Invoices - Keikaku

Clients can upload their invoices to your orders. Let's look at what you need to do with these invoices!

Invoice status

Each invoice has a status which represents its lifecycle. The invoice status will determine which interactions are available with a given invoice.

Open: this is the default status for every newly submitted invoice.
Booked: a booked invoice indicates that its PDF document has been examined and the cost has been filled in.
Checked: a checked invoice indicates that the delivery of its contents in relation to its cost has been verified.
Approved: this status indicates approval of the fact that the order cost have been exceeded by the cost of this invoice.
Accounted: this status indicates that the invoice has been accounted according to your company requirements.
Paid: this status indicates that the payment of the invoice has been processed.

Additionally, an invoice can also be cancelled.

Permissions for invoice actions

This page will mention various user roles such as "Accountant" or "Controller" as a requirement for certain actions. These requirements do not apply with the "Freelancer" plan.

Working with invoices

Keikaku will automatically send notifications to various users depending of the status of an invoice. When a new invoice is uploaded by a client, it will appear on the order detail page.

All newly uploaded invoices are open at first. Keikaku will send a notification to all users with the global role "Accountant" from your account, as they are responsible with handling the first step: booking the invoice.

If a client did not use the invoice upload link from the order PDF document and sent you the invoice via email, you can always upload the invoice by yourself on the order detail page.

To inspect an invoice, simply click on its name in the invoice table on the order detail page. If you belong to the user group that is responsible for the handling of the next invoice step, the invoice should also pop up on your personal inbox.

Handling invoices from the inbox

The sidebar navigation of your inbox displays the action categories accessible to you.

Green badges with a zero indicate, that there is nothing to do in a category
Red badges with any other number indicate that there are invoices that require your attention.

It's almost like a game. Get all badges to green and you'll win!

Clicking on an invoice should open the invoice modal. Here you can view the invoice PDF document or perform the next required invoice action, if you have the permission to do so. You can also add notes to an invoice by editing it.

Booking an invoice

When a new invoice is added the first step is to book the invoice. This has to be done by a user with the global role "Accountant".

An invoice can be booked by opening the invoice modal. Look at the PDF document and find the total cost of the invoice. Next, click on the "Book" button and enter the total cost.

Booking invoices with a foreign currency

When booking an invoice with a currency that is different from your project currency, the current exchange rate for the foreign currency will be stored on the invoice and used for later conversions.

Checking and approving an invoice

After an invoice has been booked, the next step is to check the invoice. This is typically done by the owner of the order, but users with the project role "Controller" or "Manager" may also check an invoice.

An invoice can be checked by opening the invoice modal. Look at the PDF document and examine the contents of the invoice and verify, if these contents have actually been delivered. Next, click on the "Check" button and confirm the action.

During the confirmation you may tick a checkbox to indicate that all contents of the order have now been delivered and you do not expect additional invoices from the client. This will move the corresponding order to the "Completed" status. Completed orders will be closed automatically by Keikaku, after all its invoice have been paid.

Cancelling an invoice of a completed order

When you cancel an invoice of a completed order, that order will move back to the "Open" status.

When an invoice has been checked, Keikaku will examine the cost of the checked invoice along with the costs of all other existing invoices for that order, which will result in one of these two possible outcomes:

The combined costs do not exceed the order cost, so the invoice gets approved automatically.
The combined costs do exceed the order cost, so a manual approval of the invoice is required.

An invoice that requires manual approval may be approved by a user with the project role "Controller" or "Manager". The may approve the invoice by clicking on the "Approve" button in the invoice modal.

When approving an invoice, the user who is performing the action will be confronted with the exceeding cost amount caused by the invoice and then has to choose one of these strategies:

Approve the invoice.
Approve the invoice and increase the segment amount by the exceeding amount using the budget buffer.

Keikaku will evaluate each strategy to check, if the invoice approval can be performed.

For a normal approval Keikaku will check if there is a sufficient amount remaining in the orders segment.
For an approval with segment adjustment Keikaku will check if there is a sufficient amount remaining in the orders budget buffer that can me moved to the orders segment.

If the chosen strategy cannot be performed, the user will be prompted to adjust the orders budget and/or segment amount.

Accounting and paying an invoice

When an invoice has been approved, the final two steps are to first account and then pay the invoice. This has to be done by a user with the global role "Accountant".

No internal logic is associated with these two actions, as Keikaku does not know how the accounting or payment of an invoice works in your company and which software is involved in these steps.

Just perform the accounting and payment according to your company guidelines and workflows and then come back to Keikaku to set the invoice status to "Accounted" and later "Paid" by executing the corresponding actions.

Skipping the "Accounted" status

If your company workflow is handling the accounting and payment of an invoice in one go, you may disable the "Accounted" status in the admin panel under "Settings" > "Company".

When the "Accounting" status has been disabled, invoices can be directly paid after they have been approved.

Cancelling invoices

If you noticed that a client made a mistake with an invoice, you may cancel it. It is not possible to cancel a paid invoice.

Cancelling an invoice requires you to enter a reason for the cancellation. You may also decide to notify the client. He will then receive an email that includes the cancellation reason as well as the PDF of the invoice in question.

Deleting invoices

You can also delete invoices. However, you should always prefer the cancellation of an invoice for documentation purposes. Clients are not notified when you delete an invoice.