Editing a Printed Invoice in TBS

There are many situations which require a change to be made to an invoice that has been produced by TBS, whether by virtue of noticing a price was incorrect, or an item had been left off the invoice, or correspondingly an item had been invoiced that should not have been, the list is endless of possibilities.

As with any document which relates to an accounting entry - and remember here that an invoice links back to the original booking, so it is important that, for accounting audit purposes, you can always get back to the original entries which created your invoice, and this therefore requires tight coupling between the sales ledger (whether using TBS accounts or not) and the TBS booking which created that entry.

In the simplest situation, when a change is detected soon after printing an invoice, and the status of items involved remains at 'Invoiced To Summarize' - at this stage, nothing has yet been sent to the accounting system, and so changes can take place (provided the user is authorised to make such changes) without further concern, typically amending whatever needs amending and reprinting the invoice until happy.

It is once an invoice has been updated to the Accounting System (and at which point the Accts Status has become 'Finished' that things get a little more complicated

The principles below apply equally to any accounting system, so if you are not using TBS for accounts, use the equivalents available to match what we show below

Firstly then a quick orienteering example ! A TBS booking contains possibly multiple lines of items, each of which holds a value, an invoice number and date and a sales account code :

The invoice which gets created from the booking sums together the totals grouped by the sales accounts code for entries set to the given invoice number - in our example this would mean that $170 would be posted to the sales account : Services:Rental, and a further entry would be made for the 8.875% sales tax as shown against each line - so in the accounts, there is one 'client' line (the grand total that the client should pay - here $185.09), and then the breakdown split by sales account codes that make up the grand total - $170 to Services:Rental, and $15.09 to Sales Tax Payable:

The invoice representation in the accounts is the same as the booking, just displayed differently ! It is important to remember though that they are only 'loosely' connected (by virtue of the job number and invoice number)

So with this in mind, if we need to change either side, then we need to change both sides !

Not all accounting systems work this way, but in TBS - you will cause absolute havoc, chaos and error heaped upon error if you start changing entries which belong in an accounting period which is not the 'current' accounting period. So to check your current accounting period, look in the Accounts --> Accounting Dates list :

In this example we need to look at the Sales Period Start Date - which here shows as Feb-1-2016 - provided our invoice date (see either in the sales ledger or the booking) is also in that same month (i.e. in Feb-2016) then you can apply changes following the below advice......

Let's firstly take an easy example - the invoice has tax on it and it shouldn't have.....

As you would normally for this change, go to the Booking, select the item lines to change and switch to the Amend Details tab, and set the Tax Rate to 0 and Save

Note : if your authority prevents you from making this change you will be told at the time !!

Assuming the change is allowed and has been saved, it is advisable to reprint the invoice to ensure it is now as you want it to be

To manually mirror this change in the Sales Ledger entries, we need to amend firstly the 'client side' entry (the parent gross value entry) - find the entry in the Sales Ledger, and edit the top entry :

Note : the 'value' of the invoice in the client side entry is held as a negative value - the Allocated value field shows the total payment allocated against this invoice and for what we are discussing here, should not be changed

Change the 'Value' entry to -170 and save.

For your information at this point our ledger is currently out of balance as the 'client' side total has been changed but your accounts side has not yet !

So now we need to do the final part which is to match the sales account code breakdown to the change we have made - in this case, we would suggest to edit the sales tax entry and change the value to 0. This is cleaner than deleting the entry (as you know TBS never actually deletes things)

So, highlight the Sales Tax line of the breakdown list :

Click on Edit (in the lower list) - and make the Value set to 0 and Save :

Providing the top total matches the bottom total (here they both show now as 170) then we are good, the job is done.

Looking at the opposite example - so the original booking and invoice has no tax, and it should have tax - follow the standard procedure to edit the booking, and add tax and reprint your invoice. The difference here comes in with the fact that (taking our same job as an example), an invoice added to the accounts which has no tax involved will not show a line for the tax :

So in this example we will need to add the extra line for our tax (or any other sales account code total required for the invoice, the 'sales tax' account code entry is not in fact anything different to, say, a 'freight' account code entry). After making the change to the top entry in the Sales Ledger list (to change the entry value from -170 to -185.08), then the easiest way to add a line for the Sales Tax is to use the New Copy button which will ensure all of the hidden fields are correctly set, and then simply amend the value and the sales account code, so highlight (in this case) the one lower list entry and click on New Copy :

Now change the Value - and the Accounts Code :

Now Save, and this should put us back to having the top and bottom lists balancing and matching the invoice figure :

Final Note : editing an invoice already posted to an accounts system is not a recommended practice. This note does not endorse the practice. But in deference to those who insist on taking their lives into their own hands this should help explain what to do and how to do it.