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 efficiently invoice in Business Central? Last week I shared the first method – Batch Post. This week, I share the second – Combine Shipments.
Setup help for Combine Shipments
Since this process may not pertain to every customer, BC allows us to indicate which customers will be included in the Combine Shipments process. Any not identified will be ignored when the process is run.
On the Shipping FastTab of the Customer can be found a Combine Shipments toggle. Enable this for each customer that will be included in the Combine Shipments process. I frequently receive calls for help where this step was missed. Especially for new customers just added. I recommend setting up a Customer Template specific to combine shipment customers including this field enabled to help minimize this problem.
Combine Shipments enabled on the Customer will default Combine Shipments to enabled on sales orders created after it was set. To include any sales orders that may have been created prior to enabling Combine Shipments on the Customer, go to the Shipping and Billing FastTab on the Sales Order and set it manually. If you do not, you may get “Nothing to create” when you run Combine Shipments. If an order’s shipments need to be excluded from the Combine Shipment process, Combine Shipments can be disabled on that specific order.
Posting many to one
Combine Shipments is a form of weekly invoicing often referred to as “batch processing.” This process allows an organization to invoice all shipments over a specified period of time on a single invoice even if the shipments originated from multiple orders. Rather than creating an Sales Invoice and using Get Shipments, customer by customer, Combine Shipments provides a batch process to create the sales invoices.
Use System Search to find Combine Shipments the first time. Make certain to bookmark this task before you run it to make it easier to find the next time. For this process, we define a Posting Date, Document Date and what we want to include when building our invoices. Additionally, we can filter by Sales Order header information and Posted Sales Shipment header information. The illustration shows common request criteria for this process. Until you are comfortable with the results, you may not want to post the invoices it creates. This allows you to review each invoice prior to posting. Read through the Tooltips for each caption on the other options available.
When the process runs successfully and creates invoices, you will receive a message.
The example below is one of the invoices created. If you have been using Get Shipments to create your invoices to date, the lines on this invoice may look familiar. Combine Shipments is just a way to automate the Get Shipments from Sales Invoice process making it easier and less likely to miss a shipment in the creation of invoices. But alternatively, you may find it includes a shipment it shouldn’t if you don’t set your criteria correctly.
Summary
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. Check them out for yourself and let me know in comments if one or the other turns out to be the Righter Way for you.
For more information from Microsoft go to How to Combine Shipments on a Single Invoice – Business Central | Microsoft Learn
