Repairs invoice management overview

Once inspections and work orders have been fulfilled, invoices can be created on the system to match those submitted to the housing organisation by the contractors who conducted the work. These invoices are recorded against the individual contractors and linked to the original inspection, order or task items. Any combination of billing items can be matched onto the same invoice, dovetailing with each individual contractor's invoicing arrangements e.g. by month, by project, etc. Each invoice comprises a header and any number of detail lines. The header stores the overall net and VAT invoice totals as submitted by the contractor, the detail lines reveal the original order estimate values as recorded on the system. Detail lines can be added manually through a works order search or en bloc by importing orders linked to a contractor statement. Only completed works orders, tasks and inspections are available for addition onto the invoice.

Depending on the total value of the invoice and any cost variations to the original order, different levels of user authorisation may be required to progress it through to final payment.

The repair limits that control a user's authorisation levels are stored against their individual user account and separated into two components: (1) the ability to authorise an invoice based solely on its value, referred to as the First level invoice authorisation, and (2) the ability to authorise an invoice based on its value plus a variance in costs compared to the original order estimate, referred to as the Second level invoice authorisation. A variance exception is triggered when the difference in costs exceeds the value set in the pricing rules for the contract. When a user logs into Civica Cx Housing, the home page can be configured to display an Authorise Invoices widget, revealing a list of invoices that have reached this progression stage. Using the attributes of the invoice - Reference (invoice number), Status (Awaiting Authorisation Invoice, Awaiting Second Level Authorisation, etc), Creation date or Created by - these can easily be located for authorisation using the advanced search facility. Managing invoice authorisations through different user account permissions ensures an open and transparent approach to processing payments.

Contractor credit notes are also processed in exactly the same way, simply choosing the Invoice type of 'Credit Note' at the point of initial creation.

Separate help articles have been created for each key aspect of repairs invoice management, including:

• To raise a new contractor invoice
• To add detail lines to a contractor invoice
• To import invoice detail lines from a contractor statement
• To authorise a contractor invoice
• To cancel a contractor invoice

In addition, separate help articles focus on the set-up of user account authorisation limits, contract rules and invoice searching options, specifically:

• To set repair authorisation limits for a user account
• To define contract pricing rules
• Using the search facility