Creating Maintenance Contract Invoices

Once you've created maintenance contracts and created MCC calls, you can create and print invoices for your MCC service calls. Creating maintenance contract invoices is a monthly procedure. We recommend you establish a schedule for creating maintenance contract invoices (i.e., on the same day every month). This way, invoices will not be overlooked.

Service Management maintenance invoices are created in a Microsoft Dynamics GP Receivables batch based on the billing schedule defined for each maintenance contract. Create the invoices only after your maintenance contracts are complete and up to date. Maintenance invoices can be created only once for each period; however, the invoices can be printed multiple times if necessary.

Invoices are sent to a Microsoft Dynamics GP Receivables batch called MAINTENANCE XX, where XX is the specific fiscal period number. You must post the Receivables batch in Microsoft Dynamics GP for the maintenance invoices to appear in the Microsoft Dynamics GP Receivables Open Transactions file.

If you chose the percentage-of-completion or the revenue schedule revenue recognition method, you can create invoices for maintenance contract service calls. You cannot automatically create invoices if you are using the manual revenue recognition method.

Maintenance cost transaction numbers have the prefix "MC." The cost transaction number defaults to the selection made in the Maintenance Options window.

The cost transaction number is used only within Service Management. Don't confuse it with the Microsoft Dynamics GP document number. The Microsoft Dynamics GP document number defaults to the selection made in the Use Next Number From field in the Maintenance Options window.

Creating the Invoice

1. Select Microsoft Dynamics GP > Tools > Routines > Service Management > Maintenance Contract > Create Invoices.
2. Complete the following fields, as necessary.
   • Date
     Use the drop-down lists in the From and To fields to select the range. You can select from the following ranges: enter date (the ability to enter a starting and ending date), current date, beginning of month, and end of month.
   • Invoice
     Select to create invoices for:

     • All customers, or a Branch Range of customers, or by Contract Type, both master contracts and unassigned maintenance contracts are invoiced.
       When filtering and then invoicing for a contract type, if individual contracts under the same master contract have different contract types, only the contracts with the filtered contract type will be invoiced.

     • An Individual Customer, the criteria entered in the Individual Customer fields determine which contracts are invoiced.
       • Select Contract Owner or Bill To Customer.
       • Select the Customer Name and then select Create to invoice all master contracts and unassigned maintenance contracts for that customer. 
       • If you also enter a Location Name, only the unassigned maintenance contracts for that customer and location are invoiced. Master contracts can span multiple locations, and therefore would not be invoiced.
       • If you use the lookup window in the Contract Number field to select a contract, all maintenance contracts display. You can only select unassigned maintenance contracts in this field. If you select or enter an assigned maintenance contract number, you receive an error message alerting you that the contract cannot be invoiced separately.
   • Options
     • Mark the Calculate Taxes and/or Calculate Commissions checkboxes if you wish to calculate taxes and commissions. Processing is faster when taxes and commissions are not calculated. 
     • Mark Include Non-Auto Billed Contracts in Preview to display the non-auto billed contracts in the Preview report. This check box defaults to marked.
3. Select Preview to preview a list of invoices for the selected period.
4. Select the Create button to create the invoice(s).
5. Select the Print button on the Maintenance Invoicing window to print the invoices. Select one of four invoice format options for maintenance billing. All four invoice formats include customer and address, date, contract number, purchase order number, contract type, billing date, invoice number, amount, tax, and total. If the contract contains a billing note, it prints on all invoices. Minor differences include: when using Multicurrency Management with maintenance contracts and master contracts, invoice 1 prints originating amounts instead of functional amounts; when printing multiple invoices for the same customer, invoice 2 and 3 print the invoices on one page. For invoice examples, see Maintenance Contract Invoice.

If you did not mark the Automatically Create Invoices option during setup and did not mark the Automatically Bill field on the Maintenance Contract window, maintenance invoices will not be previewed or created.

After the invoices have been created, a summary report prints, listing the invoices created. 

You can view the periods you have created and posted invoices for by choosing the Billing button on the Maintenance Contract window. If the billing amount has been posted, the posted date appears in the Posted column, and the Year and Period columns fill in accordingly. If a period has not been posted, 0/0/00 appears in the Posted column.

You can create invoices for an individual contract by choosing Print > Invoicing on the Maintenance Contract window.

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