How To: Create, Close, And Pay An Invoice

This article goes over the invoice lifecycle, starting at the first steps of entering hours to the last steps of applying a payment. Though there are many variations of this process and circumstances that may alter how your company prefers to go through this process, it will provide a basic understanding of how the information moves through Staffing Complete as you go through a payroll/billing cycle.

1 Entering Bill Hours (Payroll Module)
2 Creating an Invoice (Invoice Module)
3 Closing a Week (Closing Module)
4 Paying an Invoice (A/R Module)

Entering Bill Hours (Payroll Module)

The first step for an invoice to exist is bill hours and bill rates being entered into the payroll module, which are then used in the calculation of the invoice. Once these items are entered and saved, the Invoicing Module has the minimum amount of information needed to create an invoice for that customer. Below you can see the bill hours and bill rate being multiplied to equal $1,000 billing on this entry.

Remember that the billing and payroll hours and rates are separate, so payroll can be processed without billing, and visa versa.

Creating an Invoice (Invoice Module)

Once the Bill information is saved in the order, the billing information will be on “Step 1 – Create Invoices”. At this point the invoice has NOT been created, but will be listed next to all other billing items awaiting invoice creation that have the Work Date from the order before the Cut Off Date on this screen. The cut off date will also double as the invoice date. Clicking the “Create All Invoices” will group the items and create the invoices.

These billing items are grouped into invoices according to the option selected on the Customer Profile>”Create Invoice By” drop-down. Once the invoice is created and the billing items grouped, the bill related items on the related order will now be bold and the invoice number will display.

There are multiple options to create invoices by checking boxes select which invoices you want created, right click options for customer grouping options, and more.

At this point the invoice has been created and assigned an Invoice #, and will display any additional sales tax, late fee’s, ACA amounts etc. The invoice can now be printed/emailed and right click options are also available.

Closing a Week (Closing Module)

Before you can apply a payment to an invoice, the week that covers the invoice date must be closed. This will finalize the invoice at it’s current state, and will no longer allow you to void or modify the invoice from the invoicing module. From the closing module, you’ll select your office, select your cut off date, then after reviewing the results close the week.

All items included in the displayed results will be included in the closing period.
The closing period is the selected offices last closed period up to the selected “Cut Off” Date.
The “Cut Off Date” must be after the “Invoice Date” to include the invoice.
Weeks can be re-closed to re-calculate, but can’t be “un-closed” to undo a closing.

Paying an Invoice (A/R Module)

Once the week has been closed, the invoices are considered finalized and are now eligible for payment within the A/R module. While the A/R module has multiple options and functions for invoices, we’ll be focusing on the simple full payment of an invoice. From the A/R module, you’ll click “Insert” which will give you a screen to enter in your customer, search for your customer and double click the name, which will take you to the Pay Invoice tab.

On the below example you’ll first enter in the fields displayed. Most items will be marked as required with an asterisk and need to be filled out before selecting which invoice this payment will be applied to.

With the above information filled out, you’ll right click anywhere in the below area and select “Add Invoice”.

Selecting “Add Invoice” will load the “Open Invoices” screen where you’ll see open and paid invoices. Here you can sort by the column headers to easily find the invoice you’re wanting to apply the payment to, in this case the invoice highlighted below. Double clicking the invoice will load it on the previous screen at which point you can click “Close”.

At this point you’ve inserted the invoice to pair it with the payment, and you’ll now need to detail how much of the payment you’re applying to the invoice. In the below example the payment amount matches the invoice amount, making the due amount zero. Clicking save will finalize the entry,and the invoice has now been created, finalized, and paid.