PeopleSoft Billing 9.1 PeopleBook

Searching for Bills

This chapter discusses how to:

Specify bill search criteria and sort bill search results.
Review bill search results.
Refine bill search criteria.
Use wildcard features to refine bill search queries.
Interpret bill search results.

Specifying Bill Search Criteria and Sorting Bill Search Results

This section discusses how to:

Define search criteria.
Sort bill search results.

Pages Used to Specify Bill Search Criteria and Sort Bill Search Results

Page Name	Definition Name	Navigation	Usage
Bills Not Invoiced - Bill Search	BI_BILL_SEARCH	Billing, Locate Bills, Bills Not Invoiced	Search the system for any bill not invoiced that satisfies a unique set of parameters that you provide.
Lines Not Invoiced - Bill Line Search	BI_LINE_SEARCH	Billing, Locate Bills, Lines Not Invoiced	Search the system for any bill line not yet invoiced that satisfies a unique set of parameters that you provide.
Bills Invoiced - Bill Search	BI_BILL_SEARCH_INQ	Billing, Locate Bills, Bills Invoiced	Search for any invoiced bills and select bills for reprint.
Lines Invoiced - Bill Line Search	BI_LINE_SEARCH_INQ	Billing, Locate Bills, Lines Invoiced	Search for any invoiced bill lines.

Defining Search Criteria

Access the Bills Not Invoiced - Bill Search page (Billing, Locate Bills, Bills Not Invoiced) or the Bills Invoiced - Bill Search page (Billing, Locate Bills, Bills Invoiced).

Business Unit	This field is required.
Bill To	Select Contract or Customer, and in the adjacent field, select from the list of contract or customer numbers. This field is required.
Currency Option	Search by transaction currency or base currency.
	Click the Header Selection Criteria button to access the Bill Search Criteria page and refine the search criteria. When you click OK, the system runs the search based on these parameters and then returns you to the Search page.
	Click the Bill Search Reset button to reset values to the defaults.
Search	Click the Search button to run the search query.
Reprint Invoices	Click to reprint bills that you specify by selecting the adjacent Select field. The system reprints these invoices using the output destination and server preferences that you define on the User Preferences - Billing page. This button is available from the Bills Invoiced page only. Note. If any line on an invoice has a summarization template selected, then a summarized invoice will be printed; otherwise, a detail invoice will be printed.

Sorting Bill Search Results

Access a Search page.

To sort the results of your bill search, just click on the column heading of the column you wish to sort by. The first time you click on a column, the bills will be sorted in ascending order. If you click on the column heading again, the bills will be sorted in descending order.

Reviewing Bill Search Results

The page that displays the search results is determined by the type of query, either bill or bill line, that you initiate.

This section discusses how to:

Review results on the Bills Not Invoiced and Bills Invoiced pages.
Review results on the Lines Not Invoiced and Lines Invoiced pages.

Reviewing Results on the Bills Not Invoiced and Bills Invoiced Pages

Access the Bills Not Invoiced (Billing, Locate Bills, Bills Not Invoiced) or Bills Invoiced page (Billing, Locate Bills, Bills Invoiced).

Select

Select one check box at a time to activate the links at the bottom of this page. Use these links to navigate to the bill that you select. Depending on the link that you click, the system transfers you to the appropriate bill entry page.

To reprint invoices, select one or multiple bills and click the Reprint Invoices button.

Note. When you navigate to the selected bill, the system displays the bill in the transaction currency even if you were searching in base or euro currency mode.

Template Invoice Flag

Indicates if it is an actual bill or merely a template.

Invoice Amount

Includes all calculated taxes. The invoice amounts and currency codes correspond to the currency that you select in the Bill Search Criteria page. Changing the currency on this page changes the values in the Invoice Amount column and the corresponding currency code.

Reviewing Results on the Lines Not Invoiced and Lines Invoiced Pages

Access the Lines Not Invoiced (Billing, Locate Bills, Lines Not Invoiced) and Lines Invoiced page (Billing, Locate Bills, Lines Invoiced).

Select	Select one check box at a time to activate the links at the bottom of this page. Use these links to navigate to the selected bill. Depending on the link that you click, the system displays the appropriate page in bill entry. Note. When you navigate to the selected bill, the system displays the bill in the transaction currency, even if you were searching in base or euro currency mode.
Line	Indicates the order of the bill line when it is printed on the document. If the bill has been through the Pro Forma Pre-process or the invoice Finalization process, the system assigned a line number to it.
Seq (sequence)	The natural order in which the system adds the lines onto the bill. A bill line always has a sequence number regardless of whether it has been printed, prepared, or finalized. If the system added lines through the Billing Interface, the sequence number of each line is unique, but order may not be significant.
Description and Identifier	Displays the description field and the identifier code field from the bill line record.
Gross Extended or Net Extended Amt (net extended amount)	Displays the gross extended amount, which is the unit price multiplied by the quantity, or the net extended amount, which includes any discounts or surcharges that are applied.
Discount, Surcharge, Tax Amountand VAT Amount	An asterisk in any of these columns indicates that this line has a discount, surcharge, or tax code associated with it.

Refining Bill Search Criteria

This section discusses how to:

Refine bill-header search criteria.
Refine line-level search criteria.

Pages Used to Refine Bill Search Criteria

Page Name	Definition Name	Navigation	Usage
Bill Search Criteria	BILL_SEARCH_CRIT	Click the Header Selection Criteria button on the Bills Not Invoiced - Bill Search or Bills Invoiced - Bill Search page.	Refine bill search criteria.
Bill Line Search Criteria	BILL_LSEARCH_CRIT	Click the Bill Line Search button on the Lines Not Invoiced - Bill Line Search or the Lines Invoiced - Bill Search page.	Refine bill-line search criteria.

Refining Bill Header Search Criteria

Access the Bill Search Criteria page (click the Header Selection Criteria button on the Bills Not Invoiced - Bill Search or Bills Invoiced - Bill Search page).

Currency Option	Search by transaction or base currency. Use the Currency Value option to restrict the search to a particular currency, such as USD (U.S. dollars). If you leave this field blank, the results can include multiple currencies.
Ref (reference selection) Apply To, and Value	Sets the orientation for the search page. Click the Detail button to select a reference code that contains meaningful information in the search context. Reference enables you to qualify which values for the reference that you would like to include. For example, using the default reference Invoice (I), you can enter a search value of OE% in Ref Query Value (reference query value) to search for invoices that begin with the letters OE. From the Bills Not Invoiced or the Bills Invoiced pages, use the Apply To field that is adjacent to Ref to specify the search at either the bill header or line level. These references are available only at the header level: Customer (U). Invoice (I). Consolidated Key (K). Consolidated Invoice (N). Note. If you select Contract in the Bill To field on the Bills Not Invoiced page, you cannot elect to search by contract number in the Ref field on the Bill Search Criteria page. Likewise, if you select Customer in the Bill To field on the Bills Not Invoiced page, you cannot elect to search by customer in the Ref field on the Bill Search Criteria page.
Bill Type, Source, and Status	Enter values to narrow the search to specific bill types or sources, or those bills with a specific status. When you access the Bill Search Criteria page from the Bills Not Invoiced - Bill Search page, bills with a status of invoiced or final are not available for selection; this page searches only for bills that have not been invoiced.
Date Operand, Date, Amt Operand (amount operand), and Amount	Enter values to search by an invoice date or amount. Use the Amt Operand field to further refine the search criteria. If you search by invoice amount, specify a corresponding currency code in the field that is adjacent to the Amount field.

Refining Line Level Search Criteria

Access the Bill Line Search Criteria page (click the Bill Line Search button on the Lines Not Invoiced - Bill Line Search or the Lines Invoiced - Bill Search page).

Ref (reference)

Select a reference code that contains meaningful information in the search context to set the orientation for the search page. Selecting a reference enables you to qualify which values for the reference that you want to include. For example, using the default reference, Invoice (I), you can enter a search value of OE% to see only invoices that begin with the letters OE. For an invoice reference, the default column values are I (identifier), F (charge from), and N (net extended amount).

Date Sel (date select)

Various dates are tracked at the bill line level and may be useful in identifying billing activity. The system stores these dates at the line level:

Charge From Date (F).
Contract Date (N).
Order Date (O).
Charge To Date (T).

Use the amount operands field to further refine the search criteria.

Amt Sel (amount selected)

You can enter search criteria for bill lines by their dollar amounts. In the adjacent field, you can search by:

Gross Extended Amount (G): Without discounts or surcharges applied.

Net Extended Amount (N): With discounts or surcharges applied.

Use the amount operands field to further refine the search criteria, or enter an actual date or dollar amount in the open field for the comparison search.

Using Wildcard Features to Refine Bill Search Queries

Generally billing search engines support standard wildcard features for the Ref, Bill Type, and Bill Source fields. Unless you enter one of these wildcards, PeopleSoft Billing assumes that you want an exact match:

%	Match one or more characters.
*	Match one or more characters.
_	Match any single character.
?	Match any single character.
!	If first character, negate the operator (not equal or not like).
~	A blank character. Do not use this character with any other characters or wildcard symbols.
\	Escape character. Do not treat the next character as a wildcard.

For example, you could search for a blank in the Ref, Bill Type, and Bill Source fields by entering a tilde (~) in each field. If you leave these fields empty, the system selects all values for that field.

Within Bill Search, there are exceptions to the wildcard approach. Exceptions occur in these instances:

When you select Invoice in the Ref field, and the Value is left blank, all invoices for the contract or customer are returned.
When you do not select Invoice in the Ref field, and the Value is left blank, only rows where the referenced field is blank are returned.

Interpreting Bill Search Results

In the search results scroll area of the search pages, the number of rows is expressed in three numbers, X To Y Of Z, where Z is the total number of rows that meet the search criteria specified, and X and Y are the rows that appear in this query chunk.

Use the scroll bar to scroll through the rows of bill header data. Click the Next Chunk button to obtain the next chunk of data. You see the values for X and Y change accordingly, but Z stays constant until you change search parameters and rerun the query.

The invoice amount totals appear next to the number of selected rows. These are expressed as A/B, where B is the total dollar value of all invoice amounts that meet the search criteria, and A is the total dollar amount of the invoices that appear in the current chunk. When the set of results includes invoices with varying currencies, A/B does not appear. Instead, the system displays a mixed currencies message.

The first chunk of rows that appears when you run the search query is equal to the number of bills that you specify in the Bill Entry Max Rows field on the Installation Options - Billing - General Options page. You can change the sort order by clicking the respective column headings. The system does not invoke the query again; it resorts the rows in the current chunk. The dollar total of the chunk does not change when you change the sort order without re-invoking the query.

Note. If you resort a chunk of information, you must refresh the search to retrieve further chunks. The sort command invalidates related chunks.

Chartfield Security is enforced on the Bill Search components because of the Project ID field that is displayed in the search results. Therefore, if Project ID is a secured chartfield, a user may not see all the bills that match their search criteria in the search results. This is because the search results will filter out any invoices that reference a Project that the user is not secured to access.