RFP A/R

This page defines the RFP-Accounts Receivable billing process.

Click here if you are using RFP- Liability billing.
Click here if you are using standard line item & summary billing.

Billing tab

The main body of the billing tab shows you the payment schedule as defined during the Proposal process. You will see one or more payment description lines and each has a corresponding Payment Description, %, Amount, and Due Date. Next to each dollar amount is an X to delete the row as well as an Invoice button where you can generate the RFP (Request for Payment) invoice. We’ll go into more detail on functionality shortly.

Directly below the payment descriptions are a number of calculated fields showing:

• Contracted Grand Total – this is the amount of the proposal that the customer agreed to. The amount is not modifiable.
• Grand Total W/ Change Orders – this is the total amount of the original contract plus any approved change orders.
• The Balance field is typically blank. This field shows the difference between the amount of the contract with change orders and the total of the progress payment amounts. When a value is displayed here, you will know that the amount of past and future RFP invoices do not match what is contracted. This is a problem! Be sure to either add another invoice to your progress payment schedule or adjust a future invoice amount so that the balance difference is $0.00 – which will make this field go blank.
• The last field shows the amount remaining to be billed. This is the total value of the contract with change orders less any invoices that have previously been generated. Any value in this field indicates the job is not billed 100%.
  

On the right side of the screen, you see a similar list of numbers. These are change orders that were created after the sales order was created. Each change order will have a unique number as well as a description and amount. If the change order has been approved by the customer, you will see another green Invoice button. Change orders that have not yet been approved and committed will have a red label stating Not Approved. RFP invoices cannot be created for unapproved change orders.

The percentage amount shown on each change order indicates if the individual change order is fully billed or not. Normally, when a change order is invoiced, you’ll see a 100% under the % Invoiced heading. However, if your system administrator has enabled the partial change order billing option (Settings > Module Settings > Proposals > Accounting > Enable Change Order Progressive Invoices) this percentage displays how much of the change order has been invoiced.

The bottom portion of the billing window has two separate tabs.

Request For Payment

The Request for Payment section shows any RFP invoices that have been generated. Requests for payment are a one-line invoice that asks your customer to send money for work you have or will be completing.

• Invoice Ref # – the invoice number.
• Date – the date the invoice was generated. This might also be the date the invoice was marked as submitted to your customer, based on settings made by your system administrator.
• Status – the status of each Request for Payment. Typically this will show open, submitted, and paid in full invoices, but may also have other statuses if your system administrator has modified them.
• Total – this is the total amount of the RFP invoice.
• Balance – this is the amount due from your customer and is calculated by the Total invoice balance minus any payments made.

The right side of the RFP section shows any RFP Payments that have been made. The Amount Paid shows money your customer has paid, while the Credit Available lists the amount available to be applied to delivery invoices. A $0 credit available means that particular credit has already been applied to a delivery invoice.

Delivery Invoice

This tab displays all the delivery invoices that have been created for this sales order. A delivery invoice details the specific goods and services that have been marked as delivered by technicians or project managers. This is an internal invoice used for tracking the income and expenses for your sales order. Delivery invoices are also used by QuickBooks to determine sales tax liability.

• Ref# – the invoice number of the delivery invoice.
• Date – the date the delivery invoices were generated
• Status – the status of the invoice
• Total – the total amount of the delivery invoice
• Balance – the amount of the invoice that has not yet been paid by RFP credits. Remember, you don’t apply customer payments directly to delivery invoices. Payments are made against the RFP invoice and then the credit is applied to these invoices.

The totals for this section display the total not invoiced. This is the difference between the Grand Total W/ Change Orders and the total of all Delivery invoices generated.

The right side of this tab displays the Delivery Payments and is populated when available RFP credits are applied to delivery invoices. Payments reference

• Reference – the payment reference number
• Date – the date the RFP credit was applied
• Type – is the method of payment (Cash, Credit Card, Check, etc).
• Amount – shows the amount of the RFP payment that was applied
  

Additional Billing Options

There are some additional options available to you that you will want to verify before you start creating RFP and Delivery invoices. These can be found under the Billing Options button located directly above the Payment Description section.

During the proposal creation process, your sales staff should have created a payment schedule defining the amount and when the deposit is due. The payment schedule may have one or multiple lines for varying percentages and dates. However, if no Payment Description or schedule exists, you can use the Select Payment Schedule dropdown to load a pre-defined payment schedule. These schedules are created by your system administrator in Settings > Module Settings > Proposals > Accounting > Payment Schedules.

Alternately, you can manually enter the payment schedule on the main billing tab itself by typing in the description, percentages, and/or values for each payment required. These numbers can also be manually adjusted from what your sales member set simply by changing either the dollar amount or the percentage. NOTE: Be cautious when changing these amounts, as they are likely part of the contract, and changing them would be changing the written agreement between you and your customer.

One reason you might choose to adjust the payment amount is if the RFP was for an odd amount, like $4,497.12, but your customer sent an even $4,500 payment. It might be easier to delete the original invoice and recreate it for $4,500 instead of applying the $2.88 to the next RFP invoice.

Another Billing Option you may need to use when creating RFP invoices is the Retainage percentage. If your system administrator has enabled retention collection (Settings > Module Settings > Proposals > Accounting (tab) > Enable Retention Tracking) you may need to enter the appropriate retention percentage so that iPoint adjusts the RFP invoices to reflect retention being held.

The Invoice Retinage button is used to create retention invoices for the amount withheld using the Retainage Percent option described above. Click this button to generate an invoice for the total amount of retention due.

Once the billing options have been verified, it is time to create your request for payment.

Creating RFP invoices

Now that we understand the various sections of the billing tab and the options available, let’s look at the process of billing our jobs. The first step is to create a Request For Payment invoice asking your customer to send money for the deposit or another payment schedule.

Click the green Invoice button next to the progress payment you want to invoice. This can either be a payment schedule invoice or a change order invoice. iPoint will confirm that you really want to generate this invoice. Click Yes to continue.

If you have any committed and approved change orders, you will have the opportunity to include one or more of them on this invoice. Including a change order will add a line on the RFP specifically for the change order. So adding three change orders to your RFP will result in four lines, one for the original payment schedule and one for each of the three change orders.

Note: Because RFP-A/R push to QuickBooks as an estimate it is not possible to create a negative RFP. You will need to combine the negative change order line with another RFP to result in a positive number.

The Payment Request will be created and you can review it prior to sending it to your customer.

Note: Please do not make adjustments to the RFP. Any changes made here affect the billing amounts on the sales order and will make reporting inaccurate for this sales order. Any changes should be made by deleting the invoice and then recreating the invoice from the sales order itself, or by creating a change order to be invoiced separately.

Alternately, you can use the Total Balance Invoice button to create a single RFP invoice displaying all of the unbilled progress and change order lines. This is typically done at the end of a project so that you can capture any remaining payment requests.

On the RFP invoice:

• Use the Invoice Options to print, convert to PDF, or email the payment request to your customer.
• Use the QuickBooks button to sync to QuickBooks.
  • Push Payment Request will sync the Payment Request to QuickBooks as an estimate on the customer’s account.
  • This means there is no financial impact to the General Ledger or the customer’s account.
  • Do Not Sync With QuickBooks Check this box if you don’t want this payment request pushed to QB. This will hide the sync buttons as well as put a green dot on the RFP. You might use this option if you manually entered the request for payment in QuickBooks and want to be sure you don’t send a duplicate RFP.

Back on the Sales Order > Billing tab, you’ll find the newly-created invoice listed in the Request For Payment tab.

You can view the actual RFP invoice again in two ways:

• In the Payment Description section, click on the blue text that shows the dollar amount invoiced to open a pop-up window where you can Go To Invoice.
• In the Request For Payment section, click on the invoice.
  

Getting Paid

When your customer sends a payment for the RFP invoice, you must apply the payment directly on the individual RFP invoice. Note: You cannot apply RFP payments using the Payments option in the Accounting module. Payments must be entered directly on the specific RFP invoice.

1. Open the RFP invoice
2. At the bottom of the invoice, click the green New Payment/Credit button
3. Enter the payment details, including date, the amount paid, payment method, and check number. You can also enter a payment memo or define a QuickBooks class.
4. Click Save & Close
5. Now you will see that the RFP invoice has a payment applied and the Balance Due has been reduced by the amount of the payment. Congratulations! Wasn’t that easy?
6. Let’s push the payment to QuickBooks by clicking the QuickBooks button and selecting Push Changes to QB button. We are pushing changes because the RFP invoice was already in QuickBooks. We are simply adding the payments to the synchronization.
7. Over in QuickBooks, you’ll find that the estimate has been reduced to $0 and there is now a payment sitting on the customer’s account. The net result is that the customer’s account will show a negative accounts receivable balance because there is money available to apply to a future delivery invoice.

Let’s look at how this process affects the Sales Order.

1. Navigate to the sales order in iPoint by clicking the blue References button at the bottom of the invoice.
2. Click the Other tab to find the sales order reference.
3. Click the Go button next to the sales order name and you’ll be taken right to the Sales Order.
4. Select the Billing tab on the sales order.

Down in the Request for Payment section, you will notice that the invoice balance has been reduced by the amount of the payment. If the RFP was paid in full, the balance will be zero.
On the right side under RFP Payments you will see an available credit that matches the amount of the payment. This available credit will be reduced when we apply it to delivery invoices.

Creating Delivery Invoices

Delivery invoices are created for products and associated labor that has been marked as delivered to your customer. You will know that products have been delivered in three different ways.

• On the Sales Order List there will be a green dollar sign at the beginning of the sales order reference.
• The Product tab of the sales order will be printed in green instead of the standard white text.
• On the Product tab itself, there is a green highlighted field Delivered Not Invoiced which shows the total value of parts that need to be invoiced.
  

!Delivery Invoices should be completed on a regular basis. The Best Practice is to create delivery invoices on a monthly basis. Since Delivery Invoices are used to calculate sales tax, adjust inventory, and drive revenue in Quickbooks, at a minimum, they should be created on the same frequency that you pay sales tax.

Click the Billing Options button on the Billing tab of the Sales Order.

You have two options for creating delivery invoices.

1. All Delivered Invoice button – click this to have iPoint automatically generate the invoice for all items that have been delivered. There are a number of settings available to your system administrator that affect this button, including whether or not to include labor and/or non-deliverable items. Typically you’ll find the invoice shows the parts that were delivered along with the associated labor to install the parts as well as any modifiers that have been defined in the Sales Order.
2. Line Item Invoice – click this button to open a window where you can select non-deliverable parts to be invoiced as well as delivered items.

The list of items displayed in the Create Invoice window are items that are not deliverable. Typically this refers to labor line items but can include other charges as well.

• Even though a technician will perform labor, that isn’t something that can be handed to the customer in a box. So we refer to stand-alone labor as non-deliverable.
• Labor associated with a particular part is automatically invoiced when that part is delivered so those labor items won’t appear here.
  As a result, these non-deliverable items are not automatically included on a delivery invoice because they haven’t been delivered.
  

On the Create Invoice screen, select the non-deliverable items you want to include on the delivery invoice by placing a checkmark in the Select checkbox.

This list works similarly to most lists in iPoint in that you can click the Options button to sort, filter, and select multiple items. The key filter here for the RFP delivery invoice options is the Non Deliverable Items dropdown. Set the dropdown to Show Only to display only non-deliverable items. These are the items that must be manually added to your delivery invoice.

Once you’ve selected the non-deliverable items to include on the invoice, click the Options button. At the bottom of the Options popover window, there are three tabs available with separate billing options on each.

Delivery tab

• Parts Delivered Invoice – this button will create a delivery invoice with only the parts that have been delivered to the customer.
• Labor Delivered Invoice – this button creates a delivery invoice with only the labor associated with delivered parts.
• All Delivered Invoice – this button works just like the button on the Sales Order > Billing > Billing Options tab. It creates an invoice with all of the parts that have been delivered along with the associated labor.

Delivery + Selected tab

This is the tab you will use to include the non-deliverable parts you selected on the Create Invoice screen.

• Selected + Parts Delivered Invoice – will place all the delivered parts onto the delivery invoice as well as all of the selected non-deliverable items.
• Selected + Labor Delivered Invoice – this button adds all of the individual delivered part’s associate labor plus the selected non-deliverable items.
• Selected + Parts & Labor Delivered – this is the button used to add both delivered parts and labor and the selected non-deliverable items. This is the button most of you will use most of the time.

RFP tab

The RFP tab is seldom used unless you are creating line-item RFP invoices, which is highly unusual. This option is used in conjunction with Settings > Module Settings > Proposal > Accounting > RFP Accounting Settings > Create Line Item RFP’s.

• Parts Only RFP – makes an RFP invoice only showing selected items
• Labor Only RFP – creates an RFP invoice for the labor associated with the selected items.
• Parts & Labor RFP – is used to make a line item RFP items with the items you selected.

Again, Line Item RFP invoices are incredibly rare like the South China tiger. Typically you will create percentage-based RFP invoices. Please consult iPoint Support before using the RFP invoice tab.

Once you have created your Delivery Invoice iPoint will display it for you to review. Using the QuickBooks button on the invoice, you have several options available to you.

• Push Delivery Invoice – push this button to synchronize the delivery invoice into QuickBooks.
• Push as Estimate – this is a seldom-used option that allows you to create estimates in QuickBooks. Remember, estimates have no impact on financials or inventory in QB.
• Do Not Sync With QuickBooks Check this box if you don’t want this delivery invoice pushed to QB. This will hide the sync buttons as well as put a green dot on the invoice. You might use this option if you manually entered the invoice in QuickBooks and want to be sure you don’t send a duplicate.

Applying RFP credits to Delivery invoices

You have completed three steps of getting paid for your work.

1. You created an RFP invoice asking the customer to pay money upfront for work you are going to be doing.
2. You’ve applied the customer’s payment directly to the RFP invoice.
3. You’ve created a delivery invoice for the items and associated labor you have delivered to the customer.
   

Now we need to take some of the customer’s deposit payment and apply it to the delivery invoice. This is the process that will reduce the deposit sitting on the customers account in both iPoint and QuickBooks and apply the pre-payment to the delivery invoice

1. Select the Delivery Invoice from the list of invoices on the Sales Order’s Delivery Invoices tab by clicking on it.
2. When the invoice opens, click the green New Payment/Credit button at the bottom of the invoice to open Payment Add window.
3. At the bottom of the Payment Add window you will see two credit buttons below the big Advanced Payment Receive button
   1. Clicking this button will automatically apply any RFP credits to this delivery invoice. iPoint will only apply credits that are part of the associated sales order, so there is no worry about applying a credit from one job to an invoice for a second job.
   2. If you like a bit more control over which RFP payment is applied to a specific delivery invoice, click the View Available Credits button to open the Payment Details window. Here you can use a specific credit rather than letting the system pick a credit(s) for you. Simply place a checkmark in the box next to the delivery invoice you want to apply the credit to.
4. Back on the delivery invoice you will see that the payment has been added to the invoice reducing the balance due. If the credit was enough to pay the entire invoice, the balance due will be $0.
5. If the RFP credit is less than the delivery invoice balance, the delivery invoice will still show a balance remaining. This can be paid by future RFP payments from your customer.
6. The last step is to click the QuickBooks button and resync the invoice to QuickBooks by clicking Push Changes To QB. This action matches the customer deposit in QuickBooks to the delivery invoice.

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