Logicity Automatic Invoicing

Logicity Automatic Invoicing does not replace the process of creating invoice records within Visual Enterprise or Visual Manufacturing. It is simply a bolt-on application that will facilitate the mass distribution of digital and printed copies of invoices to your customers. You will continue to start your invoicing process by going to Visual's ‘Invoice Forms’ and selecting the option to ‘Create A/R invoices’. The only difference might be that you will likely want to check the option to ‘Suppress Print’ as you will be handling that elsewhere. (Image 1)

As A/R invoices are generated in Visual enterprise, we maintain a table behind the scenes that allows us to know what has, or has not, been processed by Logicity Automatic Invoicing. As often as you wish to output your invoices, simply open up the Logicity Automatic Invoicing screen and it will show you, grouped by customer, which invoices need to be processed. (Image 2)

Initially all customers that have an e-mail address on file will be auto-selected. We determine the customer e-mail address by querying the ‘E-mail Documents’ section of Customer Maintenance in Infor Visual. (Image 3) (Image 4)

For users of versions of Infor Visual prior to 6.5.3 (when this E-mail Documents feature was added) we instead use the generic contact e-mail address (multiple recipients can be specified when semi-colon separated). (Image 5)

In a typical workflow, the user will start by pressing the E-mail Invoices button. This will trigger the invoices for each of the checked customers to be e-mailed. A single e-mail will be sent per customer and the invoices will be attached each as separate attachments. (Image 6)

The format of this invoice will be as follows (editable in Crystal should you wish to alter it). (Image 7)

As each customer is processed, they drop off the list and you are left with only customers with no e-mail address on file. (Image 8)

Again in a typical workflow, the user would check the remaining customers to process and then click the ‘Print Invoices’ button. This will cause all of the invoices for the remaining checked customers to be printed off in batch, by customer.

A few other noteworthy features on this screen to note are:

• The ‘Select’ button is a drop-down that allows you to quickly select / de-select customers based on whether they have an e-mail address on file.
• Add Invoices loads up a screen to allow you to search for previously processed invoices and add them back for re-processing.
• Remove Invoices pulls and of the checked customers off of the list.
• The search boxes allow you to easily filter down the customer list.

You can also process account summaries with this application using the ‘Process Account Summary’ button. (Image 9)

This screen works in a very similar way to the invoice processing screen by displaying a list of customers along with buttons to e-mail and to print. (Image 10)

Customers will never drop off of this list as a customer statement is just a" point-in-time" document. If a customer selected on this list to be processed has no outstanding invoices they will not receive an e-mail or have any invoices printed for them. The format of the customer statement is as follows. (Image 11)

Under ‘Settings’ you can modify the behavior of how Logicity Automatic Invoicing operates. (Image 12)

• Under the ‘Database’ section you specify the credentials for how the software communicates to your Visual database.
• In the ‘E-mail’ section you specify the credentials to communicate with your e-mail server along with the From Address, e-mail subject, and body of messages sent from this software.
• The RRD files allow you to define the chain of actions that occur when each of the buttons in the application are clicked. Any number of reports can be executed and processed with a variety of different actions. For example, say when you print an invoice you also wish to save a copy out on your network drive you could do so by editing the ‘Print Invoices RRD’.  (Image 13)