Trade Simple November 2011 Product Update - Part 1

Legacy Development

Because of the New Platform, much has been done to resist the development of new features and functions in the front-end of trade simple. However, a small number of important enhancements have been carried out for key customers, especially where they also provide a basis for something that will ultimately enhance the New Platform.

Debit Notes — A Key Enhancement to trade simple Invoice Management

A key trade simple customer, that uses trade simple to manage ALL of their incoming invoices — both paper and electronic, wanted to remove — as much as possible — the concept of Credit Notes from their business and replace it with Debits. That is they wanted to tell their suppliers “thanks for your invoice, this is how much of it we won't be paying.” To this end they part–funded an exciting enhancement to trade simple to allow them to manage this process.

Essentially it works like this:

  1. The unit creates a Goods Received Note in trade simple

  2. The supplier transmits their invoice electronically or the unit provides the details of a paper invoice

  3. The invoice is validated and matched to the Goods Received Note. A line-level calculation of all the potential discrepancies between the two documents is automatically made. NB: no tolerance is applied at this stage, any non-zero discrepancy value is identified and recorded

  4. The invoice is then passed to the next stage of the process for disposal:

    • If NO discrepancies are found then the invoice is automatically approved and passed for payment in full (according to terms)

    • If only discrepancies for which the unit cannot — according to customer-configurable rules — change the outcome are found (e.g. supplier invoiced at a higher unit price than catalogue or the calculated discrepancy is below a pre-set tolerance) then:

      • The invoice is automatically approved and passed for payment

      • Optionally, a positive Debit Note is automatically generated and sent to the supplier (for the over-charge). This reduces the payment to the supplier as required

      • Optionally, a positive or negative Stock Adjustment is generated (for the under-tolerance discrepancies) and passed to the stock system.The changes the quantity and value of the unit's recorded purchases as required

    • Otherwise, further user intervention is required. The next time the user enters trade simple they are required to review all outstanding “Invoices with Discrepancies”. On selecting an item, they will be shown a detailed representation of the Goods Received Note and Invoice and the discrepancies identified:

      • For each problem line where they are allowed a choice, they are asked to select from TWO alternative outcomes e.g.

        • The original Goods Received Note and Catalogue were right — raise a positive or negative Debit Note line

        • The Invoice was right — create a positive or negative Stock Adjustment line

      • For each line, the system will calculate the “likely” option and pre-select this, but the user is free (following a strongly–worded confirmation) to change to the other permissible option.

      • Once complete,the form is submitted (again, after a strongly worded confirmation) and:

        • The invoice is automatically approved and passed for payment

        • Optionally,a positive or negative Debit Note is automatically generated and sent to the supplier. This reduces or even increases the payment to the supplier as required

        • Optionally, a positive or negative or zero Stock Adjustment is generated and passed to the stock system. The changes the quantity and value of the unit's recorded purchases as required

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