There are situations where commission is collected over time as rent comes due, requiring invoices to be issued monthly throughout the lease term. Manually creating these invoices each month can be time-consuming, so "Over the Term" invoicing automates the process. By setting up invoice details when the deal is booked, the system will automatically generate monthly invoices for the duration of the term.
"Over the Term" invoicing uses the existing commission structure on a Closed Deal to generate recurring invoices. Each month, a new invoice is created while preserving previous invoices and their associated payments, making it easy to track billing activity over time.
If you need to adjust the invoice amount for a specific month, you can do so by adding a new commission entry to the Closed Deal. Select the Flat Fee rate type and define the specific month using the start and end term fields. This allows you to account for additional service fees or changes without affecting previously generated invoices.
Setting Up "Over The Term" Invoices
You can set up over the term invoices from the Book Lease Wizard.
1. Click on the Book Lease button from comp detailed view to launch the Book Lease Wizard.
Note: Please see the Book Lease help article for these instructions.
2. From the Invoice section of the wizard, select "Over the Term"
as the Invoice Type.
Complete the following:
Billing Cycle End (Day of the Month): Enter the last day of the billing cycle. It can be any day of the month. If your end of billing cycle is the last day of the month, select Last.
This date is not the due date. Due date will be auto calculated based on the payment information and can be edited manually if need be through the invoice detailed view.
Next Invoice Date**: Date on which you want the invoice to be generated. If the invoice date is set to today, the first invoice will be generated immediately.
Once the invoice is generated, the next invoice date is updated with a future date one month out from previous value. For example: If Next Invoice Date is 9/17/2014, the invoice is generated at 2AM on 9/17/2014 and the field is changed to 10/17/2014.
Invoice Creation Action: Provide an action upon creating the invoice on invoice date
--None--: Do nothing
Email to Recipient: Send the invoice to the recipient directly
Send Notification to User: Send the invoice as an attachment to a selected user
Invoice Notification User: This field is used only when the Invoice Creation Action is set to Send Notification to User.
Once the deal is booked, an invoice is created every month on the day specified in the next invoice date. The invoice PDF for the current period includes line items from all previous invoices that are not paid in full.
Editing "Over the Term" Invoice Fields
Once set up, over the term invoice fields can be edited by reopening the Book Lease Wizard:
The fields and how they impact the rest of the invoices are as follows:
Billing Cycle End: Changing the billing cycle end would make the next invoice have more or less than 30 days. For example: If the previous billing cycle end was the 25th and an invoice is generated for the 26th of the previous month to the 25th of current month, changing the end date to the last day of the month would generate the next invoice for the the duration between the 26th of the current month to the last date of next month.
Next Invoice Date: This date can be changed if you want to generate the next invoice early or later than planned.
Invoice Creation Action: Changes to action will apply to all the invoices created after the change.
Preview Generated Invoices
The invoices generated are listed in the related list of the Closed Deal and Invoices list view. To preview an invoice before sending it to your customer, click the invoice number link.
2. Click the Preview button see the preview of the generated pdf file.
Sample Email to Recipient
Sample Email to User
Troubleshooting
Automatic invoice creation can fail due to many reasons. When the system fails to generate a monthly invoice on the invoice date, an email is sent to the comp owner explaining the reasons for failure.
