Accounts Department Sales Ledger

High Level Activities / Processing

1. Verify/Populate/Correct (as required) invoice able data for completed TOT services (manufacture & production, despatch, client goods handling,storage, webstores)
2. Release validated sales invoice data for overnight batch import to Accounts package
3. Generate  sales invoices in accounting package and provide to clients
4. Receive client payments into TOT bank account
5. Allocate customer payment receipts to open invoices in accounting package
6. Generate remittances for allocations in accounts package and provide to client
7. Reconcile Company Bank a/c to Accounting package post payments

Inputs

Outputs

Current Processing Flow

Validation/ correction of Invoice able Sales

1. TOT has varying invoice validation processes depending on the service origin. It is worth remarking that although the invoice is created in the internal system - its data contents are batch inserted into an accounts package which is the platform used to generate and despatch customer. (An exception  for this is for clients who need to be perceived that their orders are completed in order for them to generate PO references which are then sent to TOT to be keyed onto invoices which are then released)

   1. For Production / Manufacturing orders, accounts staff check the invoice able elements of the order to validate data existence and correctness

   2. Ditto for Despatch services

   3. For Storage costs - accounts staff run a report that calculates charges for eligible clients who hold stock at TOT. The calculation is based on current [QTY] of items * [item_chargeable_rate]. This process produces a report of holdings together with an invoice for the total. Accounts staff visually check that the holdings report total is identically reflected on the invoice

   4. For 3rd party PO Handling charges, accounts staff check the invoices created for these for data existence and reasonableness.

   5. For webstores, sales invoice data is generated at the individual web customer order level.  However, webstore owners require a single aggregate invoice for a set of orders (for a given time period typically). Before an aggregate invoice is created, accounts staff interrogate the record set to ensure that each individual webstore order contains the (correct) required charge data. [supply, production,picking, packing & despatch]

Release validated sales invoice data for overnight batch import to Accounts package

1. Accounts staff update the status in the production system for invoice data on orders that has been validated and i thus ready to invoice.
2. The status update causes the invoice data to be released overnight to the accounts package
3. The exception to this is for customers who require pre-advice of invoicing. For this cohort, invoices are generated from within the internal system and emailed directly to the client. Once the client responds with their internal PO references, these are recorded against the respective invoice data and the record marked for release as per #1

Generate  sales invoices in accounting package and provide to clients

1. Invoice data which has been validated feeds in overnight into the accounting package and creates a sales invoice record
2. Accounts staff identify the newly inserted invoices and export these into the email package
3. Staff then check in the email package that the exported invoices have been correctly captured and then email these to the respective clients
4. It is worth remarking that the accounts package supports multiple invoices on a single email record - so these are grouped / sent on a single email to each client
5. Certain clients require additional supporting information to be sent - WMIS for example receives a report which cross references TOT invoice identifiers to their WMIS internal identifiers. This is generated from the accounts package reporting module
6. Once invoices have been emailed, the accounts package updates their status as emailed.

Receive client payments into TOT bank account

1. The ideal situation is that once the client receives the invoice, they make full payment to TOT's bank account
2. This occurs, but also clients may elect to pay for multiple invoices (in full) with a single payment, or make a single payment and request partial or full allocation across multiple invoice
3. Accounts staff interrogate the TOT Bank account to identify client payments (as they are not always pre-advised that payment will be made)s

Allocate customer payment receipts to open invoices and Generate Remittances in the accounting package.

1. Payments received from clients are allocated against their open invoices
2. This may be on 1:1 basis, or across a series of invoices - either in whole or partially.
3. This allocation may be directed by the clients themselves or  in absence of direction is done by accounts staff
4. Accounts staff record the allocation of payments to invoices in the accounts package
5. Once allocations have been completed, accounts staff post the entries in the accounts package and generate remittance advice which is emailed to the respective clients
6. This updates client balances and the corresponding invoice records in the accounts package
7. Updated client balances are fed back from the accounts package to the client records in the production system. Note: invoice paid status is not communicated back to the production system.

Reconcile Company Bank a/c to Accounting package post payments

1. On a daily basis, the balance of the company bank account is reconciled back to the accounting package
2. The account should reconcile as in very simplistic terms, debits on the bank account should correspond to purchase orders to suppliers and  credits to the account correspond to sales payments in respect of invoices

See here for workflow schematic