webBooks-Quotes And Invoices

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Unless you are in specific industries or are of particular types of organizations, your company will have the need to create invoices for products and services rendered. This module takes it a step further and allows you to also perform quoting and leasing as well! And while there is a generic invoice template that comes with webBooks, custom templates can be created to make yours specific to your company. For more information, please feel free to contact our staff for more information!


Tabs

Each module will contain several tabs that help group the various types of associated information. Below we will cover the details of each one currently available in the latest release of the module.

  ?  

This tab is found in each module as the way to access helpful documentation and, when clicked, will load this wiki page for the module. Of course, you can always go directly to our wiki and read through the entire software documentation.

  #  

Not quite as prevalent as the '?' and 'General' tab, this one presents the user with a list of all the assets currently cataloged for the company. The page is setup to have a table layout that can be filtered using the textboxes and listboxes toward the top of the page. The more of those filter objects are used, the more specific the results are in the table. To load any of the assets that are shown in the table (regardless if the filters are used or not), simply click on the serial number of the item.

General

Also found in most of the available extensions, this tab provides the general information associated with the module. Below you will find the details of each field available on the form.
Document number
As the name suggests, this is the quote, invoice, or lease number of the document. This textbox also doubles as a submission field where you can enter in the exact document number which will populate the tab data upon pressing the <ENTER> key.
Job number
Sometimes several invoices need to belong to one overall job and by using this field, you can accomplish this goal. It is important to remember that this field does not auto-populate so you will have to know and enter the job number here.
Purchase order
In the world of business, purchase orders (PO's) are typically used to define and secure a purchase from a seller. Use this field to store the accepted PO issued by your customer for the purchase.
Account number
As the name suggests, this field shows the account number of the customer account.
Customer name
Also an easy-to-understand field, this one defines the customer account name for the quote, invoice, or lease. This textbox also doubles as a submission field where you can enter in the (partial) customer name and all matches will be shown in a selectable list which will populate the tab data upon clicking the desired item in the list.
It is important to note that the results list that is returned uses the following values to help the webBooks user know exactly which account to load: Customer's name [ID] first line of address. The first value would be the value that gets loaded for the field. The second reflects the customer's ID (see 'Customer Accounts' module) - this is NOT their account number! The final portion of the line is the first line of the accounts mailing address. Using those three bits of information, a webBooks user should be able to identify the exact account to load when there may be more than one customer with the same name (e.g. a common persons name or a business chain).
To clear all of this off the screen, simply delete the value in this field.
Required & Recurs
This line contains two values with the first being a date field denoting when the product(s) and/or service(s) will be required by the customer. The second value indicates that the invoice or lease is to recur at the stated time. It is important to note that any value for this field other than the 'None', '1st', '15th', or 'daily' will mandate a 'Required' date value so there is a base date to work from.
Type & Status
Another line that contains multiple fields. The 'Type' value indicates what type of document this will be and includes a quote, invoice, or lease. The next field defines the status of the document and will have its values dynamically populated based on the 'Type' selection. The values are self-explanatory so they will not be covered here.
Terms & Balance
Although the default sales terms were defined in the 'Customer Accounts' module, the first field on this line allows you to change this value on a per quote, invoice, or lease basis. The last field on this line is a read-only value that shows the current balance on the account.
Status
Another read-only line, this line is populated by the software to indicate the status of the customer account so you will have more knowledge before doing business.
Account Rep
As the name suggests, this is another read-only line that shows the account representative.
Created by
This line defines the employee that originally created this document and when it was created.
Updated by
Similar to the 'Created by', this line shows who modified the document last and when.
Shipping
If any product(s) need to be shipped, the listbox on the first line defines who will pay for the shipping. Upon changing the prior field to either 'We ship' or 'Vendor ships', the second line listbox will dynamically populate with the respectively configured freight accounts from the 'Business Configuration' and 'Customer Accounts' module. The third line states the freight type and date when the shipment needs to be made.
Physical address
These fields are populated once the customer account has been selected or a document has been loaded. This section is also read-only.
Alt ship address
Occasionally a customer may have the need to have items shipped to an alternative location. Filling out this section will accomplish that goal.
Associated info
The documents created in this module can be transformed into other module data. For example, invoices or leases can be converted into work orders. To convert a document into some other type of data, select the target format in the top listbox and then click the '+' button. Once the conversion has been made, you can double click on any items in the combobox to have the respective module load with the converted data.
Authorized contacts
This column is read-only and shows the people who are the authorized contacts for the account. This will prevent the user from having to go back and forth between modules to confirm any callers who are able to work with the account.

Notes

Also found in many of the modules for webBooks, this tab allows co-workers to add notes to your account. Most likely the ones adding information here will be managers, but for flexibility anyone can add notes (access should be defined by company policy). There are only three fields on this page with the 'Creator' and 'Note' values being self-explanatory. The first field, however, may need more details. This listbox is used to define who has access to the note being entered and contains two fixed values along with any number of dynamic values. The two fixed are '_EVERYONE_' and '_MANAGERS_', meaning that either everyone can see the note being entered, or only employees who have the 'Manager' flag set for their account. Any other value in the list will be a dynamic value that corresponds to each department you have entered on the 'Business Configuration' module. This, in turn, will restrict access to the note being entered to all employees that work in the selected department.

Print

After opening a quote, invoice, or lease, you can click on this tab to load the data into the template. After a few seconds, you can click the 'Print' button to make the necessary form adjustments in order to print the document. It is important to note that if you need to make a change to the quote, invoice, or lease, this tab refreshes everytime it is clicked.

History

You may also notice this tab as the final tab on many modules in webBooks, and it keeps track of all the history details that deal with a selected ID Code. In order to add a line to the history, you will need to specify a date when the action occurred, the quantity of the ID Code included in the quote/invoice/lease, the back order quantity of the ID Code included in the quote/invoice/lease, the ID Code, the dynamic cost value (explained below), the dynamic suggested sales price (explained below), the taxable status of the ID Code, all the included serial numbers, and a note that corresponds to the history detail. After filling all of that out, simply click the '+' button toward the top left-hand side of the form and the line item will be added to the details list at the bottom.
The list allows a company to define all the quote/invoice/lease information so that its history can be reviewed at any time. It is important to note that when changing the 'ID Code' value, the available inventory serial numbers are filled out automatically with the first one in the list having its cost and suggested sales price values automatically filled out. As long as there are not any added serial numbers in the list, then the cost and sales price fields will populate allowing a sales person to identify which items they would like to include in an invoice. For example, lets say that the company has received two different shipments of the selected 'ID Code' with both shipments having different costs (both product and freight). If the customer requires a certain sales price, the employee can cycle through several serial numbers to see which ones have the lowest associated costs so the sales price can be reduced accordingly.
After any serial numbers have been added to the list, the cost and sales price values are dynamically updated based on the items that have been added to the serial numbers list. Please beware of the following if *INVENTORY* discounts are applicable to the invoice. If you allow the 'QTY' value to auto-increment while filling out the invoice, then the applied discounts value can become distorted since it is calculated each time a serial number submission is made. This means that as each serial number is added to the list, the current 'QTY' value is used as the base for inventory discount calculations. So for example, lets say that you have an inventory discount that starts for any order with a 'QTY' between 5 and 10. If the employee lets the 'QTY' value auto-increment, then the first 4 serial numbers will not receive a discount since they are under the minimum of 5. Instead, if the user needs to get that specific discount, enter the actual 'QTY' being purchased and that way all the serial numbers added will have the appropriate discount applied.


Buttons

The buttons located in the header of each form will be covered below (see the respective sections above for inline buttons).

Clear (General)

Clicking this button will clear all the tabs loaded data so that you can create (see the 'Save' button below) or load another record (see the 'General' tab above).

Save (General)

One of two buttons available in the header of the 'General' tab, click this button once you have filled out all available fields to save or update a new or existing asset. It is important to note that this ONLY saves information listed on this tab - no others!

Save (Notes)

The 'Save' button on this page will add the note to the list.

Print (Print)

Clicking this button will make the necessary form adjustments in order to print the quote, invoice, or lease document.


Common Tasks

The below sections cover several common tasks that a user may need to perform at some point in their interaction with the software. These will be expanded as time elapses.

Creating a New Quote or Invoice

When opening this module, the form comes up ready to load an existing document or to create a new one. If you currently have a document loaded and want to create a new one, simply click the 'Clear' button within the header. Otherwise, all that is necessary to create a new document is to fill out the (cleared) form and click the 'Save' button at the top of the screen. Making it a quote or invoice is as simple as selecting the appropriate value from the 'Type' field. It is important to note that you do NOT include any serial numbers when creating quotes since there is no guarantee that the customer will follow through with the purchase!

Converting a Quote into an Invoice

Converting a quote into an invoice is accomplished by one simple step. First, load the quote you wish to convert using the '#' tab or typing in its document number and pressing <ENTER>. After the quote has been loaded, simply change its 'Type' value from 'Quote' to 'Invoice'. As mentioned in the section above, you should now edit each of the history values that include products so that any serial numbers can be added and tracked (provided you are also using the 'Inventory' module).

Working with Leases

Lease documents are created the same way that is outlined in the "Creating a New Quote or Invoice" section above, but instead of selecting 'Quote' or 'Invoice' as the 'Type' value, you would select 'Lease' from the list. This will automatically add the appropriate history details in the 'Inventory' module if you have it installed for any serial numbers you include in the lease. After the equipment has been returned to your organization, you will need to change the 'Status' value from 'Lease' (indicating that the equipment is currently being leased to a customer) to any of the remaining list items. A value of 'Comped' indicates that the lease was comped and any money was refunded to the customer, 'Returned' means that the equipment has been returned and the lease is over, and finally a value of 'Stolen' indicates that the customer has stolen the equipment. After changing the value and saving the changes, the appropriate history details will be added to the 'Inventory' module once again, if installed.

Make a Document Reoccur

At times an invoice, and possibly a lease, will need to reoccur for select customers. With other business management software like Quickbooks, you have to go through a whole series of steps in order to accomplish this task such as filling out additional information per customer account, creating a template, and more! With webBooks, you simply select the appropriate value from the 'Reoccurs' listbox via the 'Required & Reoccurs' line. If the selection within that list is anything other than the '1st', '15th', or 'Daily', then you will need to also specify the 'Required' value (on that same line) so that there is a base date to use as the reoccurring date. That's it!


Developers

This section is for any developer that is looking to create a custom invoice template. There are a couple of things to keep in mind:

  • The filename must be called 'webbooks.quotes_and_invoices.template.html'
  • The file must be placed in all the directories under the 'themes' directory so no matter what theme is selected by any employee, they will have access to the custom template

Below we will cover the variables that can be used in your template. They must include preceding characters around the variable name. More can be added upon request so contact our staff.


  • Account Variables
Variable Description
ACCOUNT_NO The customers account number
ACCOUNT_NAME The name of the customer account
ACCOUNT_PHONE The main phone number associated with the customer account (in the order of: home, toll free, local site)
ACCOUNT_FAX The fascimile (fax) number associated with the customer account
ACCOUNT_TAXEXEMPT The tax exempt number of the customers account
ACCOUNT_MAIN_ADDR1 Line 1 of the customer account mailing address
ACCOUNT_MAIN_ADDR2 Line 2 of the customer account mailing address
ACCOUNT_MAIN_CITY The city of the customer account mailing address
ACCOUNT_MAIN_STATE The state of the customer account mailing address
ACCOUNT_MAIN_ZIP The zip code of the customer account mailing address
ACCOUNT_BILL_ADDR1 Line 1 of the customer account billing address
ACCOUNT_BILL_ADDR2 Line 2 of the customer account billing address
ACCOUNT_BILL_CITY The city of the customer account billing address
ACCOUNT_BILL_STATE The state of the customer account billing address
ACCOUNT_BILL_ZIP The zip code of the customer account billing address


  • Business Variables
Variable Description
BUSINESS_NAME The organizations name
BUSINESS_ADDR1 Line 1 of the organizations mailing address
BUSINESS_ADDR2 Line 2 of the organizations mailing address
BUSINESS_CITY The city of the organizations mailing address
BUSINESS_STATE The state of the organizations mailing address
BUSINESS_ZIP The zip code of the organizations mailing address
BUSINESS_URI The organizations website address
BUSINESS_PHONE The organizations phone number
BUSINESS_FAX The organizations fascimile (fax) number


  • Invoice Variables
Variable Description
INVOICE_NO The invoice number
INVOICE_TERMS The terms of the invoice
INVOICE_SHIP The shipping type, valid values: n/a, same day, overnight, 2 day, ground
INVOICE_TYPE The type of document, valid values: quote, invoice, lease
INVOICE_REP The name of the sales representative for the customer account
INVOICE_REQUIRED The date when the document is required by
INVOICE_PO The purchase order number associated with the invoice
INVOICE_SHIP_ADDR1 Line 1 of the customers alternative mailing address
INVOICE_SHIP_ADDR2 Line 2 of the customers alternative mailing address
INVOICE_SHIP_CITY The city of the customers alternative mailing address
INVOICE_SHIP_STATE The state of the customers alternative mailing address
INVOICE_SHIP_ZIP The zip code of the customers alternative mailing address
INVOICE_HISTORY All the history details of the invoice (see the note below)
INVOICE_SUB-TOTAL The sub-total of the invoice
INVOICE_TAX The tax calculated for the invoice
INVOICE_FREIGHT The freight charges associated with the invoice
INVOICE_TOTAL The tally of the sub-total, tax, and freight charges
INVOICE_BALANCE The current account balance from past unpaid invoices and leases
GRAND_TOTAL The grand total of the bill which includes the INVOICE_TOTAL and INVOICE_BALANCE


  • Other Variables
Variable Description
DATE Show the date in the format YYYY-MM-DD