Invoice Schedule Generator: Self-service—Early access only

Invoice scheduling made simple—stay ahead, stay accurate

Most organizations follow regular cycles for invoicing and billing that directly impact financial planning, operational efficiency and supplier relationships. To help you efficiently and accurately generate invoice schedules that match your program’s business processes and workflows, you can use the Invoice Schedule Generator from self-service.

As an Enterprise administrator, you can create schedules that automatically generate recurring invoices based on criteria you define. Once you set up your schedule, rolling invoices are automatically scheduled for up to one year ahead.

Why it matters

The Invoice Schedule Generator streamlines managing invoice schedules across suppliers, services, and time periods. It offers a flexible billing schedule that accommodates your program’s needs. Using the Invoice Generator delivers these benefits to your organization.

• Ensure accuracy: Automate invoicing, standardize formats, and reduce errors.
• Boost efficiency: Eliminate manual work, minimize delays, and free up finance teams.
• Customize schedules: Flexible billing cycles, consolidated invoices, and contract alignment.

Persona

Clients and program office administrators

Terms you should know

Although invoice scheduling is a common process and concept, it’s important to understand how some basic terms are defined within Beeline Enterprise.

Key options for creating a schedule

The Invoice Schedule Generator feature streamlines scheduling invoices. When you create a new schedule, numerous options are available on the Edit Generator page. Below are the available options and Enterprise Best Practice Recommendations.

• Billing Period: Choose monthly, weekly, and more.
• Recurrence Type: Daily, weekly, biweekly, monthly, semimonthly, or fiscal calendars (4-4-5, 4-5-4, 5-4-4).
• Effective Date: When the schedule starts. Currently limited to a MM/DD/YYYY format.
• Invoice Run Offset: The number of days before, after or equal to the Billing Period Reference.
• Exclude Weekends: Optional.
• Run Time: Set in Eastern Standard Time (EST) 24-hour format.
• Categories: Select invoice types, such as expense, staff augmentation.

Naming best practices

As you’re creating your invoice schedules, keep these best practices in mind.

• Create as few invoice schedules as possible.
• Group as many schedules together as possible.
• Schedules are meant to be reusable, so avoid getting too granular with your schedule names.
• Include the frequency and the time the schedule runs.
• Build a name for Weekly schedules as follows: Weekly hyphen Day hyphen Time; where the hyphen is used as a separator.
  • For example, Weekly-Thursday 09:00 or Weekly-Thursday 09:00and11:00
• Build a name for Monthly schedules as follows: Weekly hyphen Description of your schedule; where the hyphen is used as a separator.
  • For example, Monthly-2 business days before EOM

Tips

• Understand the difference between Monthly invoicing and Calendar month invoicing.
  • Monthly invoicing is a collection of weeks, either 4 or 5, per month.
  • Monthly invoicing will align with a client's timesheet week ending date.
  • Calendar month invoicing generates an invoice from the 1st to the 30th or 31st of the month.
  • Calendar month invoicing will most often not align with a timesheet week ending date.
• Make sure invoice start and end dates align with the client's timesheet periods when scheduling invoices that include timesheets. Otherwise, billing for timesheets may be split across multiple invoices.
  • For example, your client’s site timesheet workweek is set up as Sunday through Saturday. If you create an invoice schedule with starts on Saturday and ends on Friday, billing for timesheets will be split across two invoices.
• Sometimes you can’t match invoice start and end dates to the client's timesheet periods and timesheets will be split across more than one invoice.
  • For example, your client uses weekly timesheets but uses Calendar monthly invoicing.

Prerequisite

Your Enterprise VMS must have Invoice Categories set up for your organization. Invoice Categories are configured for you by Beeline before implementing your site. If you have questions about or need to make changes to your Invoice Categories, open a Service Request ticket and then contact your Client Operations Manager.

How to steps

When you navigate to the Invoice Schedule Generator page, you can instantly view the name, recurrence type and the status (active or inactive) of invoice schedules already generated for your site. You can also quickly create a new invoice schedule tailored to your organization’s specific needs.

You can’t have two separate invoice schedules that include the same invoice category. If you want to process the same invoice category on multiple different schedules, create one schedule that includes two different run definitions.

For example, you may want to run a preliminary invoice weekly on Mondays and Wednesdays. You’d create a single schedule with run definition details specified for each run time.

Generating a schedule

1. Select Preferences > VMS Settings > Financial Services. A Financial Services page displays.
2. Select the Invoice Schedule Generator link. The Invoice Schedule Generator page displays showing existing invoice schedules.
3. From the Navigation bar, select Add New. An Edit Generator page displays.
4. In the Name field, enter a label for the schedule you’re generating.
5. From the Recurrence Type list, choose one of the predefined types to align your schedule with operational cycles and help standardize reporting and cash flow management.
6. Use the Effective Date calendar to set the date the schedule goes into effect. Currently limited to a MM/DD/YYYY format.
7. In the Run Definition section, select Add New. Additional fields display so you can define the criteria and specifics of your invoice schedule.
8. From the Billing Periods Reference list, select one of these options: Start Date, End Date, First Weekday, or Last Weekday. Your selection depends on the number of days before or after the billing period date when you want the invoice to run. You can enter positive or negative numerals to align with your program's needs and financial strategy.
9. In the Invoice Run Offset Days field, enter the number of days before or after the billing period date when you want the invoice to run. You can enter positive or negative numerals.
10. To omit weekends from your schedule, select the Exclude Weekends checkbox.
11. From the Specific Day list, select the day of the week you want the schedule to run.
12. In the Run Time (EST) field, enter the time of day you want the schedule to run.
    Caution: Remember, the runtime uses a 24-hour clock based on Eastern Standard Time (EST).
13. To select the predefined invoice category you want in your schedule, take one of these steps:
    • Use the Arrows to select the predefined invoice category you want from the Category Name (2.0 Invoice Platform) list. You can choose more than one category.
      OR
    • Use the Arrows to select the predefined invoice category you want from the Client Billing Schedule (1.0 Invoice Platform) list. You can choose more than one category.
14. Select Next. A preview of your schedule displays.
15. Optional. If you want to make changes to your schedule before you make it active, select Return to go back to the Edit Generator page and make adjustments.
16. Select OK. A message informs you that invoices in a Not Started status associated with the schedule will be deleted.

    

17. Select OK. Invoices are automatically scheduled for up to one year ahead. Plus, new invoices will be automatically generated per the schedule you created.

Managing schedules

Although once you generate an invoice schedule, it cannot be deleted, you can make an active schedule inactive.

1. Locate and select the active schedule you want to update. An Edit page displays.
2. Select Edit.
3. Clear the Is Active checkbox.
4. Select OK. A message informs you that invoices in a Not Started status associated with the schedule will be deleted.
5. Select OK. All automatically generated schedules in a Not Started status associated with the schedule are deleted. The schedule remains in the list of schedules on the Invoice Schedule Generator page.

Reporting on your invoice schedules

If you want a list of your invoice schedules, you can quickly select Export from the Invoice Schedule Generator page. You can also access the Beeline Master Invoice Schedule report from the Report Builder to create a report with details on your invoice schedules.

1. Navigate to the Beeline Master Invoice Schedule report using one of these options:

   • Select Report Gallery. Next, locate the report and then select Run.
     OR
   • Select Admin > Reports. Enter the report name in the Report Name field on the Reports Administration page, and then select Search. Next, locate the report in the list at the bottom of the page, and then select Open with Report Builder.
2. From the Output Type list, select a format for your report, such as Excel, chart, JSON API, and more.
3. From the Fields tab, choose columns from the available invoice-related fields.
4. From the Filters tab, choose any filters you want to apply.
5. After you define filters, select Create Report.