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OfBiz Invoice Processing Workflow Explained

Monday, July 18th, 2011

OfBiz-Invoice-Accounting

In this issue we’ll discuss Invoice statuses and the Invoice processing workflow supported in the Apache Ofbiz Accounting application. Like other business documents/objects in Ofbiz, Invoices are an important part of the broader Ofbiz system, and changes to its status have direct impact on General Ledger (GL), billing accounts, payments and other accounting functions. Of all statuses, the ‘Ready’ and ‘Paid’ status are unique in that they trigger GL transactions.

As you read this article please keep one very important thing in mind about Ofbiz, it’s designed and built to be fully customizable. Like most other workflows in Ofbiz, OOTB workflow for Invoice processing is very flexible and should be easy to use for most enterprises. If your business uses different statuses (and processing workflow), don’t worry, customizing workflow is very easy.

Now coming back to the Invoice status.

In-Processes: When an Invoice is created it’s always in ‘In-Process’ status. A user can add/edit invoice items and update other invoice attributes like billing party or due date, without impacting any other part of system. This is comparable to a ‘Work-In-Progress’ or ‘Draft’ status you might have used in other workflows.

Approved: Move an Invoice to ‘Approved’ status when you are done preparing (discuss and review), and the Invoice is ready to be finalized. Once in ‘Approved’ status an Invoice cannot be edited. In the event you need to make any updates to an Invoice, it needs to be moved to the ‘In-Processes’ status.

Sent: There’s little flexibility after an invoice is sent. An Invoice can be moved to ‘Sent’ status from ‘In-Processes’ or ‘Approved’ status. Given the flexibility, use of this status in Invoice processing workflow is open for interpretation. It can be used to support the “Sent for Approval” or “Sent to Customer” step in workflow. An Invoice in ‘In-Process’ status can be moved to “Sent” status to support the “Sent for Approval” step in workflow. Alternatively, we can Approve the invoice and then move it to ‘Sent’ status, marking it as “Sent to Customer.”

Ready: An Approved invoice can be moved to Ready status and is a very important step in workflow. Moving an Invoice into Ready status triggers the process of posting the Invoice to GL. What happens on the GL side of the system is governed by Organizations Accounting Preferences and the GL setup.

Paid: Somewhere between creating an Invoice and moving it into ready status, an organization may receive payment (for AR invoices) or send payment (for AP invoices). Once Payment is received (or sent) and applied to the Invoice, and the total amount of payment applications covers the Invoice grand total, the Invoice can then to be moved into Paid status. Moving the Invoice to Paid status triggers GL transactions. A valid status change after the Ready status is ‘Paid’, ‘Write Off’ or ‘Cancel’.

Write Off: If an accounting manager sets the invoice status as ‘Write Off’, then the Invoice becomes non-collectible in the system.

Canceled: An Invoice in ‘Ready’ status can canceled. Any Invoice cancellation event triggers the reversal of the related GL transaction entries and the Payment application, though the Invoice will remain in the system as non-editable.

- Anil

Anil Patel is Chief Development Officer at HotWax Media as well as an OFBiz project committer, PMC member, and active community contributor. He also studies karate! Anil will join other HotWax Media employees and advisors in periodically posting thoughts here related to OFBiz, eCommerce, ERP, and related topics.

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Posted in Apache OFBiz, HotWax Media, OFBiz, OFBiz Development, OFBiz eCommerce | No Comments »

Types Of Invoices in OFBiz

Tuesday, June 28th, 2011

An invoice is a commercial document issued by seller to buyer that enlists the summary of the transaction i.e. quantity, unit price, total of complete purchase, item descriptions, settlement terms, dates, etc. This Ofbiz component supports various Invoice(s) for Accounts payable and Accounts receivable. Let’s find out what are those invoice(s) types are.

Let’s start with AR component. AR supports Sales Invoice(s), Purchase return Invoice(s) and Interest Invoices(s).

1) Sales Invoice(s): The Sales Invoice is where everything comes together. A customer is chosen from the database, or entered as a new customer. Merchandise its detailed by entering non-inventory items or selecting merchandise from inventory. Each Sales invoice may also have a memo attached (e.g., for delivery instructions or other particulars). Once an Invoice is paid it will Debit Accounts Receivable.

2) Purchase Return Invoice(s): In the event of a purchase return, goods are removed from the warehouse to return the goods to the supplier. These will be created for mapping the entries.

3) Interest Invoice(s): Invoices are used to charge clients for overdue invoices.

On the other side of this accounting function, the Ofbiz AP Component supports purchase Invoice(s), customer return Invoice(s), payroll and commission invoice(s).

4) Purchase Invoice(s) : When an invoice is received from one of your regular suppliers, this should be entered in the Ofbiz System as a purchase invoice. Once an Invoice is paid it will Credit Accounts Payable.

5) Customer Return Invoice(s): The reasons a customer may decide to return an item are numerous, and it can be possible only on condition that the terms between our Company and the Customers are discussed, and the return is allowed.

6) Payroll Invoice(s): It could be referred to as ‘The Sum’ total of all compensation that a business must pay to its employees for a set period of time, or by a given date. It is a major expense for most businesses and is almost always deductible as such.

7) Commission Invoice(s): A Commission Invoice is a form of payment to an agent for services rendered.

In the next tutorial I will walk you through various Invoice statuses.

-Anil

Anil Patel is Chief Development Officer at HotWax Media as well as an OFBiz project committer, PMC member, and active community contributor. He also studies karate! Anil will join other HotWax Media employees and advisors in periodically posting thoughts here related to OFBiz, eCommerce, ERP, and related topics.

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Posted in HotWax Media, OFBiz, OFBiz Development | No Comments »

OFBiz Tutorial: Associating Product with Multiple Categories

Wednesday, December 8th, 2010

Building off of other OFBiz catalog manager tutorials that have been posted earlier, today we will look into how you can associate a product with multiple categories.  This will be broken down into two sections: adding a product into a category, and then updating the product category association.

Add Product to a Category

Let’s first talk about prerequisite for managing this part of the catalog:

The user must at least have the role of catalog manager.  There are other roles that they can have that encompass catalog management, but they must have the ability to go here and manage this content.

The data must be setup so that the product’s association type is modeled correctly in the system.  Basically what this is saying is that some association types, while they may look like they would fit in here, will not have the product show up correctly on the front end if you do not do this properly.

Now that we know that – let’s discuss associating a product with a category.

Go to the “Catalog” component and click on the “Advanced Search” Button within “Search Products”.

ofbiz-tutorial-cross-sell-1

Fill in the search values on the “Find” screen and click on the “Find” button.

Ofbiz Tutorial Cross Sell 2

A list of products will be displayed based on the search criterion.

Ofbiz Tutorial Cross Sell 3

Click on any of the products and the “Edit Product” page of the selected product will get displayed.

Ofbiz Tutorial Cross Sell 4

Click on the “Categories” tab.

categories-tab

Fill in the following details in the “Add Category for this Product” form :
category-look-up

  1. Category
    • Select “Category” from look up which contains following information :
      • Product category Type Id
      • Primary Parent Category Id
      • Category Name
      • Description
      • Show In Select
  2. From Date
  3. To Date
  4. Comments
  5. Sequence Number
  6. Quantity

category-fields

Click on the “Add” button after entering the information.

add-button

At this point the added “Category” will be displayed in “Categories” section with the following details:

  • Category
  • From Date
  • To Date
  • Comments
  • Sequence Number
  • Quantity

categories-section

Update Product Category Association

Now that you can add product to a category, let’s discuss how you can edit this information in OFBiz. The prerequisites are exactly the same as for adding product to a category except to edit it, you need to have the product associated with a category.

Here are the steps for updating the product category association:

Go to the “Catalog” component and click on the “Advanced Search” Button within “Search Products”.

ofbiz-tutorial-cross-sell-1

Fill in the search values on the “Find” screen and click on the “Find” button.

Ofbiz Tutorial Cross Sell 2

A list of the products will be displayed based on the search criterion.

Ofbiz Tutorial Cross Sell 3

Click on any of products and the “Edit Product” page of the selected product will get displayed.

Ofbiz Tutorial Cross Sell 4

Click on the “Categories” tab.
categories-tab

Following details will be displayed in “Categories” section of added category:

  • Category
  • From Date
  • To Date
  • Comments
  • Sequence Number
  • Quantity

categories-section

Update existing category details.

category-update

Click on the “Update” button to save the details.

ofbiz-tutorial-cross-sell-11a

Use the “Delete” button to delete the category association – if necessary.

delete-button

Now your updated category details will be displayed on the “Categories” section of “Category Members” page.

More OFBiz tutorials to come in the not too distant future – stay tuned!

Tim Ruppert is Chief Operating Officer at HotWax Media, an OFBiz service provider, as well as an OFBiz project committer and active community member. Tim will join other HotWax Media employees and advisers in periodically posting thoughts here related to OFBiz, eCommerce, ERP, and related topics.

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Posted in Apache OFBiz, HotWax Media, OFBiz, OFBiz Development, OFBiz Tutorials | No Comments »

Accounting for OFBiz eCommerce

Friday, October 29th, 2010

OFBiz-Accounting-Application

After a long wait and a lot of hard work, I am pleased to finally be able to say that the Accounting application in Apache OFBiz is ready for prime time! By working with internal experts (including Jacopo Cappellato) along with client experts, we have recently launched an enterprise e-commerce system that is using the OFBiz Accounting application more extensively than any of the systems we have previously implemented.

It is no surprise that the mantras of entrepreneurs everywhere often center on revenue generation, and rarely on the underlying accounting thereof! Keeping accurate financial records of all business activities is, nevertheless, essential, and the OFBiz Accounting application has many features designed to help support that critical need for sound financial management.

In an effort to make the OFBiz Accounting application as easy to use as possible for a variety of businesses both small and large, Hotwax Media created additional tools allowing for user export of general ledger account transaction data in the Quickbooks IIF format, as well as the ability to receive payments in A/R batches. (There is a widely accepted perception that Quickbooks is very easy to use. I don’t necessarily agree :) This integration, nevertheless, means users can easily export data of their choice out of OFBiz Accounting and import that data into Quickbooks. We created this integration based on customer demand. I would not have guessed it, but they told us loudly and clearly that accountants love to play with numbers in Quickbooks; well, we aim to please!

Over next little bit I’ll share more information with some concrete examples that you can use for setting up your own OFBiz Accounting system.

- Anil

Anil Patel is Chief Development Officer at HotWax Media as well as an OFBiz project committer, PMC member, and active community contributor. He also studies karate! Anil will join other HotWax Media employees and advisors in periodically posting thoughts here related to OFBiz, eCommerce, ERP, and related topics.

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Posted in Enterprise eCommerce, HotWax Media, OFBiz, OFBiz Development, OFBiz eCommerce | No Comments »

OFBiz Tutorial: Managing Cross Sell Products in OFBiz

Wednesday, October 27th, 2010

Building off of other OFBiz catalog manager tutorials that Pranay and Vikas built earlier this year, today I will be diving into how you can manage cross sell information in OFBiz.  We’ll break this up into two separate sections: Adding Cross Sell Products and Editing Cross Sell Products once they are added.

Add Cross Sell Product(s)


Let’s first talk about prerequisite for managing this part of the catalog:

The user must at least have the role of catalog manager.  There are other roles that they can have that encompass catalog management, but they must have the ability to go here and manage this content.

The data must be setup so that the product’s association type is modeled correctly in the system.  Basically what this is saying is that some association types, while they may look like they would fit in here, will not have the product show up correctly on the front end if you do not do this properly.

Now that we know that – let’s discuss adding cross sell product associations to your products.

Go to the “Catalog” component and click on the “Advanced Search” Button within “Search Products”.

ofbiz-tutorial-cross-sell-1

Fill in the search values on the “Find” screen and click on the “Find” button.

Ofbiz Tutorial Cross Sell 2

A list of products will be displayed based on the search criterion.

Ofbiz Tutorial Cross Sell 3

Click on any of the products and the “Edit Product” page of the selected product will get displayed.

Ofbiz Tutorial Cross Sell 4

Click on the “Associations” tab.

Ofbiz Tutorial Cross Sell 5

Fill in the following details in the “Add Association” form :

    Product Id
    Product Id To
    Association Type Id (Select Association Type as ‘Complementary Or Cross Sell’)
    From Date
    Sequence Number
    Reason
    Instruction
    Quantity

Ofbiz Tutorial Cross Sell 6

Click on the “Create” button after entering the information.

ofbiz-tutorial-cross-sell-7a

Then you’ve got your association taken care of, and you will see it displayed on the “Associations from this Product to” section of your product management page:

Ofbiz Tutorial Cross Sell 8

If your front end supports it, you will see your cross sell items on the front end of your website in the “Recommended Products” section of your product detail or shopping cart pages.

Edit Cross Sell Product(s)

Now that you can add cross sell products to your product associations, let’s discuss how you can edit this information in OFBiz. The prerequisites are exactly the same as for adding cross sells into the system except to edit it, you need to already have created the cross sell product association :) .

Here are the steps for editing cross sell product associations:

Go to the “Catalog” component and click on the “Advanced Search” Button within “Search Products”.

ofbiz-tutorial-cross-sell-1

Fill in the search values on the “Find” screen and click on the “Find” button.

Ofbiz Tutorial Cross Sell 2

A list of the products will be displayed based on the search criterion.

Ofbiz Tutorial Cross Sell 3

Click on any of products and the “Edit Product” page of the selected product will get displayed.

Ofbiz Tutorial Cross Sell 4

Click on the “Associations” tab.
Ofbiz Tutorial Cross Sell 5

On the “Associations” page, click on the “Edit” button next to the complementary product in the “Associations from this Product to” section.

Ofbiz Tutorial Cross Sell 9

Update the following details in “Add Association” form:

    Thru Date
    Sequence Number
    Reason
    Instruction
    Quantity

Ofbiz Tutorial Cross Sell 5

Click on the “Update” button to save the details.

ofbiz-tutorial-cross-sell-11a

Use the “Delete” button to delete the associated cross sell product – if necessary.

Ofbiz Tutorial Cross Sell 12

Now you’ve got your association tuned (or deleted) depending on what you needed to do in your system.  The changes will be reflected on the “Associations from this Product to” section of Associations page and will also be reflected on your front end in the “Recommended Products” section of your product detail page or shopping cart pages.

More OFBiz tutorials to come in the not too distant future – stay tuned!

Tim Ruppert is Chief Operating Officer at HotWax Media, an OFBiz service provider, as well as an OFBiz project committer and active community member. Tim will join other HotWax Media employees and advisers in periodically posting thoughts here related to OFBiz, eCommerce, ERP, and related topics.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Apache OFBiz, HotWax Media, OFBiz, OFBiz Development, OFBiz Tutorials | 2 Comments »

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