order can be viewed and individual orders and items within orders can be ticked off or selected to invoice. While this may sound terrific and works well, it is in our opinion next to useless. It was introduced to make upgrading from opposition systems easier. The actual contents of an order are immaterial to accounts. What matters is that the invoice is valid and that the total invoices against the order do not exceed its value
You can retrieve order details by entering order numbers. To accept the invoice is then a single keystroke. Your suppliers should be educated to include your order numbers on all invoices
Retentions can be set up to automatically deduct. These can be overridden or manually entered if no retention strategy has been set up
Percentage complete is displayed for each job/cost centre at posting. The system uses this to project a forecast cost so that Job Cost reports anticipate total costs earlier
Posting outside a set date range is prevented
Jobs (such as completed jobs) can be declared as non postable.
Invoices can be declared authorised or unauthorised
Invoices can be batched. These batches can be saved or loaded before updating. Regular invoices can be saved as a batch and loaded monthly and edited before updating.
A pay strategy determines when the invoice should be paid
At Payment
Use the Pay selection screen to select what invoices to pay
Details can be printed using the Batch Payment report before editing (if necessary) and processing payments
Unauthorised invoices can be withheld. Reports are printed for supervisors/project officers showing their invoices requiring authorisation. This form is then used by the accounts clerk to post authorisations prior to payment.
Supervisor: fred smith
Supplier 045 CAMBRIAN FENCING (VIC)
Tran No Date Reference Job Invoice
424 12/06/96 3214 2000 $500.00
714 25/10/96 777 2000 $1,000.00
Pay deductions ensure that any tax or other deduction are made and accounted for
Authorisation
Perhaps the most efficient way to handle creditor control is to use the authorisation system:
Set View Authorised only in payments
with Job Control Module
| • | Set the invoice checking criteria to Unauthorise on failure |
| • | Set Unauthorised as the default on invoice posting |
| • | Post Invoices directly, or by pressing control M, then entering order reference |
| • | Use Job Control system to authorise invoices |
without Job Control
| • | Set the invoice checking criteria to Unauthorise on failure |
| • | Set Authorised as the default on invoice posting |
| • | Post Invoices directly, or by pressing control M, then entering order reference |
After posting invoices, run unauthorised invoices report for distribution to supervisors. Unauthorised remain in the system, they just don't get paid. If they turn out to be bogus, they get deleted
This system only requires invoices that break the rules to be checked. This saves an enormous amount of work, but is not infallible:
| • | Without Job Control, an invoice from a supplier before the work is done or goods |
| • | Without Order reference matching, an invoice from the wrong supplier before the correct supplier sends his invoice. |
The downside of these situations is to be weighed up against the extra time (and usually extra staff) to manually check each invoice. Bear in mind also that the sheer mundanity of this process by whoever authorises the invoices (Supervisors, estimators or accounts staff) usually means that the checking is often cursory at best.
After the event
If an invoice manages to get past all the traps above, It will soon be highlighted by one of Databuild's standard reports. The Looking for Trouble report quickly highlights all problem areas.
123 Joe Smith Contract Price $5,944.03
Variations $11,266.00
New Contract Price $17,210.03
Claimed $275,045.53
Received $17,474.00
Balance Due $257,571.53
Balance of Contract -$257,835.50
These cost centres deserve attention Budget Forecast Cost to date %
3 WATER SUPPLY $2,760 $6,000 $6,000 100.0% $2,760
5 EARTH WORKS $959 $2,496 $2,496 100.0% $8
8 TERMITE SPRAY AND PEST CONTROL $169 $300 $300 100.0% $169
13 CONCRETE - PREMIX $926 $10,000 $10,000 100.0% $0
15 LAMINATED TIMBER BEAMS $32 $125 $125 0.0% $0
Reports
A series of creditor reports and user-definable custom reports rounds out the picture
End of document.