We are a reasonably high shipping volume company. Are there steps that can be taken to increase Invoicing group size? I’m open to Hardware optimization, software tuning, upgrades, virtualization tuning, etc. Is it possible to have groups of 100 - 400 invoices without issues. What’s possible? What have others done successfully and how?
We are on 10.1.600 and currently limiting batches to 50 invoices. These are then being sent to customers via the email option where available and printed and mailed where email is not configured. Thanks all!
Hey Jose and Rob,
We’ve just gone live and it is a learning curve for the users and so our throughput is down atm but we are in the 250-300 invoice range now and expectations are 400-500 when we are at stride and with growth, I would like to keep 1000/day in my sights. One goal other is to have invoicing done same day so we are currently grabbing shipments at intervals thru the day which is leading to other issues.
Are you receiving errors with large batches or just slow?
We have done batches of almost 150 invoices without any issues. Our typical batch size is anywhere between 80 to 100. Each invoice has many lines. So if you count the invoice lines per batch it could be close to 1000.
Vinay Kamboj
Both. While in our UAT’s we were trying to push 100-165 and sometimes getting errors. We’re hosted and our consultant suggested groups of 50. The folks doing the invoicing are trying to get it done by EoD by invoicing periodically through the day but have scooped up shipments that were ‘about to need corrections’ but became invoiced, causing all sorts of added hassles. I would like to offer them a single EoD time like 4:45pm in which invoicing could be run and rip. I’m really looking for input like 'We do 150-250 invoices at a time with these following specs of hardware/software/version/ and tuning. A bench mark to see what is possible and what it takes to get to these goals.
Thanks Vinya,
That is encouraging. What hardware/software version/ tweaks are in place to get that performance, if I may ask?
Are you hosted with Epicor? Worst Worst case have some process built that auto builds the groups on a schedule and your A/R process the created groups. That would probably be last resort but a workable solution.
Wild idea: Could you invoice on Shipment and skip the Invoice group and posting?
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I’ll second @Jason_Woods suggestion, as you must not be doing much editing to the invoices. If you only spent 30 seconds on each invoice, it would still take over 8 man-hours to process 1000 invoices.
I thought about that too… In the foggy distance future, we might be able to do that but we are talking about a new implementation and we are still running in the SOP’s and uncovering issues so invoicing after shipment automatically would be about the worst move until we reach steady and consistent ‘no errors’ state. If I were to hazard a guess, that is a year off. At this time, between the shipments and frequent invoicing we actually creating problems and hampering corrections as the shipments are getting scooped too soon…tripping over each other. I was trying to find a way of nixing doing invoicing so frequently, so that a bigger batch(es), later in the day could replace the current frequent invoicing.
But based on the comments and the lack of performance oriented tweaks or hardware, it sounds like 150 invoices per batch is a high water mark… and I am quessing we cannot get there currently with our hosted environment. If for some reason, someone finds this post and is getting great batch sizes and knows the secret sauce, I’m all ears.
Vinay,
Do you have any tips or hardware recommendations to getting there?
We are on 10.1.600.19. There are no special tweaks, just standard Epicor recommended hardware config.
Vinay Kamboj
Why not just make several AR Invoice Groups, limited to 150 invoices, at the end of the day? You can have several AR Invoice Groups at one time. Once a shipment is used to create an invoice, it won’t be selectable in any other invoice group. Even if that first group is not yet posted.
Something to consider is if you’re allowing combined invoice (one invoice for multiple packers to the same customer).
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You should automate making shipment invoices using Generate Shipment Invoices process and put it on a schedule say every 2 hours. Each group can be named different, say ARINV12 for noon, ARINV14 to 2:00 pm etc. This way each group will only have invoices for shipments in the last 2 hours.
The groups can then be checked and posted manually. The group will however to be posted by the end of the day since the group names are reused in this process the next day. Printing and posting can be automated later on as there is more confidence in the process.
Vinay Kamboj
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We invoice large amounts daily, throughout the day. I live in invoice entry (especially since everything is basically called an “invoice”) I have found it best to break down batches as the following:
1010UPS - ups shipments
1010LTL - truck shipments
1010DROP - drop-shipments
1010RMA - RMA’s
1010CM - Credits
1010MISC - miscellaneous
Once a group is complete; we run the edit list to double check everything is flowing to the correct GL and product groups. Make changes if needed, rerun list. Save edit list as the group name, in categories print/email invoices and done.
You can add invoices to the groups throughout the day.
The auto-invoice scares me, so the only auto-invoice we currently do is with our credit card sales, which is magical.
We only use Auto-invoicing on Counter sales
I have a client who only auto invoices. The GLs are handled with product groups and posting rules. It’s awesome!
It just required about 10 hours on the front end. Saves a hour every day since.