Understanding Invoice Design

Before you design or modify invoices in the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Contract Billing and JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Service Billing systems, you should understand the use, placement, and naming of smart fields, and the formatting of the section size and font size.

Although you can insert business view fields from the Billing Detail Workfile table (F4812) directly into the header and detail sections (that is, without using the SF4812* smart fields), you must use the SF4812* smart fields in the footer section. To simplify the invoice design process, use smart fields and do not use the business view fields.

Oracle recommends that you change the variable name to a name that is more specific when you insert a smart field. The default variable name is the name of the smart field as it is defined in the data dictionary. If you do not change the name, confusion can result later, especially if the same smart field is used for multiple invoice fields. Also, if you place the same field in multiple sections (such as the header, the footer, or the detail section), you might want to include a reference to the section in the variable name.

The variable name that you select becomes the associated text that the system prints with the variable. Thus, if you want the text to appear on the invoice with the variable, you should name the variable the same as the text that you want to appear. If you want the text to appear but do not want to refer to the variable by the same name, you can modify the associated text later by changing the name within the properties of the text. If you do not want any associated text to appear with the variable, you can disconnect and delete the text after you place the smart field on the invoice. This solution is not recommended because the system does not allow you to change the smart field parameters when you delete the associated text. To display a smart field without associated text, Oracle recommends that you change the name of the associated text to a one-character blank field.

The system initially inserts all alpha smart fields as 40-character fields. You can change the length afterwards by changing the display length within the properties of the smart field. All numeric smart fields are initially inserted as 15-digit, 2-decimal fields. For all noncurrency numeric fields, you can change the length and decimal settings later by changing the display length and display decimals within the properties of the smart field. Currency numeric fields do not need modification; the system prints them with appropriate currency properties.

When you modify section sizes or font sizes of detail lines, you might need to modify these three variables in the Initialize section of the Invoice Header section:

// Set the number of detail lines that can print on a page that DOES NOT have the
// Total Section print
VA rpt_MaxDetailLines_MATH01 = 45
// Set the number of detail lines that can print on a page that DOES have the
// Total Section print
VA rpt_MaxDetLinesWithTots_MATH01 = 25
// Set the number of lines (detail and blank lines) that are between the Detail
// Heading and the Total Section
VA rpt_LinesBeforeTotals_MATH01 = 30

You can test the line counting modifications by enabling the assignment line that sets the Blank Line variable to a visible expression. As illustrated in this code section, the disabled assignment line is located in the Do Section of the Blank Line section:

// This value to be set to <blank>, but can be set to something visible (for
// example blankline) for testing purposes.
! RV Blank Line = BlankLineeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee