Streamline Billing and Enhanced Journal Entries with Vantagepoint

Within billing in Vantagepoint 3.0, you will notice a focus on providing more robust information to help drive decisions within the draft invoice approval process as well as a focus on streamlining the overall user flow within billing. For accounting, users will now have the ability to associate key information with transactions.

Enhanced Journal Entries

Transaction document management (TDM) allows you to attach supporting documents/receipts/invoices to a transaction that then follows that transaction through billing and reporting. With the 3.0 release, you are now able to attach an accrual schedule with your journal entry.   If you use journal entries for billable transactions, the supporting document can be included in the billing backup similar to TDM functionality for other transactions.  In addition, any expenses inserted during the billing process can now include supporting documents.

Simplified Final Invoicing

For some users, each step in the current billing process is a key component to finalizing the invoice within their organization. For other users, the automation of certain steps will streamline the process.  In 3.0, you have two new options to choose to automate. 

• Review GL details on Accept – if you are a user that rarely changes the default revenue accounts or calculated invoice amounts of a final invoice, you can now choose to skip the review of the invoice accept dialog. In addition, if you have a new biller on the team and want to limit their ability to change invoice amounts or revenue accounts for final invoices, a new role security option provides additional control around the invoice accept dialog.  
• Post on Accept – if you have access rights to post invoices and your current process does not include additional approvals for invoice transactions, you can now choose to automate the posting of the invoice transaction created by Interactive Billing and Batch Billing. When the option is selected within Interactive Billing, all invoices (including any voids and credit memos) associated with the current billing session will post when you navigate to another application within Vantagepoint. This option automates the previous step of navigating to transaction entry to choose to post the invoice file created by billing.

More Key Information for Project Managers and Billers

The project hub is a robust resource for project managers and billers to review all key details associated with a project from contract to billing terms to project progress displayed within the project review.  Additional key values are now available within Draft Invoice Approvals (as well as Interactive Billing) expanding the information available to the PM with the goal of expediting the approval process.

• Billing extension for fee-based projects – you can now analyze unbilled transactions at a billing value within Draft Invoice Approvals for fee-based projects. The solution includes two amount fields for labor, expenses and units. The invoice amount will match the amount to be billed to the client on the invoice.  The billing extension amount will calculate using current billing terms including the ability to calculate billing values using Rates for Reporting. For users that have previously requested the ability to include the unbilled detail report within the Draft Invoice Approval process because of the option to calculate a billing extension using Rates for Reporting, this could be a great solution. 
• Display current amount on fee phases –  Project managers with access to update percent completes within Draft Invoice Approvals can now see the immediate impact on the calculated current fee when changing the percent complete within the fee phases grid. 

Stay Tuned

Stay tuned for new functionality within dashboards including solutions to several key requests around billing:

• Do you have users that would like an easy view of where all invoices stand within the invoice approval process (without having a defined role within the approval process)?
• Have you ever needed an easy solution to filter a list of billing terms to find all projects using a specific rate table?
• Would your project managers and/or billers like a clear visual to represent aged unbilled transactions? Or view total unbilled labor or unbilled expense transaction totals alongside other key project metrics like revenue, billed or AR?