June 2024 Release

Accounts Payable Payment Processing Approvals.

Accounts Payable schedule payments now has added functionality to authorise payment runs before the bank file is produced.

This is an optional change to your processing.  If required, approval is defined against the AP Company Controls that will identify that payment approvals are in use and the users that will be notified to approve payments for that company.

A rejection action is also available, with the addition to add rejection comments.

There is also a control to deny the user who initially requested the payment run the ability to self-approve their own payment request.

Setup requirements before Accounts Payable Payments Approval can be used.

·       Payment Approval – flag to switch on approvals of Payment Runs

·       Prevent Self Approval – flag to deny self-approval if you are the user who has updated the schedule

·       Payment Approver – enter a Financials user who can approve the payment run

·       Approval Role – if more than one Financials user can approve the schedule, a group can be created so anyone within that group can approve the payment run  (see later section on how to set up users for the approval role).

Code tables to be setup

To set up Approval Roles access the following menus:

Systems Admin>System Wide Controls>User & Roles>BEM Action User Roles

Use the Insert action.

Make an entry in the following fields:

·       BEM Action User Role

·       Description

·       User

·       Notify (this represents that you wish Business Event Manager Message to be sent that user)

Update once complete.

Facility Denials

To deny user(s) access to approve or amend payment schedules you need to make a change to their security group. 

To locate a security group against a user, follow the steps below.

Main Menu>Systems Wide Controls>Users & Roles>Users

Click on OK and locate the user(s) and use the view action against the user account.

Security groups are located on the second format.

To amend the security group to allow approval, follow the steps below.

Main Menu>System Wide Controls>Security>Security Groups

Locate the security group and click on the Denials button.

Locate program GGA by entering GGA in the Program field and clicking on OK.

Use the Amend action.

Enter a Y next to the Pay Approve and Reject Comments action.

Processing a Payment Run for Approval

The payment schedule can be created and updated in the usual way, once the Pay Request action is the selected

The payment schedule will have a new status of Unapproved.

A task is then sent to the approver(s) Example is in Task Manager, this could be email or diary message in Financials.

Approval

To approve the schedule, access the Schedule list screen.

Menu access:

Accounts Payable>AP Processes>Payment Processing>Schedule Maintenance, click on OK to retrieve the schedule.

Click on the Approval button.  The approver can view the details of the schedule and see which supplies have been PAID, NO PAY or DETAIL PAID.

Click on the Amend button to view details of each supplier.

Clicking the Details button will take you the AP enquiry screen where you view the invoice image. Use the Exit icon until you return to the summary list screen.

When you are ready to Approve, click on the Approve button on the summary screen.

The status of the schedule is now Payment Requested.

The Payment Run can now be submitted in the usual way by selecting the Update Ledger & Create Pay Files menu option.

Reject

Access the schedule list as described in the approval section.

Click on the Approval button.

After reviewing the detail, you decide to reject the payment run.  Select the Reject button.

Add rejection comments and then click on Update.

The status will then be rejected, and a Business Event message will be sent to the user who requested the Payment Request action.

Rejection comments can also be viewed from the Schedule list screen.

You can amend the payment schedule and resubmit the payment request (which will then go through the approval step).

After the payment schedules have been ran, the schedule will go to a status of ‘Complete – Awaiting Deletion’.

Points to note

Fully Automatic Schedules (that are defined on the payment code using the Fully Auto Flag) are exempt from this approval step as you cannot manually update or control the status for these payment schedules and will automatically create the payment regardless of the new approval setting.

The ‘Payment Cancel’ action that is available against a schedule to cancel the payment request is still available but can only be invoked after the schedule has been approved.

A schedule that has a proposed payment value of zero is not subject to approval (this will usually be the case when all suppliers in the schedule have been selected as ‘No Pay’), to allow the schedule to be completed and all transactions unpaid and returned to their original status from ‘scheduled’.

Payment Processing Limits

There is a new Payment Processing Limits option available, so that the total payments for the payment processing run will not exceed a defined amount. This ensures that there are not excessive payments made and can be controlled by the finance team to limit the payment amount out of the system.

However, as multiple suppliers may be paid in the same schedule, the order that the payments are made are in supplier code order regardless of the age of any transactions that are due, so if the payment limit is applied due to the value of payments, those suppliers with a lower alphabetical supplier code are paid before suppliers with a higher alphabetical code. For this reason, the following change has also been applied.

The schedule maintenance has been changed to add a new ‘transaction selection’ option to control the retrieval of transactions the schedule is produced in the background. Three options are available, ‘Supplier’, ‘Supplier/Due Date’ or ‘Due Date’.

The option of ‘Supplier’, which is the current functionality, will select transactions in supplier code and entry date order for filling the payment schedule and will continue to retrieve transactions in this order until either there are no more transactions available, or the payment limit has been reached.

The option of ‘Supplier/Due Date’ will select transactions in supplier code and transaction due date order for filling the payment schedule and will continue to retrieve transactions in this order until either there are no more transactions available, or the payment limit has been reached.

The option of ‘Due Date’ will select transactions in transaction due date order for filling the payment schedule and will continue to retrieve transactions in this order until either there are no more transactions available, or the payment limit has been reached.

Changing the order when using a payment limit would be useful so the oldest due transaction is selected first.

Before the schedule is ran through the Payment code needs to be amended to select the correct option.

Systems Admin>Module Controls>Accounts Payable Controls>Supplier Controls>Payment Codes

Click on OK and amend the code you wish to change the setting for.  Scroll along to the Transaction Selection, use the drop-down menu to select an option.

Once complete click on Update.

 When selecting the Create Payment Schedule option the schedule will be created using the transaction selection status above.

From the previous example the following suppliers have now only been retrieved due to the Payment Limit on the Payment code.

Payment Processing Audits

The schedule maintenance list for Accounts Payable Payment Processing has been changed to allow enquiries of historic payment schedules (i.e., payment schedules that have been processed and were in a status of ‘complete and awaiting deletion’).

There is a new status for these schedules called ‘Retained’.

This allows you to view and processes existing schedules as well as optional enquire upon older schedules previously processed.

The existing enquiry on Accounts Payable schedules list has been changed to allow a variety of search parameters to find either specific payments that have been requested or approved or all payments made within a date range.

The details behind the schedule can be viewed (i.e., the suppliers or transactions that were selected for either ‘Pay’ or ‘No Pay’) so a full history is retained of the requested payment.

There is a new AP Company control will govern the number of days that these schedules will be kept before they are removed by the current schedule deletion process. This is to ensure there is not excessive data held for these ‘Retained’ schedules.

The automatic schedule deletion process will now respect the new AP company control setting for retaining payment schedules and either continue to delete the schedule (if selected) when the new AP company control setting for retaining payment schedules is not entered or set the extracted payment schedule to a new status of ‘Retained’ if the new AP company control setting has been set. This process will now also delete any ‘Retained’ schedules that have exceeded the retained days as defined on the AP company controls.

Setup to allow Schedule Archive Days

Schedule Archive Days.

Schedule Maintenance list Enquiry  

Menu access: Accounts Payable>AP Processes>Payment Processing>Schedule Maintenance

The screen now allows for searching of payment schedules using additional parameters. These additional parameters are:

·       Supplier code

·       Last update user

·       Approval user

·       Payment date from/to and

·       Transaction/payment system reference number

·       Status

·       Include Archived

Once the selection has been made click on OK to retrieve the list.

The schedule status Archived and Complete Awaiting Deletion can be viewed to see the details by either using the double click action on the line or clicking on the Suppliers button.

Clicking on the Amend button will allow you to view the details behind each supplier. This will only give you VIEW access.

Skeleton Code added to Sales Invoice Screen

The Skeleton code field has been added on to the Sales Invoice screen.             

Accounts Receivable>AR Processes>AR Data Entry>Maintain Skeleton Documents>Insert Invoice/Credit Note

Skeleton codes can be created and maintained from the AR Data Entry menu.

Accounts Receivable>AR Processes>AR Data Entry>Maintain Skeleton Documents.

Use the Insert Normal action, only the Code and Description fields are mandatory.  Add in any additional information, anything that is entered will default on to the invoice screen when the code is used in data entry.

Bank Sort Codes menu change

Bank sort codes option has been removed from the Systems Admin menu and added to Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable menus.

Menu access for Accounts Payable:

Systems Admin>Module Controls>Accounts Payable Controls>Company Controls>Bank Sort Codes

Menu access for Accounts Receivable:

Systems Admin>Module Controls>Accounts Receivable Controls>AR Company Controls>Bank Sort Codes

Authorisation load processes added to menus

The two new loads for Structure Authorisers and Value Level by GL Responsibility that were released in May have been added to the following menus:

Menu access for Accounts Payable:

Systems Admin>Module Controls>Accounts Payable Controls>Authorisation Codes – the are the last four options on the menu.

Menu access for Purchasing Management:

Systems Admin>Module Controls>Purchasing Management Controls>Authorisation Controls – the are the last four options on the menu.

Patch List added to menu

A new menu option had been added that will list the fixes applied to Financials, date parameters will allow date ranges to be entered.

Menu access:

Systems Admin>Patch List

Batch Schedule Renamed to Schedule List

The Batch Schedule option has been amended to Schedule List.

Batch Types option added to General Ledger Code Tables menu

The Batch Types option has been added to the General Ledger Controls Menu.

Menu access:

Systems Admin>Module Controls>General Ledger Controls>Batch Types.

'All Invoices' button added to the Order Summary Screen

When accessing the order summary screen and linking to Invoices that have been matched to the orders, only invoices for the line selected were displayed by using the Invoice List button.  A new button has been added to show all invoices matched to all order lines – All Invoices.

Access the following screens:

Purchasing Management>PM Enquiries>Orders

Make an entry in the selection window and click on OK.  Select the Order Summary button to access the screen below.