Generating Financial Reports

A financial report contains a summary of amounts payable from multiple invoices.

Use of Financial Reports

Although many laboratories might use an external accounting system to actually track the cost of jobs or the issuing and paying of invoices, a laboratory manager usually wants to know how costs are amounting, and how the work is progressing with respect estimated and actual invoiced amounts over a period of time.

Financial KPIs are indicative of the commercial health of a laboratory. A financial report is a statement of the financial state of the laboratory, either with respect to costs passed on to clients in job invoices, or with respect to costs incurred by the laboratory in job cost invoices.

Some financial reports need to be re-generated on a regular basis (for example, the current work-in-progress charges or invoiced amounts month to date). Other financial reports are ad-hoc and assist the laboratory manager to get a bird’s eyes view of the laboratory over a longer time period, or for specific clients or projects.

Financial reports are generated from job costs or invoices already raised in the system. A wide range of criteria can be used to locate invoices, thereby allowing for different kinds of financial reports, based upon a specific date range, for a particular client, the monetary value of proposal invoices currently on offer, the monetary value of production invoices raised, the monetary value of credit notes raised

The types of invoices that can be searched for the generation of financial reports include production invoices, credit notes, proposal invoices, proposal job costs and production job costs.

The columns in the financial report's search results grid can be hidden or revealed so that the invoice amounts display either in the invoice's Currency or the laboratory's Currency . This allows financial analysis and comparison of invoices to be done in the same currency. Job costs are always displayed in the laboratory's default currency.

The supported report engines are Crystal Reports and Text. Mechanisms are available that allow result sets to be processed and manipulated at various points along the reporting process using scripts. This facilitates the inclusion of additional logic and utilisation of external services and report engines.

Generation of Financial Reports

Financial reports are generated using the CCFNRP—Financial Report application, which can also be accessed using the Invoicing » Invoicing Status Report menu option.

Searching for Invoices to Generate Financial Reports

Financial reports are generated from selected invoices that are returned from a search.

Unlike the CCINV—Invoice application that returns only client-related invoices (proposal invoices, production invoices, and credit notes), this search can return client-related and job cost-related invoices (proposal invoices, proposal job cost invoices, production invoices, credit notes, production job cost invoices).

When searching for merged invoices, since the primary job invoice represents for the whole invoice, if invoices are searched by the job name of the primary job invoice as the only criteria then the invoice is returned from the search. However, if the job name of a non-primary job invoice is used as the only criteria then the invoice are not returned from the search.

The invoice criteria allows invoices to be searched based on invoice type (mandatory), invoice status, released date (displayed as Invoiced), description, client, project, contact, or quote.

The invoice scheme criteria allows invoices to be searched based on an associated scheme, or property of a scheme: section, section group and/or scheme group.

The invoice dates criteria allows invoices to be searched based upon various invoice status-related dates.

The job criteria allows invoices to be searched based on an associated job, or property of a job: client, project, contact, client group, cost centre, workflow status and various related dates, client submission number and contract submission number.

Setting a sort order orders the records returned from the search.

Invoices can be displayed in the invoice's Currency or the laboratory's Currency . If invoices are to be displayed in the laboratory's Currency then the invoice amounts—WIP Amount, Estimate Amount, Invoice Amount Incl Tax and Invoice Amount—are converted to the laboratory's Currency using the invoice's Exchange Rate. (Note that if the laboratory's Currency is updated such that an exchange rate cannot be found, this does not matter as the exchange rate is taken from that set on the invoice.)

Note: Ensure that WIP and estimate amounts are up to date prior to generating a financial report based on client invoices, and ensure that cost WIP and estimate amounts are up to date prior to generating a financial report based on job cost invoices.

When searching for invoices, where the Invoice Type search criteria is:

  • Production Invoice, Credit Note Invoice, ‘Production and Credit Note Invoices or Proposal Invoice

    and the Has WIP/EST outdated search criteria is:

    • All, then invoices are not filtered by an invoice's Is WIP EST Outdated flag.

    • Yes, then invoices are filtered by whether an invoice's Is WIP EST Outdated flag is true.

    • No, then invoices are filtered by whether an invoice's Is WIP EST Outdated flag is false.

  • Proposal Job Cost or Production Job Cost

    and the Has WIP/EST outdated search criteria is:

    • All, then jobs are not filtered by a job's Cost WIP EST Outdated flag.

    • Yes, then jobs are filtered by whether a job's Cost WIP EST Outdated flag is true.

    • No, then jobs are filtered by whether a job's Cost WIP EST Outdated flag is false.

    When invoices for a financial report are returned from a search, an invoice's Is WIP Est Outdated flag indicates whether the WIP and estimate amounts need to be updated for an invoice. When WIP and estimate amounts are recalculated for a financial report invoice or cost WIP and estimate amounts are recalculated for a financial report cost invoice, this flag is reset.

Dependencies and Restrictions for the Generation of Financial Reports

This process presumes that job invoices and job cost invoices have already been created in another process.