Submit your Suggestions for Spectrum

Greetings,

As part of our work order billing process, our service managers would like to review a batch of customer invoices prior to distribution to customers.  This would be the same invoice we actually will send to a customer, but in a DRAFT status.  Such a review would provides the service managers an opportunity to make adjustments if necessary prior to issuing the invoices to the customers.

Note that we have two roles in this process:

1. Service Accountant – Prepares the work order invoice
2. Service Manager – Reviews and approves work orders

In the case when a service manager asks for a change to an invoice, only the service accountant has the security access to make this change.

A current challenge with the simple work flow of "bill now" in version 14.14 is that pressing this button updates AR.  When a service manager needs to make a change to an invoice, the service accountant has to reverse the work order billing for modifications.  It seems that with the addition of a 'preview / review' work flow to Work Order billing, it would simplify things and eliminate the need to reverse work orders.

We would like to propose two enhancements:

1.  (Simple enhancement)  Add a "Print Bill" or "Preview Bill" button on the work order billing screen so that we can print a single work order for review.  The "Print Bill" or "Preview Bill" would not update AR but simply generate the electronic invoice as if we clicked the "Bill Now" button.  The service manager would be able to review a set of printed (or emailed) invoices.  Once approved (outside of Spectrum) then the service accountant would make any changes and then hit the "Bill Now" button.

2.  (More complex enhancement)  Create an electronic approval work flow.  This could be something like creating an "Add to batch" button on the work order billing screen so that we can create a batch of invoices that could be either printed or electronically reviewed.  The service manager would then have a screen where he could review the batch of invoices.  He would click on a work order and then Spectrum would load it into a preview screen where the invoice appears (electronically) as if it were printed.  This is similar to the PO review / approval screen.

We opened a ticket on this question (#685027) and the response was "While Spectrum does not currently have invoice approval functionality within WO or AR, this would be an excellent submission for the Enhancement Forum."

Thank you!