Association Service Contracts – Using Service Contracts to Automatically Post or Create Invoices

Summary: This article and tutorial video provides an overview of how to use Association Service Contracts in Vantaca to automatically post or create invoices.

There are times when you need to pay a Service Provider, or record a payment made outside the system, but don't ever receive an actual invoice for those items. Examples of this may include your Management Fees, certain monthly insurances, or a Utility that is set up to autopay using a debit card. This article focuses specifically on the creation of these items, and builds off of the knowledge found in the Association Service Contracts article. If this is your first time using Service Contracts, start there. 

In Vantaca you can use Association Service Contracts to automatically create invoices on a specific day of the month, or can set up invoices to be automatically created and reconciled when certain bank-side transactions are posted through integrated bank accounts. We call both of these processes Auto-posting of invoices and we set up our Auto-posting criteria through Association Service Contracts.

To get started, navigate to the Association > Services page.

Be sure you are looking at the correct association. If you do not see the Service you need, you will need to add it using the steps found in Association Service Contracts. 

Click the dropdown on the service to reveal the contract(s) available for that service, and click +New Service to create a new contract, or click Edit on the existing contract to reveal the contract details we can use to set up our Auto-posting invoices.

Let’s start by using an example of one of our existing service contracts: such as an Insurance contract. This insurance payment is automatically drafted every month, but we don’t receive an invoice for it. So, we want to have an invoice created so that we can record the payment to the appropriate general ledger expense information, such as GL code, Fund, descriptions, et cetera.

First, confirm that the correct Service Provider is selected and that the start and end dates are correct. It is not necessary to have an End Date, but you must put a Start Date.

Note: Make sure to add a unique account number on each service contract even if you have to create one. When creating account numbers, make sure to use a number that makes sense within your management company (it could be the association code). While it is not required to have an Account No to Auto-Post, it will be needed for things like Approval and Auto-Pay. For instance, if your Management Fee contracts do not have an account number, the invoice will be created, but it will not automatically advance and pay as expected.

There are two ways to Auto-Post invoices: Creating an invoice on a certain day of each month, or creating a book-side invoice when receiving a bank-side Transaction on the Accounting > Reconciliation page.

Fixed Date Auto-Posting

 
In the Contract window, click on the Auto-Posting section. The Auto-Post Method allows us to define how we want an invoice to be automatically created, either on a specific day of the month or upon reconciliation of a specific transaction.

Method: Auto-Post
Date: The day of each month that the Invoice Action Item will be created.

For Example: Setting this for 1st will create a new Invoice Action Item on the 1st of each month.

Register Description: This is how the Payment will display on the Accounting > Bank Register screen.

Amount: The Invoice Amount that will appear on the auto-posted Invoice. Leaving this field blank will still create an invoice, but the Invoice Amount will need to be entered. 

Note: Auto-posting invoices is an overnight process, and will only post from tomorrow forward, based on the Start Date of the Contract. The system protects against retroactively auto-posting invoices. 

Beyond the Auto-Posting section, all other sections for Auto-Approval, Payment, etc are the same. For help setting up basic service contracts, see the Service Provider Contacts
 

On Reconciliation Auto-Posting

This method should be used when your payments meet the following criteria:

1. The payment is made outside the system (such as auto-payment set up through a debit card)
2. You are simply recording a book-side transaction
3. The Association uses an Integrated Bank
4. You DO NOT receive an invoice for the payment 

When using On Reconciliation Auto-Posting, Vantaca will search the Bank-Side transactions on the Accounting > Reconciliation page and create an item similar to a Post Expense to record the transactions on your Financials, as well as give you something to reconcile against that Bank Item. These Items do not require approval (since they've already been paid).

Auto-Post Method: On Reconciliation 

Bank Description: Because Vantaca is automatically creating and reconciling an invoice, it is important to select the appropriate invoice. Vantaca defines the unique identifying information in the Bank Description field using percentage signs (%). Find the transaction you will use as your default from the Bank Side (Left Side) of the Accounting > Reconciliation page.

Vantaca will search for the Phrase you enter. For this example, we are looking for "3996921 Core & Main" in our Bank Item Description. Vantaca will search for that exact description only, so that is where the percentage signs (%) come in: Adding a % before or after your entry will search for any stream of characters before or after your search. 

We can use the Preview button to see which transactions would automatically match based on our search terms. Any of the items in this preview would create this Auto-Posted invoice. If you find there are items that do not meet what you're looking for, refine your Bank Description until only the items you need are displayed.

Register Description: This is how the Payment will display on the Accounting > Bank Register screen.

Review Threshold: Review Threshold allows you to set an upper limit for the amount of the Invoice to bypass everything. Anything below the Threshold will move to the Next Step, while anything Above the Threshold will move to your Review Step. Keep in mind these items have already been paid, so this is not an Approval. This simply allows you to see that this item is higher than expected. For instance, if this were a water bill, an overly high bill may indicate a water leak.

Review Step: For items that are above the Review Threshold, this is the step that will be used. Items on this step will be found on the Accounting > Approve Invoice > Prepaid Review tab. 

Next Step: If the item is below the Threshold, it will go to the step selected here. This will, in most cases, be the Prepaid (Expense of Autodraft) Step. These items are automatically reconciled with the Bank-side item that triggered them, and write the appropriate Book-side items 

As these items are paid outside the system, there is no need to select any Approvals or Payment options.  Enter the appropriate GL information for the contract, following the steps outlined in Association Service Contracts.

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