Understanding Online Bill Entry

This section lists common elements and discusses:

• New invoice number assignment.

• Invoice line number assignment.

• Chunking.

• Invoice line summarization.

• Defaults.

• ChartField Security.

• ChartField combination edits.

• Affiliate ChartField Defaulting feature.

• Entry types and entry reasons.

• Online bill inquiries.

Online bill entry enables you to enter bills directly into the system and bypass the Billing interface. Although the manual method is less common than using the billing interface, it is useful for miscellaneous billing activity and for small departments that do not warrant their own tracking systems.

Online bill entry, whether for standard or express billing, enables you to view and modify online bills that have been imported through the Billing interface. You can review the bills before converting them into invoices.

When entering bills online, you should understand the difference between bill header and bill line data:

• Information that you enter on bill header pages applies to the invoice as a whole.

  For example, if you enter a contract number on one of the header pages, all billing activity for the invoice corresponds to that contract number.

• Information that you enter on bill line pages applies only to a particular line of a bill.

  For example, to combine billing activity for more than one contract number in a single invoice, enter the contract number on each bill line, not in the header.

  Note:

  Information that you enter at the line level overrides information at the header level.

  Most components in this topic operate in deferred processing mode. The system does not update or validate most fields until you save a page or refresh it by clicking a button, link, or tab. This delayed processing has implications for the field values on a page. For example, if a field contains a default value, any values that you enter before the system updates the page override the default. Also, the system updates quantity balances or totals only when you save or refresh the page.