Good afternoon.
Background: A few years ago we decided that we needed to show the 'Ex Ref' on our remittances in order for our suppliers to know which of their invoices are being paid. I cannot imagine any circumstance where this would not be the desired default. This is achieved by checking the 'List invoice/credit by item line' check box in settings -> bank defaults. This does what it's supposed to IF supplier invoices are separately batched in rather than being created using 'update ledgers' when following the recommended and correct supplier process which begins with creating a purchase order. If the latter (correct) process is followed, the supplier payment, and therefore the remittance, shows each and every invoice line with it's individual line total (completely useless for us and the supplier) rather than the invoice total on a single line (which is correct for a remittance in 99% of circumstances).
Problems:
- One of our suppliers offers a prompt payment discount based on the invoice total. To account for this when making a 'supplier payment' we have to either apply the total invoice discount to a single invoice line (which is not correct) or spend half an hour manually calculating and applying the discount on each item line of each invoice that we are paying - not acceptable to us.
- The remittance is produced with a line for each invoice item line. This would be very time consuming for the supplier receiving our remittance and allocating our payment. Sometimes there may be 50 or so invoices being paid with between 5 and 50 item lines per invoice - not acceptable to our suppliers. Reconciling 50 invoices is fine but reconciling 2500 item lines is not fine.
So what are we supposed to do? It appears we are currently following the incorrect supplier process, running a data check shows a warning for each PO which hasn't generated an invoice when receiving stock and using 'update ledgers'. There is also no link between the PO and the supplier invoice if we batch the invoice in rather than creating from the PO/delivery.
Sage appears to give us two options for supplier process, doing it 'incorrectly' works - but not properly, doing it correctly makes remittance and supplier payment unacceptably long winded for both us and our suppliers.
Any (polite) suggestions appreciated.
