Invoices
The main purpose of Telefakt is to create invoices and send them to your customers. To achieve this the process of invoicing creates invoices and invoicelines from orderlines. In this chapter you will learn more about what an invoice is, what it's lines contain, how these lines map to orderlines and customers, how invoices are sent out and what happens after.
What makes an Invoice
Each invoice is connected to one and only one customer. This customer is the entity responsible for paying the invoice but they might not be the one that uses the service(s) that the invoice contains. Invoices are made out in a single currency but this currrency can be any of the 168 supported currencies in Telefakt. Once the invoice is created it cannot be deleted and the invoice number is "used up". Each bill issuer in Telefakt can have separate invoice number series, and separate invoice layouts.
Automatic invoicing of change and termination orders
Once a service is activated Telefakt will bill it until the service is terminated or changed. Any changes to existing services be that an increase or a decrease in price as well as termination of the service is automatically refunded for the already billed period and re-invoiced with the new price/service. Many billing systems require manual handling of this process, which is error prone and labour intensive, especially in segments where change is frequent.
Invoicelines
A invoice is made up of one or more invoicelines, each invoiceline has a period start and end date, number of items, price, and total amount as well as the product and other information like location data and comment fields. There is a strict relationshihp between orderlines and invoicelines in Telefakt, all invoicelines must originate from an orderline and once and orderline is activated it guarantees that invoincing must happen. This tight coupling is critical to the reliability and depandbility on Telefakt's ability to guarantee that everything that is delivered will also be invoiced.
Distribution
Once the invoice is created it must be distributed out to the customer, the recipient of the invoice is configured at the customer level. Some of the settings are manual, like defining that the customer should receive PDF by email to a specific address, while others are entirely automatic like EHF. Telefakt supports distribution of invoices in the following formats;
- Email - PDF
- Email - Excel
- EHF
- Paper
- EFaktura
There are rules on which formats can be mixed and which formats can be configured/altered by users and overrides for these rules. After the delivery method(s) and format(s) that the customer should receive the invoice in has been decided distribution can start. Telefak handles distribution by email directly, whereas the other three delivery methods (EHF, EFaktura and Paper) are handled by partners. Logiq handles EHF while Riverty handles EFaktura and Paper deliveries. Telefakt will send the correct invoices for distribution to these two different partners automatically. The last step before the distribution actually happens is to compute the KID and due date of the invoice. Once that is completed the invoice will be distributed and then marked as Printed which prevents it from being printed again.
Credit and debt collection
After the invoice has been distributed the next step is to handle the payment. For this Telefakt uses Riverty, they receive all the customer payments, check them off against the correct invoice, apply any fees or interests and then pay the money on to GlobalConnect. Telefakt is integrated with Rivert through a Azure messaging service, this means that Telefakt interprets and applies all relevant messages from Riverty onto the local copy of the accounts receivable for the customer. This allows users in Telefakt to see the exact status of the invoice as it is in Rivert.
Invoice reminders and shutdown notices
Because Telefakt knows the exact status of the invoice it also automates the sending of invoice reminder emails and provides a UI for users to track and manage invoices and connections for customers that don't pay their invoices. These emails are visible for all users when looking at an invoice and the Credit department can easily choose not to notify a customer of missing invoice payment. Users can also manage shutdown notices which are sent to customers when their invoice is more than 42 days overdue.
Accounting
When an invoice has been created it must be added to the accounting systems. Telefakt does this automatically after the PDF of the invoice is received from Riverty. This guarantees that any minor currency exchange rate divergences are handled correctly. Because all accounting has to happen in the system currency which is NOK all invoices will have a NOK value as well as the currency value. Since Telefakt fetches data currency exchange rates every day in the morning and Riverty fetches it once a week invoices in other currencies than NOK will have a small divergence in the NOK value. This gets corrected when Riverty has created the PDF and computed their NOK value - this then overwrites the value in Telefakt and that new NOK value is what gets sent IFS.