Hi David

I thought of doing something like this, but discarded it for several reasons. 
The major one was that, if there is a contract with a customer saying they will 
be invoiced once a month, then that's what they should get. And that's what the 
company wants to track. Managing (worst case) 100+ invoices a month per 
customer becomes awkward. In the situation I'm working on, a customer could 
purchase some postage stamps in the morning, then use a meeting room in the 
afternoon, then purchase some coffee for drinks after the meeting. And expect 
all those items, plus the ones for the other ~29 days of the month, to be on a 
single invoice at the end of the month.

The key thing from the company's perspective is that none of those purchases during the month are forgotten and hence never invoiced (a problem they currently do have).
I don't really have to use the Order system to do this, but it would make life 
easier as the company would like to use the ecommerce section so their 
customers can order their postage stamps etc via it (i.e. get the customer to 
do the data entry as much as possible).

If it were easy to hide what are really invoices, and make the statement act 
like an invoice in regard to payments and overdue tracking and payment gateway 
interaction, then I'd be happy with doing that. But that approach doesn't seem 
any easier.

If I've got it wrong and hence missed an easy solution, please tell me!

Cheers,
Anne.


2009/12/17 David E Jones <[email protected]>

The more common approach is to invoice each order, accumulate invoices 
throughout the month, and then send a statement (based on a Billing Account for 
all outstanding invoices).

Is there a reason you don't want to distinguish between invoices and statements?

-David


On Dec 16, 2009, at 11:07 PM, [email protected] wrote:

> Hi
>
> I need to have an invoice generated regularly, say once a month or perhaps on 
demand, for all items ordered by each customer during that month "on account". 
There doesn't seem to be any support for this at the moment (please point me to it if I'm 
wrong).
>
> I doubt I'm the only one that needs this, so I'd appreciate some advice as 
to how to implement it so it is unlikely to adversely affect existing 
functionality, and so it has a chance of being accepted into trunk.
>
> Main requirements are:
>
> - orders can be fulfilled (i.e. shipped goods or supplied services) 
without generating an invoice
> - at a regular configurable interval, an invoice is generated for each 
customer, containing all previously uninvoiced order items.
>
> So a customer can order (and receive) 5 widgets on the 5th of the month, 
and 4 gizmos on the 20th. On the 30th of the month, a single invoice is generated 
which contains one item for 5 widgets and another item for 4 gizmos. This is 
similar to staying in a hotel, where eating in the restaurant is charged to your 
room, and you receive one invoice at the end of your stay listing all your 
restaurant orders.
>
> So far, I'm thinking of achieving this by:
>
> - putting fulfilled orders into Sent status, without generating an invoice 
(maybe I need to introduce a Sent status for order items?)
> - creating a service which gathers all order items for a customer that are 
in Sent status, generates a single invoice for all of them, and sets their status 
to Completed.
>
> I am still going through the existing system, trying to work out the best 
places and ways to achieve this.
>
> If there's a better approach I should consider, or anything I need to 
watch out for, I would greatly appreciate hearing about it!
>
> Cheers,
> Anne.
>
> --
> Coherent Software Australia Pty Ltd
> PO Box 2773
> Cheltenham Vic 3192
> Phone: (03) 9585 6788
> Fax: (03) 9585 1086
> Web: http://www.cohsoft.com.au/
> Email: [email protected]
>
> Bonsai ERP, the all-inclusive ERP system
> http://www.bonsaierp.com.au/
>



--
Coherent Software Australia Pty Ltd
PO Box 2773
Cheltenham Vic 3192
Phone: (03) 9585 6788
Fax: (03) 9585 1086
Web: http://www.cohsoft.com.au/
Email: [email protected]

Bonsai ERP, the all-inclusive ERP system
http://www.bonsaierp.com.au/

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