Service Invoices

Service invoices bill customers for completed work from a service call. The standard workflow is to create an invoice from posted service-call costs, mark the draft invoice Ready To Send, post the invoice, and then send the posted invoice PDF to the customer.

Invoices can be reviewed from the Service Call Invoices tab or from the Service Invoices workspace. The Service Call Invoices tab is best when you are working on one service call. The Service Invoices workspace is best for processing or emailing multiple invoices.

Prepare the Service Call Costs

1. Open Service Calls and select the service call you want to invoice. Confirm the customer, location, and billing information on the Summary tab.

2. Review the charges. Click the Service Call Costs tab. Check the descriptions, quantities, and Billing amounts. Use the Invoice filter and choose Not Linked to isolate costs that are not assigned to an invoice.

3. Finish cost posting when needed. If your company uses direct cost posting, select eligible rows and choose Post. Otherwise, use Send Selected To ERP and follow your organization’s Business Central cost-posting process. Wait until the required rows show Posted.

4. Adjust billing before invoicing. For an eligible unlinked Posted cost, click the cost product to open the Adjust Billing Amount window to make changes if a billing change is needed. Enter the billing total for the cost row. FORGE calculates Unit Price from this amount; cost values remain unchanged. Posted Employee Reimbursement adjustments allow zero or a positive amount and reject negative amounts.

Create a Draft Invoice

1. Go to the call’s Invoices tab and select Create Invoice. Use More if the tab is not on the visible tab rail. Wait while the latest cost data loads.

   If the customer is on hold, FORGE displays “This customer is on hold and an invoice cannot be created.” Select OK and have the hold resolved before trying again.

2. In the new invoice dialog, choose the posting date for the invoice. It starts as today’s date and is saved for later posting. Confirm that the date is appropriate for the accounting period before creating the draft.

3. Review Bill-to Customer, Service Location Tax Liable, and Service Location Tax Area Code beneath the date. These values are read-only. A new invoice uses the configured Bill-to Customer, or the service call customer when no Bill-to Customer is configured.

   The service-location tax indicators show the Location’s own settings. An off or unset Tax Liable setting is unmarked. Each available cost also shows its Product’s Tax Group Code; a missing Product or code displays a dash.

4. Select all eligible costs or the individual eligible costs you want to bill. Review their descriptions and amounts before creating the invoice.

   If the picker shows “No available items to invoice.”, check cost posting and existing invoice links. There is no Create button when no costs are available. A zero-dollar invoice is allowed; a resulting net invoice total below zero is blocked.

5. Select Create and wait for the operation to finish. FORGE calculates estimated tax in Business Central before saving the invoice and cost links. The new invoice appears on the call’s Invoices tab and in Service Invoices.

   While Creating invoice is displayed, the cost picker is disabled and the dialog cannot be closed. If tax calculation fails, no invoice or cost-link changes are saved. Keep the correlation ID from the error for support.

Review or Update the Draft

1. Open Invoice Details. Select the draft invoice from the call’s Invoices tab or find it in Service Invoices. Confirm the service call, customer, Posting Date, and document type.

2. Review lines and totals. Check quantity, unit price, per-line Tax, and line total, followed by Subtotal, Discount, Est. Tax, and Total. Draft Est. Tax is the saved Business Central estimate.

   Charges use the saved unit-price precision before the extended amount is rounded. For example, 60 at a saved price of 1.084 produces 65.04 before discounts and tax, even though Unit Price displays 1.08. Do not substitute a total calculated from the rounded display price.

3. Add costs to the same draft when needed. Use the invoice builder’s option to append eligible costs to an existing Draft, choose the target draft, and select the additional costs. Review the resulting invoice before completing the addition.

   An addition keeps the draft’s saved Posting Date and Bill-to Customer. FORGE recalculates estimated tax for the complete invoice, including existing lines. If calculation fails, the draft and cost links remain unchanged.

4. Delete an unwanted local draft when allowed. Use the draft row’s Delete action. This action is available only while the invoice is Draft and has no external invoice connection. After deletion, its linked Posted costs become available to invoice again.

   If deletion is blocked, read the displayed reason. Creating or adding to a draft reserves the costs but leaves their cost status Posted until invoice posting succeeds.

Mark the Invoice Ready and Confirm Posting

1. Approve the draft for downstream posting. Open the Draft in Invoice Details, complete the review, and select Mark Ready To Send. On success, the details close and the refreshed invoice list appears.

   Ready To Send is a posting-readiness state. Customer email delivery is a separate action after the invoice is Posted.

2. Resolve any readiness block. If an inventory item is missing its Tax Area Group in item setup, FORGE blocks Mark Ready To Send and highlights the affected invoice lines in bold red. Have the item setup corrected, then try again.

3. Monitor the posting workflow. Follow your organization’s configured invoice-posting workflow. Review the invoice status and background-process messages, and use Refresh to retrieve the latest results. Review Process Logs when an error requires investigation.

   Business Central determines final posted tax. It may differ from Draft Est. Tax. The invoice’s header Tax is authoritative and can differ from the sum of displayed line taxes. Successful invoice posting changes linked costs from Posted to Invoiced.

4. Confirm financial completion. Confirm the posted result and ERP Invoice Number in Invoice Details. If Work In Progress (WIP) Accounting is enabled, the related WIP relief must also succeed. Treat Pending Evidence or Needs Correction as unfinished work and have an authorized operator resolve the reported failure.

   If the invoice has posted but a later accounting step fails, recovery must resume the unfinished work using the existing invoice. Do not create a replacement invoice merely to clear a posting error. An uncertain posting outcome requires reconciliation.

View and Send the Invoice

1. Use View Invoice for an invoice with an archived PDF. For Draft or Ready To Send invoices, use the print action and wait for PDF generation. Draft printing uses the saved estimated tax. After posting and archive generation, the PDF belongs to the invoice record.

2. Before emailing, verify the configured recipients with your administrator. When Invoice Location is enabled on the service location, delivery uses only that Location’s email list. Otherwise, delivery uses the effective Bill-to Customer email routing.

   Location routing never falls back to Customer emails when Invoice Location is enabled. Customer and Location Email fields accept semicolon-separated addresses. Invalid or missing required recipients must be corrected before sending.

3. In Service Invoices, find the Posted invoice with an archived PDF and use Send To Customer. Each recipient receives a separate private email with the invoice PDF attached.

4. Review Sent to customer and the latest delivery error. A fully sent result means all recipients in the saved delivery attempt were accepted by the email service; it does not confirm that each person read the email.

5. Retry or resend as appropriate. Use Send To Customer again for an unsent or partially failed invoice. The retry uses the original recipient snapshot and sends only to failed or unattempted recipients. Use Resend To Customer for a fully sent invoice when another delivery is needed; that creates a new attempt using current routing and recipients.

   If delivery is blocked because the registered company name is missing, have Registration corrected and retry. Email subject, message, and reply-to defaults are maintained in Service Settings.

Correct a Posted Invoice

Use Correct / Credit to reverse a posted invoice in full. This creates a linked corrective credit memo and preserves the original invoice for audit. Partial credits and standalone adjustment credits are outside this workflow.

1. Open the original invoice. Open the Posted invoice in Invoice Details and select Correct / Credit. The action applies to document type Invoice and is unavailable after a successful correction of that original invoice.

2. Confirm the correction date. In the Posting Date field, confirm or change the date for the corrective credit memo. It defaults to the original invoice’s Posting Date, or today when that date is missing. Use a date Business Central permits for posting.

3. Start the correction. Submit the correction and monitor the progress banner in Invoice Details. The work runs in the background and the banner updates in place as steps complete.

   If WIP accounting is enabled, completion requires both the credit memo and the related general ledger reversal to post. The reversal uses the final posted credit memo date. A rejected date stops the correction; FORGE does not substitute another date.

4. Retry a failed correction from the original invoice. Resolve the reported cause, then use Correct / Credit again and confirm the posting date. The retry resumes unfinished steps and retains completed financial work. Do not try to post the corrective credit memo directly.

   Draft credit memos can show a CR- number until posting completes. Costs remain locked until the full correction succeeds, even if the credit memo has already posted.

5. Verify completion and rebill if needed. Confirm the successful correction message and linked corrective credit memo. Released costs return to Posted and become available for a new invoice. Create any replacement invoice separately through the normal invoice workflow; FORGE does not create it automatically.

Resolve Common Problems

• No costs appear — Confirm the costs are Posted and not linked to another invoice. Refresh the list. Draft, Sent to ERP, Invoiced, and Non-invoiced rows cannot be selected.

• Draft creation or addition fails — Review the error and correlation ID. Ask your administrator to check Business Central availability, tax setup, posting accounts, and extension compatibility. The failed calculation leaves the draft and cost links unchanged.

• Ready To Send is blocked — Review highlighted item rows for a missing Tax Area Group and have item setup corrected.

• Posting or WIP relief fails — Review the Process Log and arrange authorized repair. Preserve the existing invoice and use recovery that resumes the failed step.

• Customer email is incomplete — Review the latest error, routing, recipient addresses, archived PDF, and registered company name. Partial retries keep the original recipient snapshot.

• Correction fails after credit posting — Keep the original invoice and linked credit memo. Retry the correction from the original invoice after resolving the reported cause; costs remain locked until every required reversal step finishes.

The billing workflow is complete when the invoice is financially posted, any required WIP relief is confirmed, and customer delivery has the expected result. Keep the original and any linked corrective documents available for billing history.