Invoicing
An invoice in Polaris is an itemized list of the materials shipped to the library, including any services provided by the supplier. It includes titles, quantities, funds, prices, and other applicable charges. There are various options for invoicing in Polaris, though most orders are processed electronically, and a library may find EDI to be a beneficial option. Additionally, Polaris does offer other manual methods for specific types of processing. Options for processing invoices in Polaris include:
Regular (paid upon receipt) - Purchase order line items are copied to create invoice line items. Encumbrance transactions are posted in each linked fund until the invoice is paid and the expenditures are posted. The payment method can be Depository Agreement, Free, or Purchase.
Prepaid - If you select prepay when the purchase order is released, Polaris automatically creates a prepaid invoice, and the funds are immediately expended.
Prepaid with a deposit account A deposit account is an account with a vendor that allows customers to pay all or a portion of the estimated annual billing in advance. Depending on the amount prepaid, the typical discount is from 1.5% to 4.5% more than with a regular plan, where invoices are paid after the receipt of titles. fund - An invoice is also created automatically when you release a purchase order with a deposit account fund. The linked funds are debited, and no encumbrances are transacted.
Approval plan and Blanket order -Under an approval plan An arrangement with a publisher or vendor to send materials automatically. With an approval plan, it is not necessary for the library to order each title individually, and titles that are not considered appropriate may be returned by the library. An approval plan with a vendor is usually an agreement that the library will receive current imprints selected for the library on the basis of a detailed profile. or blanket order, the supplier sends specific types of material, but the individual titles are not known until they are received. For example, your supplier sends your library the latest releases from the most popular adult fiction authors. There is no difference in Polaris between Blanket orders and Approval plans. However, some libraries may wish to use the Blanket order type for items that cannot be returned to the supplier.
Select either of these order types on the Invoice workform to track the automatic shipment of titles under a specific program the supplier offers. You can enter the plan information in the Plan box on the Supplier workform.
When the shipment arrives, you add the line items for the titles and segments for the number of copies. The titles are checked for duplicates on existing firm orders, allowing you to decide whether to keep copies of titles that were already ordered. Then you receive the copies at the segment level where you add the number of copies that arrived for each title in the shipment. For more information, see Add an invoice line unlinked to a purchase order line and Receive a purchase order/invoice line item segment.
With blanket orders and approval plans, funds are not encumbered, since there is no purchase order, and they are expended when the invoice is paid. You can track the expenditures for items paid for using these order types with the Items by Approval Plan and Items by Blanket Plan reports.
Miscellaneous - This invoice type can be used to account for charges other than for materials; to link to other invoices to make adjustments after the invoice is paid; or to indicate a lump payment to a serial supplier for all your subscription renewals. Line items on miscellaneous invoices are not linked to bibliographic records or purchase order line items. The payment method for miscellaneous invoices is always Purchase.
Rapid Receipt - You can start with a new invoice, pull in multiple line items from various purchase orders, and receive them in one step. See Use Rapid Receipt to receive line items from an invoice.
Invoices for serials - You can create an invoice without a purchase order to pay for subscriptions. See Add an invoice line linked to a subscription.
Linked invoices - You can link an invoice to one or more invoices to account for debits or credits to invoices that have been paid and keep a clear audit trail. See Linking Invoices.
EDI Invoices- If you send orders using electronic data interchange (EDI), the electronic invoice file is created automatically when the order is filled. The EDI invoice reflects the contents of the actual shipment and may contain line items (titles) that were ordered via various EDI purchase order transactions.
EDI invoice line items linked to purchase order line items - The EDI Invoice Defaults profile updates the linked purchase order line item to received as soon as the invoice is saved in the Polaris database, or it can be set to not to automatically receive the purchase order line item, and receive later when the shipment arrives.
- No matching purchase order line item - If no matching bibliographic record is found, the invoice line item is created using all the information in the EDI Invoice Defaults profile.
- Matching purchase order line item has an incorrect status - If a matching purchase order line item is found, but it has an incorrect status, such as cancelled, it cannot be linked to the purchase order line item. The information from the purchase order line item is used to create the invoice line item, and an error is listed on the log. For more information on the EDI invoice e-mail log, see The EDI Invoice E-mail Log.
- EDI invoice line items where quantity sent is not equal to quantity ordered - Select the Hold partial shipment option in the Polaris Administration profile EDI Invoice Defaults to prevent EDI invoices from being generated automatically if the quantity sent on any of the line items in the invoice does not match the quantity ordered. See
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For information on standard invoice reports,
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