Invoicing SO (sales order) a client

As soon as work is completed and there is confirmation from the client that the goods/services have been received, we should be able to invoice the work. Additionally, if there is prior agreement to invoice a portion of the work up-front (i.e. for large production work, or where there is significant out costs).

At any point during the process, a Sales Order can be created which acts as a formal internal instruction to a finance team representative to issue an invoice to the client from the appropriate finance system. The OMG Sales Order is NOT an invoice, nor a client-facing document.

As with estimating, always attempt to pre or part-bill large cost jobs – especially those which incur significant 3rd party costs.

Workflow

Status	Definition
Draft	The Sales Order is being created or edited
Ready to bill	The Sales Order has been finalised and is ready for the finance representative to start the billing process In this status, the finance representative can either send the Sales Order back to the owner (with questions or clarifications) or accept the request
Billing queries	The finance representative has left queries that need action by the Sales Order owner The owner can review the notes, click Edit to set the status back to Draft in order to make changes
Billing request accepted	The finance representative has reviewed the Sales Order and has everything needed in order to issue the Invoice
Billing complete	The Sales Order has been processed and the invoice issues from the finance system. Only the finance representative can set this status
Cancelled	The Sales Order will progress no further Once cancelled, no further changes can be made

Business rules

The ‘Sales Order’ is an IIG internal document for internal use only.
Only a finance representative is authorised to update the sales order status to ‘Billing request accepted‘, Billing queries and ‘Billing complete’.
You cannot create a ‘Sales Order’ without first having created an ‘Estimate’.
Only ‘Approved’ estimates can be added to a sales order. ‘Draft’, ‘Pending’ and ‘Cancelled’ cannot be added.
- This ensures there is a clear audit trail from Estimate (where the client PO number is allocated) to Invoice.

Creating a Sales Order

Prerequisites

Any items (Deliverables or Purchases) to be billed will exist on an ‘Approved’ estimate. To create a sales order, first open the project/campaign/activity:

Select ‘Sales Orders’ from the left navigation.
Click ‘New sales order’.
<< Image of SO LIST SCREEN >>
Enter a ‘Description’ if required, then click ‘Next’.
In the ‘Line items’ section, click ‘Add’.
- In the ‘Add Line Items’ modal, select an estimate you want to add to the sales order then click ‘Next’.
- Use the checkboxes to select the ‘Estimate line items’ to add them to the Sales Order.
- You can change the amount you want to include on the sales order as either a % or a specified value:
  - Use the drop down to the right of the ‘Amount to bill’ field to select if you want to bill a % of the total ‘Left to bill’ or a specific value.
  - Click ‘Apply to all’ if you want to set a given % across all items (eg 50%).
- Click ‘Add’.
You can repeat this process to add items from ‘different estimates’ to a single sales order.

Ready to bill

Once you’ve finished preparing the sales order, simply click ‘Ready to bill’.This will trigger an email notification to the appropriate finance representative, but depending on the agreement you have with finance, you can also ‘Download’ the sales order as a PDF and send via email.

To set a sales order as ‘Ready to bill’, first open the project / campaign / activity:

Select ‘Sales Orders’ from the left navigation.
Click the sales order ‘Number’ that you want to bill.
At the top right of the page, provided the ‘Sales Order’ is in ‘Draft’ state, you will be able to click ‘Ready to bill’.
The status of the ‘Sales Order’ will now change to ‘Ready to bill’.
Download a copy of the sales order and send any ancillary backing data to your finance representative(s)

Responding to queries

Once the sales order is ‘Ready to Bill’, the finance representative for your legal entity / client will review the submission. In some instances, there may be queries that need to be resolved before billing can be processed successfully.

In this instance, the finance representative will leave a note against the ‘Sales order’ and mark it as ‘Billing queries’.

To review and respond to a Sales Order query;

When the status of the sales orders updated to ‘Billing queries’, an email notification will be triggered to the ‘Sales Order Owner’ (the person who created the Sales Order):
- The email will contain some summary details pertaining to the Sales Order, as well as the note left when the status was changed.
From the email, you can click the ‘View sales order’ link to take you to the site and, if you’re logged in, directly to the sales order.
From there, you are expected to review the ‘Notes’ left by the Finance team and take the appropriate action required. This may require you to make changes to line items from the originating estimate(s), in which case you may need to remove these items from the sales order and re-add them:
- Remember, a ‘Sales Order Line Item’ is a snapshot at the point in time it was added. If it changes, the line item needs to be removed and re-added.
To put the ‘Sales Order’ back in to ‘Draft’ state so that you can edit, simply click the ‘Edit’ button at the top right of the screen.
The sales order status will change to ‘Draft’ and you’ll be able to make changes as required.
If you wish to have a conversation with the finance representative, you can go to the ‘Notes’ section, in the left navigation from within a sales order and respond to comments:
- You ‘must’ use the @ mention function if you want email notifications to be triggered to the person you’re liaising with.
Once you have finished making changes, you’ll be able to click ‘Ready to bill’ again.

Tracking a sales order’s progress

Once you’ve marked a sales order as ‘Ready to bill’ and there are no queries with it, then the status will update to ‘Billing request accepted’, from this point, the finance team will manage the transaction through the given finance system (SAP, Quickbooks, Xero etc).