Maintaining Invoices

• Maintaining Invoices
  • Invoice Scope
  • Properties of an Invoice
  • Use of Invoices
  • Invoice Life-cycle
  • Type of Invoice
  • Pricing Mode: Grouped-by-job or Combined-job
  • Invoice Documents
  • Price Types
  • Quotes
  • Price Books
  • Making Samples and Tests Invoicable
  • Pricing and Re-pricing Invoices with Cancelled Jobs

An invoice contains fees payable by a client for work performed by the laboratory, raised from one or more job invoices, where one of the job invoices is marked as the invoice's primary job invoice.

An interactive mechanism is available to present system-determined line items for last-minute price adjustments, including the addition of any surcharges or discounts.

An invoice has a status and a life-cycle. and requires approval before it is transmitted to the client.

A job invoice is an invoice of fees payable for the job, that may be raised either in an individual invoice, or with other job invoices in a combined invoice.

Invoice Scope

Invoices are created with lab-scope. A laboratory can contain multiple invoices.

Properties of an Invoice

An invoice can have:

• A client and optional project and/or contact—The recipient of the invoice.
• Locale—Used to set the invoice's Locale, which is, in turn, used to extract the invoice line item notes in the required language for the invoice document.
• A currency and exchange rate—A job invoice inherits its Currency from the job invoice client. When an invoice is drafted from multiple job invoices, the currency on each job invoice must be the same. This can be updated whilst the invoice's Status is Initial.
• A price book—Refer to Conditions for Defaulting Job Invoice Price Book.
• A quote—The quote must be linked to the client and currency for it to be applied to the job invoice.
• A split—If there is more than one job invoice in a job, then a split can be assigned to each job invoice to apply only a percentage of the total invoice charges to the invoice. It could be possible that sum of the invoice totals is less than or greater than 100%.
• An invoice status—Refer to Conditions for Defaulting Job Invoice Status and Number.
• A flag to indicate that samples and tests are locked for update—Samples and tests can be added to the job invoice when the job is activated, unless the Samples and Tests Locked for Update is selected. The Update Job Invoices Upon Activation check box in the laboratory record (in the CCLBRT—Laboratory application) indicates whether or not samples and tests are updated in job invoices when a job is activated.
• A linked credit note—This appears only if the invoice was credited.
• Multiple tests—Each sample, scheme and analyte has a flag to indicate invoiceability.
• Multiple surcharges and rebates—Inherited from the client.
• Multiple taxes—Shown from the client.

Use of Invoices

All laboratories (process control and commercial) have financial pressures on them to manage and cut costs to operate their laboratories. They have differing mechanisms on how to record and manage their operating costs, but a LIMS can help in this area. However, you can imagine, that if the LIMS keeps track of sample and tests across time periods (that is, financial months/years) then any calculations of costs of analysis that is directly related to number of samples or tests could be obtained from the LIMS.

CCLAS can store an internal cost to perform the tests (stored at the scheme level). Any management report that can query the number of samples per scheme, across a time period, by reporting this count multiplied by the scheme cost, could generate a cost per scheme across the time period. This could be a useful report to the laboratory managers for all laboratory types.

A commercial laboratory also has to be able to charge out their services to the clients that have requested the work. In this case, it is not the internal cost that needs to be accumulated, but a much more complex summations of the commercial charges that are assigned to the group of samples.

All work that is done in a job can be invoiced to one, or more, clients.

Invoice Life-cycle

Invoices are drafted from job invoices, and can then be edited, released, authorised, transmitted, etc. An invoice has a life-cycle that is controlled by statuses. For example, an invoice needs to be released and authorised, after which it can be transmitted to the company's ERP or accounting system outside of CCLAS.

Whilst CCLAS is not a financial system, the invoices it generates can be transferred to a company's financial system.

Type of Invoice

Client invoices are priced as estimate (EST) invoices:

• Estimate (EST) client invoice—The invoiced amount presuming all outstanding work included in the invoice is completed, so therefore based upon what work is done to date and what is outstanding.

Pricing Mode: Grouped-by-job or Combined-job

Some laboratories want to have all pricing for invoiced items to be grouped by job, that is, each job is priced distinctly on the invoice, and range limits used to determine pricing by the count of an entity count only those entities within an individual job.

Other laboratories want to have all pricing for invoiced items to be combined for all the jobs in the invoice, that is, the range limits used to determine pricing by the count of an entity count all entities across all jobs in the invoice.

Since pricing is often based on a range of items such that the price could change depending upon the count of an entity, an invoice that contains multiple job invoices merged with a combined-job pricing mode allows for price saving based upon combined counts across the job invoices.

For example, where an invoice contains two jobs each with 30 samples for a scheme that is priced per sample, and the price schedule applied has a sliding scale of pricing meaning that the price is cheaper after 50 samples, then for a grouped-by-job pricing mode, the invoice line item under job 1 for its 30 samples and the invoice line item under job 2 for its 30 samples would not hit the cheaper rate. However, for a combined-job pricing mode, the sample counts tally together for pricing, such that, the invoice line items for the invoice's 60 samples has 10 of those samples priced at the cheaper rate compared to the first 50 samples.

Invoice Documents

The invoice document itself can be generated, and using a variety of invoice templates and report engines, can be printed, emailed, or saved into a network folder as required. Generated invoices, of all states, are recorded against the invoice.

Price Types

To achieve the various commercial invoicing charges, a price schedule that handles the different types of charges can be:

• Price per sample or ranges of counts of samples
• Price per ranges of counts of analytes in scheme
• Price per ranges of hours in a scheme
• Price per ranges in the results for analytes in a scheme
• Package pricing.

Quotes

Clients can have quotes, which are essentially working sub-sets of price schedules:

• Clients can link to quotes.
• Quote can apply a generic discount to schemes and analytes that are NOT covered by the quote.
• Quotes can make a scheme or analyte not invoiceable.
• Quotes can apply a quote price by applying a quote price schedule for a scheme or analyte.
• Quotes can apply a discount to a book price or quote price for a scheme or analyte.

Price Books

Price books can be managed over different time periods in different currencies:

• Currencies to be applied to price books and clients.
• Surcharges and taxes to be defined and applied.
• Invoice requests to be created and the invoicing details accumulated.
• Invoice workflows to allow them to be finalised and locked.
• Invoice reports (commercial invoices) to be created and distributed.
• Invoice details to be exported/transmitted to external accounting/ERP systems.

Making Samples and Tests Invoicable

For sample-based, or unit-based pricing, a sample scheme is invoiceable where:

• The job invoice sample is invoiceable.
• The job invoice scheme is invoiceable.
• The sample scheme in the job is invoiceable.
• No invoice sample grid exclusion exists for the job invoice sample scheme.

For scheme-based pricing, a sample scheme is invoiceable where:

• The job invoice sample is invoiceable.
• The job invoice scheme is invoiceable.
• The sample scheme in the job is invoiceable.
• No invoice sample grid exclusion exists for the job invoice sample scheme.
• More than one sample scheme analyte is invoiceable where:
  • The job invoice scheme analyte is invoiceable.
  • The sample scheme analyte in the job is invoiceable.
  • No invoice sample grid exclusion exists for the job invoice sample scheme analyte.

For analyte-based pricing, a sample scheme analyte is invoiceable where:

• The job invoice sample is invoiceable.
• The job invoice scheme and job invoice scheme analyte are invoiceable.
• The sample scheme and sample scheme analyte in the job is invoiceable.
• No invoice sample grid exclusion exists for the job invoice sample scheme or job invoice sample scheme analyte.

Pricing and Re-pricing Invoices with Cancelled Jobs

Even though a job is cancelled, the charges for the job within an invoice are still calculated. Therefore, where a multi-job invoice contains a cancelled job and the cancelled job charges are NOT to be included in the invoice, then mark the cancelled job's samples as NOT INVOICEABLE on the job invoice.

Even though an invoice contains a cancelled job, the invoice can still progress through the release and authorisation phases. When an invoice is requested for release, at the point where the system checks whether its jobs have a Workflow Status of Completed for the action to proceed, the system also allows for the jobs to have a Workflow Status of Cancelled so that the invoice is available for transmission to the client.