If you invoice all orders shipped at the end of each day or maybe even at the end of the week, did you know there 2 different ways to batch invoice in Business Central? This blog post is 1 of 2 where I will share with you these 2 very different methods to “batch” invoice what has been shipped in BC.
Posting Order-by-Order
It is the end of the day, or the week, and you are ready to invoice everything that has been shipped. Your customers require that each invoice contains only shipments from a single order, so you need to invoice order-by-order. In addition, you are required to add or change document date and posting date to today. Since these could be incorrect on any given order, you open each one, check the dates, then select Post Invoice.
Your company is doing well, so what was previously a relatively easy task to invoice each week has become more and more time-consuming. And unfortunately, you occasionally miss setting the dates on the invoices properly. No one’s perfect!
Setup help related to Posting Dates
Whether using Batch Post or not, if you want help minimizing misassigned posting and document dates on shipping and/or invoicing, you will want to consider how you have set Sales & Receivable Setup Default Posting Date and Link Doc. Date to Posting Date. If you set Default Posting Date to “Blank,” a user must enter a posting date to post the first transaction from the document. However, it is important to note that the posting date is not reset to blank after this first posting from the document. So, if the first transaction posted from the order was a shipment and you are now invoicing, the order will have a posting date set from posting the shipment unless changed by the user. And, if you have disabled Link Doc. Date to Posting Date, not only will the posting date potentially be set incorrectly for the invoice, but the document date may also be incorrect.
Another consideration, your orders may be coming from an e-commerce platform or other source. Based on this integration, there may or may not be a posting date set on the orders. But once again, depending on how you post your shipments, posting and document dates could already be set (and not necessarily correctly) at invoicing even if they were originally blank.
Why am I sharing this now, in this blog post? Because one of the hidden gems in Batch Posting is the ability to set both posting and document dates on all orders included in the batch at the time of posting. All of the above can be made into a moot point.
Batch Invoice in Business Central
Batch posting is used for shipping, invoicing or shipping & invoicing. You probably think I am going to tell you to use System Search and type in “batch post” or “post batch,” but I am not. It doesn’t work. Go to the Sales Order list page and use System Search here or find it under the Post action in the menu.
After selecting the action, you are presented with a few decisions. Do you want to Ship, Invoice or Ship & Invoice? Do you want to select a Posting Date to replace the Posting Date currently assigned to the documents you will be posting, and do you want that same date to be used for the Document Date?
Replacing the posting and document dates are great options when you invoice weekly, and your orders are entered and/or shipped throughout the week. (NOTE: If you are using multiple currency, the exchange rate associated with the new posting date on the sales header will be applied to the sales lines.)
And finally, do you want to filter the orders considered for batch posting by any values found in the sales header. For example, you may want to filter your Sales Orders to Status = Released and Completely Shipped = Yes (if you invoice on complete shipment.) If you need to invoice partial shipments, Batch Post will invoice only what has been shipped and not yet invoiced if you select only Invoice (and not Ship) option.
Summary Batch Invoice in Business Central
Batch Post is not only available for Sales Order but also available as a posting action from Purchase Orders. To learn more from Microsoft go to Post Multiple Documents at the Same Time – Business Central | Microsoft Learn
If you want to automate invoicing by using a batch process, BC provides 2 processes for you out-of-the-box – Batch Post and Combine Shipment. Two distinctly different processes to meet 2 very different requirements. Next week I will share details on using Combine Shipment. Let me know in comments if Batch Post might be the Righter Way for you and it is something you are going to investigate further.
