Paying Contractors

Smart calculates payments due to Contractors, making it easy to issue Contractor Payment Advices and Charge Listings and/or reconcile invoices received from the Contractor.

Contractor payments are calculated automatically as job details are entered and may be changed (by an operator with the appropriate access) at any time until the job is invoiced.

Pricing is set up for individual Service Providers (a default price is set up in the Services section) .

There are two methods of paying contractors. You can generate a Charge Listing which lists jobs done by the contractor's Service Providers and the amounts due to them according to your calculations.  Or you can reconcile invoices rendered to you by the contractor and then produce a payment advice for the contractor.

If you wish you can use both these methods together. For example you could send a charge listing to a contractor to assist them in preparing an invoice to submit to you. You can then use the charge listing to generate the contractor invoice (see Select jobs to add to the Contractor Invoice , below.

Contractor Charge Listing

(In earlier versions of Smart, Charge Listings were known as Payment Advices.)

Contractor Charge Listings are calculated and issued by you when your agreement with the Contractor (and your legal obligations) allow you to do so. They require little effort from you (Smart does most of the work). They suffer these drawbacks.

• Any overpayments by you are likely to go un-noticed.
• Where the contractor charges you GST or a similar tax, there may be a legal requirement for them to present you with a "Tax Invoice" rather than have you prepare the document.

Use Charge Listings if your contractor is happy for you to tell them how much they should be paid. This puts the responsibility for identifying any discrepancies on the contractor.

To print Contractor Charge Listings, select \Accounts \Contractors \Print Charge Listings from the Main Menu. Once a job appears on a Charge Listing it can't be listed on another Charge Listing.

• If you choose a Division (may be renamed in your system)
  • When printing a new charge listing, only jobs to be billed to that division are included.
  • When reprinting a charge listing, only charge listings for that division are printed.
• If you don't choose a Division
  • When printing a new charge listing, jobs for all divisions will appear on charge listings. A separate charge listing will be created for each division.
  • When reprinting a charge listing, charge listings for all divisions are reprinted.
• Press the Contractor button to select a contractor. Only charges for that contractor will be listed. Press the button again to select all contractors.
• Items with a Received date up to and including the Include Items up to date will be included on new listings.
• The listing will be dated with the date entered in the Date Listing field.
• If Invoiced Items only is checked, only jobs which have been invoiced (or marked 'never invoice') are included in the Charge Listing. Otherwise, all jobs which have been approved for invoicing (or have already been invoiced or marked 'never invoice') will appear.
• If Generate If In Credit is not checked, a Charge Listing will not be produced if the total on the Charge Listing would be less than zero  (this can happen if you have processed customer credits which also reverse the payment to the Service Provider).
• Choose a State to include only items at locations in the specified state.
• If the job or charge has a contractor payment but no Service Provider specified, or if the Service Provider specified has been deleted, the payment will be attributed to the Service Provider selected here.  Press the Service Provider button to select a Service Provider. Press the button again to deselect the Service Provider. If no Service Provider is selected, jobs with a payment but no service provider are given the Charge Listing number of 999999999 and you will not be able to allocate them to another Service Provider.
• If you select to Reprint Charge Listing, only Charge Listings with a Listing date in the range selected will be printed. Note that this may include jobs dated outside the selected date range (or exclude jobs dated inside the selected date range).
• If you select Short Form, only the Job Reference, ReceivedDate, and Payment Amount are shown for each job. Otherwise the service, Service Provider, Location Site Code, and job times (dispatched, on site, off site) are also shown.

Press OK to print Charge Listings. When printing is complete you will be asked whether printing completed normally. If you answer no or cancel printing, new Charge Listings will not be created.

Reconciling Contractor Invoices

Contractor Invoices are invoices rendered to you by the Contractor for payment. Smart takes most of the effort out of reconciling these invoices but this still takes longer than issuing Charge Listings. However this method enables you to comply with legal requirements and it is more likely that you will underpay rather than overpay the Contractor since the onus is on them to list all charges due.

Instead of issuing Charge Listings for all jobs performed by the contractor you can wait until you receive an invoice from the contractor and then reconcile their invoice. This makes you or your staff responsible for identifying discrepancies.

As part of this process you can issue a Supplier Invoice Payment Advice to the contractor.

Overview

These are the steps to reconcile a contractor invoice:

• Key basic invoice details into Smart
• Copy existing Smart job details into the contractor invoice
• Adjust job pricing details as necessary
• Print a Payment Advice.

Details

To access contractor invoices for all contractors, select \Accounts\Contractors\Contractor Invoices from the Main Menu (for invoices for all contractors)

To view only invoices for a single contractor, select \Accounts \Contractors \Contractor Details and click the Invoices button.

If the invoice does not already appear in the list, right click and select Add to add it. Otherwise double click on the invoice to open the Invoice Details window.

Step 1. Enter the contractor invoice details

Enter the information in the top (coloured) section from the contractor's invoice. (Once you have saved the invoice you won't be able to change these details.) You can view and/or update contractor details by pressing the Contractor Details button to ensure they print correctly on the payment advice.

• Enter the Invoice No, Date, and Totals as they appear on the invoice supplied by the Contractor.
• Once you have completed reconciliation you can change status setting from Incomplete to Ready for Payment. This will ensure that the invoice appears in the list of invoices ready for payment when you select \Accounts\Contractors\Contractor Invoices from the Main Menu.  Once you set the status to Paid you will not be able to change details of the invoice.
• You can optionally enter the date and details (e.g. cheque number) of the payment. The initials of the operator who last changed anything on this line appear next to the date.
• The selected Division is the one paying the invoice. (The term Division may be changed to another term, e.g. Class, in your system)
• Any notes you make here are for internal use only, and do not appear on the Payment Advice.

Step 2. Match the jobs on the contractor invoice with jobs in Smart.

 1. Select the Find/Add Jobs tab.

2. Change the view (if necessary) to assist in locating unpaid jobs done by the contractor.

By default, this window displays jobs for the contractor dated up to and including the invoice date which have not yet been paid. You can change the search settings to look for specific jobs.

• You can enter a partial value for Job Number, Order Number, or Docket No. For example, entering a job number of 345 will match jobs like 12345 and 34567.
• Press the Location button to select from a list of locations. Press the Location button again to clear the selection.
• If you check All Divisions, jobs for all Divisions will be shown. Otherwise, only jobs for the division specified above for this invoice will be shown.
• If you check All Contractors, jobs for all contractors will be shown and you will be able to select any Service Provider for any contractor. Otherwise, you will only be able to select a Service Provider for the contractor for this invoice.
• If you can't locate the job you are looking for, try checking the All Contractors or Paid Jobs boxes. The job may have been allocated to another contractor, or already paid. (These boxes are checked automatically for you if you search on Job Number, Order Number, or Docket Number.)
• The Docket No field may be labelled as Line Number depending on your system settings .
• By default the list of jobs includes jobs which have already been selected. To see only jobs which match your search settings, check the Exclude Selected box
• Press F4 to restore the default search settings.
• The check mark in the Job No column indicates whether the job has been approved.
  • a green tick means the job has been approved by Operations.
  • a red tick means the job has been approved by Accounts.

3. Select jobs to add to the contractor invoice.

• Press the space bar to select or de-select the highlighted job.
• Right click to view details of the highlighted job, to view details of payments for the job, or to add a new job.
• Right click to select 'Add from Charge Listing' to add jobs which previously appeared on a Charge Listing (you will be able to pick from a list of Charge Listings for the contractor. Charge Listings only appear in this list if they are dated in the date range specified in 'Search Settings').  Jobs from the Charge Listing will not be added to the Contractor Invoice if they already appear on an existing Contractor Invoice (including this one). 

4. Make any adjustments to the amount to be paid

To adjust the amount of the payment and/or add notes, go to the Invoiced Jobs tab.

By default, the amount to be paid to the contractor is the amount calculated by Smart (see Pricing), less any previous payments.

Double click on a job (or right click and choose Change) to view or update details of the payment.

Here you can change the amounts as appropriate, or enter a note about the payment. Any notes about the payment will be printed on the Supplier Invoice Payment Advice.

You should update the amount on the Invoiced by Contractor line (if necessary) to reflect the amount shown on the Contractor Invoice for this job. Although this is not essential it will reduce confusion and queries about your payment.

5. Print the reconciled invoice

Press OK to save and exit.  If the invoice items you've selected don't add up to the amount on the contractor invoice you will be warned.

You can print the invoice from either list of contractor invoices. When you print the invoice you will be asked if you want to mark it Paid.

You should check the All Invoices view from time to time (select \Accounts\Contractors\Contractor Invoices from the Main Menu) to make sure you don't overlook invoices for payment.

If you have a link to MYOB or another accounting system which exports contractor invoices, they won't be exported until marked Paid.

6. View payment details.

You can view details of payments made for a job by clicking the lookup button [...]  in the Accounts tab of the Job Details window.

© Skorpion Pty Ltd 2009