Advance Letter Processing¶
This chapter will be devoted to processing advance letters on your POS. In some cases you need to issue the customer an advance ltter (e.g. you need to order some very expensive goods from the vendor catalogue and you want to be sure the customer is committed to actually buy what you order). Therefore we have added the support for advance letter processing in the application version 25 and above.
Setup necessary for prepayment processing¶
To set up advance letter processing for your shop, following setups need to be done.
Selecting Advance Letter Implementation
There is a general setup for POS advance letters that is shared for all the shops. You can access this setup by using the "Prepayment Setup" action from the shop list.
The general POS Prepayments Setup contains general information about the setup for the Prepayment/Advance Letter Management, following information can be entered.
| Field | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Activated Prepayment Application | This should be set up automatically based on the version of BC you are using. In POS Base CZ Navertica currently supports only implementation of the standard CZ Prepamynet solution, however in case it would be necessary, further implementations can be added by local partners, then the user would need to set up the respective prepayment application to be used. |
| Prepayment Action | This action determines what the behaviour should be after creating/posting the advance letter. You can either select the "Create" option, then the advance letter is only created, or you can select the "Create and Print" option - then the advance letter is created and printed in the same step. |
| Credit Memo Action | This action determines what the behaviour should be after credit/posting the advance letter credit memo. You can either select the "Create" option, the the advance letter creadit memo is only created, or you can select the "Create and Print" option - then the advance letter credit memo is created and printed in the same step. |
| Activated Cash Payment Posting Application | This action determines what the behaviour should be when processing advance letter cash payments. Currently only the method "CZ" is supported by Navertica for POS CSY, other methods can be added by the local partners. |
| Activated Card Payment Posting Application | This action determines what the behaviour should be when processing advance letter card payments. Currently only the method "CZ" is supported by Navertica for POS CSY, other methods can be added by the local partners. |
Shop Related Advance Letter Setup
Aside from the general setup for all shops, there are some setups that can be adjusted separately for each shops. For there purposes the tabs "Rolecenter" and "Prepayments" are important on your shop card.
The Rolecenter tab is to define which actions should be displayed in the Role Center for the given shop. In most cases not all tiles need to be added to the Role Center.
| Field | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Show Tile with Opened Prepayments | This tile shows opened advance letters, ergo documents that still have remaining balance to be paid or to be used. |
| Show Tile with Orders or Bills with Prepayments | This tile shows all opened bills for the current shop that have an advance letter invoice related to them. |
| Show Tile with Closed Prepayments | This tile shows advance letter inovices with no remaining balance. |
| Shot Tile with Closed Prepayment Cr. Memos | This tile shows advance letter credit memos with no remaining balance |
| Show Invoice Payment Page | This action enables the user to perform Invoice Payments on POS. This means that the new action Invoice Payment will be available in the POS Role Center. This action allows the user to process a payment of an invoice that was previously issues (either an advance letter or general sales/service invoice). |
The Prepayment tab is focused on the setup that is necessary for correctly creating advance letter invoices.
| Field | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Allow Prepayments | Only if this field is ticked, all actions related to advance letters will be displayed throughout POS. On some shop it doesn´t have to be wanted that the users can create advance letters. |
| Prepayment Payment Method Code | This is the Payment Method Code that will be used for the advance letters and the advance letter credit memos. |
| Combine Prepayments | This field determines if the lines can be grouped on the advance letters or if each bill line will have a special advance letter line. |
| Default Prepayment Payment Term | This is the Payment Term that will be used for the advance letter and the advance letter credit memos. |
| Default Prepayment % | This is the default Prepayment % that will be suggested to be used when creating the advance letter for the bill. |
| Post Bill With Unpaid Prepayments | This field determines if the bill can be posted when an unpaid advance letter is related to it. If the field is set to "Always", then the bill can be closed regardless of the status of the advance letters related to it - the user is not even warned that there are some opened advance letters. If the field is set to "After Confirmation", then the bill can be closed if the user confirms that it should be posted even with the upaid advance letters. If it is set to "Never", then the user is not able to post the bill if all advance letters are not paid or cancelled. |
| Check only shop prepayments | This field determines if only the advance letters that were created by the shop should be checked. This can be used in case advance letters are created by other processes as well and those should block the posting of the bill. |
Creating an Advance Letter For a Bill¶
The first step for creating a bill with an advance letter is to enter basic bill data as if you were creating a regular bill. You can either use the "New Bill" fuction on your shop or you can use the "New Bill for another Shop" function. Then typically you would change the customer data to refer to the customer to whom the advance letter should be issued and enter bill items (the goods the customer orders).
To create an advance letter from the bill, you should use the "Create Prepayment" action.
After this action is selected, the user is asked to enter the data for creating the advance letters. The user sees the total amount including VAT that is supposed to be charged for the bill items and can either enter the Prepayment % or the Prepayment Amount (he can enter either one, the other will be calculated based on the entered data). The default payment term will be suggested to be used, but the user can change it in case the term should be different.
After confirming the dialogue a confirmation will be shown to the user to confirm the creation of the advance letter. In case the Prepayment Action in the POS Prepayments Setup is set to "Create and Print" the issued advance letter is also printed.
The user can create several advance letters for one bill in case that is necessary - if creating several prepayment invoices, you need to enter the final amount for each prepayment invoice (the amounts in total cannot be higher than the total amount of the bill). Ergo if for example the total prepayment amount should be 150 EUR adn the first should be for 100 EUR and the second should be 50 EUR, then you enter the amount 100 EUR for the first advance letter and then the amount 50 EUR for the second advance letter.
For each advance letter a new line in the Bill Payment Interface is created. The current status of the payment of the advance letter is displayed there.
Creating Advance Letters Without a Bill¶
It is also possible to create an advance letter without a bill being created first (e.g. in cases when the payment should be done before the order for the goods for the customer will be placed). In this case the user need to use the "Create Sales Advance" action in the POS role center.
The first step when creating the advance letter will be selecting the customer to whom the advanced letter should be issued. For selecting the customer use the "Select Customer" action.
Afterwards the user will be inputing thee items for the advance letter. When creating the advance letter lines in standard BC the user fills in the VAT Product Posting Group and the requested amount, however this is too complicated for the people operating POS, therefore we have prepared an extension that allows the user to select items and the advance letter lines are then created based on the selected items (respectively their VAT Product Posting Groups) and their pricing. From the user perspective the way to create an advance letter is the same as when creating regular bills.
After all items are loaded into the advance letter, it is necessary to mark the advance letter with a special flag to conform that all the items were already entered. For this purpose the "Release" action should be used. This action changes the status of the advance letter from new to "To Pay" and the user can proceed with the payment of the advance letter or to linking the advance letter with a specific bill.
The payment of the advance letter can be done directly from the advance letter card using the "Payment" action.
Paying the Advance Letter¶
After the advance letter was issued, you can proceed to processing the advance letter payment. For this purpose the action "Payment" was added to the posted bill. You can find the advance letters that are expected to be paid either from the fact box information from your bill or also from the role center by opening the "Open Prepayments" tile.
After using the Payment action a dialogue will be displayed to the user that demands that the user selects the payment method (CASH payment or CARD payment) by which the customer is paying the advance letter and afterwards the user is supposed to click "Close and Post" and the payment is processed.
It is possible to use both payment methods for one advance letter, but in that case you need to lower the amount for the first payment, finish it and then repeat the process with the other payment.
After processing the payment for the advance letter a new drawer entry will be created. Drawer entries that are created by "Invoice payment" function are marked with "Inovice Payment" flag.
On the bill card you are able to see the number of advance letters and the respective amount.
For advance letters following fieelds are displayed:
| Field | Meaning |
|---|---|
| PREPAYMENTS | This field displayes the number of sales advance letters linked (fully or partially) with the selected bill. |
| Amount | This field displays the total amount of the issued advance letters that are linked with the bill. |
| Paid Amount | This field displayed the total amount of the linked advance letters that has already been paid by the customer and can therefore be applied. |
| Assigned Amount | This field displayed the amount from the advance letter that is linked to the document. This means that the amount is the part of the advance letter usable for the selected bill - usually there will be just one advance letter for one bill, so the Assigned Amount should match the Amount. |
| Remaining to pay | This fields displays the amount that isn´t paid by the customer (meaning the amount that should be requested from the customer before handing over the goods). |
Finishing Bill With Prepayments¶
After the advance letters are created and paid the user can go to the payments interface and continue with the processing of the bill payment. If the advance letters don´t cover the whole amount of the document, the user can add other payment methods to match the total amount of the document.
If an advance letter was linked to the document, but for some reason it is not included in the list, you can use the "Preapyment" function in the payment interface to link an existing advance letter to the POS payment methods.
To apply the advance letter for the bill, you should you the "Select prepayment" action to view all available advance letters for the source document.
The list will show all available advance letter with the detail of their payment, due date and amounts. Only advance letters that are not already linked to a payment line will be displayed. After the user selects the invoice, its data will be transferred to the previous dialogue and after confirming a new payment line will be created with link to the selected advance letter.
After the bill with advance letters was successfully posted following drawer entries are created to match the payment methods used for the bill.
Cancelling Prepayments¶
To cancel the advance letter you can use the "Cancel Prepayment" function in your POS Role Center.
In the following dialogue you are asked to enter details for the advance letter you want to cancel. You can either start by selecting the customer by the "Select customer" action (then the bill selection is limitted to the selected customer) or you can just go ahead and select the bill to which the advance letter was related (then start using the "Select Bill" action). Alternatively if you are aware of the advance letter number (e.g. from a barcode printed on the advance letter report) you can also use the "Select Prepayment" action.
In case there was an error in the entered data, it is possible to delete these data using the "Clear" action and re-enter them once again.
After selecting the prepayment to be cancelled you are supposed to select the payment method that will be used for returning the money to the customer. You can chose from three options:
- CASH Return (the customer receives cash as compensation for the prepayment and the advance letter is closed)
- CARD Return (the customer receives the amount returned to his credit card and the advance letter is closed)
- Credit Memo (the advance letter is closed, the VAT Credit Memo is issued and no compensation is directly posted - it will be done later on e.g. by the financial department)
It is currently not possible to combine the ways of cancelling the advance letter (you cannot do partial refunds).
Note
If the advance letter hasn´t been paid yet, the dialogue will display zero valuee in the "Amoutn to return" field. In this case the only possible option is to cancel the advance letter using "Credit Memo" action that only closes the advance letter without any additional movements.
To finish the transaction and post the prepayment credit memo, the action "Close and Post" should be used.
After the Close and Post action is used, the user needs to confirm that the advance letter credit memo should be created.
The respective drawer entries are created for the advance letter credit memo that was issued.
