Overview
This article covers the invoice delivery and invoice approval account attributes. It is arguable these settings are the most important settings in the Emersion platform as they directly control the behavior of the system when invoices are approved and how they are delivered to your customers.
These settings work hand-in-hand.
The Invoice Delivery and Invoice Approval settings are controls for:
- the method of which your invoices are sent
- whether invoices are automatically approved.
These settings are an account attributes in Emersion. Read the article on account attributes to understand more about the inheritance pathways used by these features.
Invoice Delivery Methods
The following invoice delivery methods are available. In Cumulus, this is referred to as the Invoice Delivery Method setting. This determines how invoices are sent to your customer.
Email
This method sends the invoice to the preferred email address of the billing contact on the account and any other nominated recipients that are set up in the invoice delivery event template.
Post
This method sends the nominated recipient(s) of the Invoice Post event, a list of invoices to be printed out and posted to the customer.
Do Not Send
This method will leave the invoice approved but will not send the invoice to customers. When Emersion creates your service provider account during the start of the onboarding process, this is the default setting.
Email and Post
This method combines the activities of 'Email' and 'Post'.
Automated Invoice Approval
Emersion's platform allows service providers to automatically approve invoices when they are generated, or to create them in a pending status before approving them manually in bulk, or individually.
When the Auto Invoice Approval setting is enabled, invoices that are generated are automatically approved and handled in accordance with the invoice method setting.
Using automated invoice approval will completely bypass invoices being placed into a pending status. Users will not need to review and approve these invoices. They will be delivered to customers immediately, provided the invoice delivery event is enabled.
Are you Onboarding? Two tips apply:
- Do not enable the Auto Invoice Approval setting until you are ready to send out invoices. Until then, leave this setting as Do Not Send. Changing this setting will result in invoices being sent immediately to customers before you may be ready.
- Do not forget to set up the events for each delivery method to be offered.
Want to Use These Settings?
Configure Default Settings for all Customers
To set your default provider-level default settings for all customer accounts, go to:
Admin > Settings > Service Provider Defaults > Invoices
The Invoice Settings page will display.
Invoice Delivery
Select the invoice delivery method from the options available. This will apply to all new customers that are created in future.
If you want to reset all customer accounts to this new default setting and remove any customer-level override, check the Reset all customers flag. If you want to change only the default setting for future customers, leave this unchecked.
Auto-Approve Invoices
To enable automatic approval of your invoices:
- Tick the Auto Invoice Approval check box . This will apply to all new customers that are created in future.
- If you want to reset all customer accounts to this new default setting and remove any customer-level override, check the Reset all customers flag. If you want to change only the default setting for future customers, leave this unchecked.
When you are happy with your Invoice Delivery and Approval settings, press the Save button.
Configure the Settings for an individual customer
As mentioned above, the default default settings can be overridden for any customer via the Customer > Details tab.
Click the Edit Account Summary button to put the page into EDIT mode.
Invoice Delivery
Select the invoice delivery method for this customer from the Invoice Method drop list.
Auto-Approve Invoices
Tick the Auto-approve Invoices check box to enable automatic approval of invoices for this customer.
When you are happy with your settings, click the Save Account Summary button.