Billing
Faster and more accurate invoice processing
Everyone is happy when your company closes a big sale, but that is when the trouble can start for financial managers. In many companies, billing is a manual and laborious process consisting of rekeyed information and a mixture of detached spreadsheets and custom databases. These inefficiencies can cause billing mistakes, bottlenecks at month end, long order to cash cycles and lead to lower customer satisfaction.
FinancialForce Billing streamlines the invoicing process by using information already held in Salesforce CRM - so there's no need for manual rekeying or complex integrations. Users can create an invoice directly from any opportunity, support case or other billable activity captured in Salesforce at the click of a button.
Optimize your Order to Cash Cycle
Because FinancialForce customer records were built with salesforce.com account objects, time delays and process friction are eliminated from your order to cash procedure. The bills are generated from CRM sales transactions and can be posted directly into the FinancialForce single ledger. This means invoices are generated quickly and accurately, eliminating time delays, billing disputes and work backlogs at the end of the month. Billing disputes and re-work due to mistakes are eliminated.
You will improve DSO, optimize cash management, keep your customers happy and make less work for your staff.
Key features
- Raise an invoice direct from any activity in Salesforce CRM (standard or custom objects)
- Generate a credit note directly from a sales invoice
- Raise a single invoice that has multiple installments due for payment on different dates
- Spread the revenue from a sales invoice across a range of accounting periods, at both document and product line level
- Set up recurring invoices for regular bills, such as an annual maintenance agreement invoiced monthly
- Accept credit card payments using PayPal
- Add your own custom fields to the standard sales invoice page layout
- Send invoices directly to customers via email
- Define customized printed invoice layouts
- Add notes and attachments to the invoice
Invoice scheduling
A sales invoice can be paid in installments. You can do this by setting up a payment schedule. The result is a single invoice that has multiple values that are due for payment on different dates. Scheduled payments are typically used to request payment for purchases that are invoiced annually but paid for monthly.
You can also create a schedule to automatically generate multiple invoices from a single entry. A recurring invoice is a special type of invoice that you enter only once but that causes several similar invoices to be generated automatically. Recurring invoices are typically used to request payment for regular bills, such as an annual maintenance agreement, that are invoiced monthly. Alternatively they could be used to create invoices for scheduled monthly deliveries of products.
Revenue recognition
An income schedule allows you to spread the revenue from a single sales invoice across a range of accounting periods, so the values in the general ledger accurately reflect the income due for each period. A single sales invoice can be associated with one or more income schedules, at the invoice or the line item level.
Credit note processing
Once a sales invoice has been posted to FinancialForce Accounting, you can use it to create a credit note. The document created by the conversion inherits many of the original invoice details, including its currency and tax values. If the invoice was created from an opportunity, a reference to this opportunity is retained. You can then amend the details, add or remove lines and so on, before saving.
All exchange rates for a credit note are calculated using the invoice date. This ensures that where the credit note is converted from a sales invoice, there will be no exchange rate differences between the two documents.
Printing
The layout of your printed invoices can be customized to suit your requirements. This includes the ability to add your own company's logo and to add your own custom fields to the ones already included on the standard invoice layout.
If you'd rather not print and mail these invoices, you can email them directly to your customers from within FinancialForce Accounting - saving you time and money.
Read more about FinancialForce Accounting on our products page »
Billing screenshot
