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Payment on Shipment

  • 28 January 2022
  • 8 replies
  • 395 views

Userlevel 1

Soon to go live on Acumatica, and this is my first post so apologies if this has been answered anywhere.

Need:

In short, looking for a solution that would allow us to take payment against a Shipment with picked or allocated quantities vs. what Acumatica allows which is only payment against an Order or an Invoice.

Scenario:

We ship goods based on square footage (leather hides), such that a customer can order 1 hide, but in our Pick/Pack/Ship against a Shipment, we can pick 45square feet, 50square feet or 60square feet - all of which is acceptable in our industry and decided by the Picker.

In the case of a prepaid customer, there is no way to take payment against the picked item(s) on the Shipment. My understanding is we have to confirm shipment, create invoice and then take payment against the invoice…..which raises the potential for the Shipper to pack goods up, label them and goods leave our warehouse in advance of payment being received and potentially, credit card payment is denied when payment is attempted on the invoice.

Additionally, for many sales we are required to pick the goods to get appropriate totals that affect our packaging and freight/duty rates for international prepaid delivery and must provide a Proforma to the customer to pay in full before goods ship. 

The work-around of creating Shipment, picking goods, determining freight/import costs, then cancelling the shipment, adjusting the Sales Order to equal picked values and providing that for payment to customer would require us to “re-pick” the entire shipment from a systems-standpoint once the order is paid, and in the interim when payment could be 30 days from time of picking, our inventory visibility/demand is obviously not correct.

Other work-around is a simply business process that Shipper must not ship until given the okay by the Front Office, but that introduces human error we’re trying to avoid.

Any help/direction appreciated.

RH

 

 

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Best answer by mvolshteyn 28 January 2022, 15:27

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8 replies

Userlevel 5
Badge +3

@rharvey6 , can you clarify why it is not acceptable to charge payment from a sales order before creating a shipment? Do you meat that it is a picker who sets the final price in your process? If this is the case, can this price still be more or less reliably estimated before shipment is created and picked (and then the difference is charged or refunded at the invoice level)

Userlevel 1

@mvolshteyn, thank you for taking the time.

We cannot charge on the sales order - leather hides are sold by the square foot at a fixed customer price level or unit cost….but leather hides are variable in size so the amount to charge will always be different based on the picked quantity. Picker only decides the picked quantity, not the price per square foot.

Example, customer orders 1 hide (avg 50sqft) at $2.00 = $100. We enter 50.00 qty on sales order based on average hide size and create shipment. Picker then picks the hide but must have freedom to pick any hide (we cannot auto-allocate) which determines final quantity and end invoice total. In a given lot of 100 hides for a stock item, maybe 2% of hides are exactly 50sqft, but even if they are an exact match in size quantity, a 50sqft hide’s quality may not be suitable to sell as a single hide order so the Picker may need to select another hide that could be 55.00sqft or 45.00sqft ($110.00 or $90.00).

Similarly, using the 50sqft average, we have customers that order 275sqft of a leather. In picking, we try to get as close to that value as possible, but based on average hide size in a given lot, it’s possible and acceptable by the customer to over ship (eg. 310sqft) or under ship (250sqft). In those cases, we pick quantities and allocate to Shipment, then we have to undertake a back-and-forth with customer - maybe we have to remove or add a hide. 

Hence final price of the order will 99% of the time be different than the PO…….for international shipping, there are then additional complexities for duty calculations as duties are on the final cost of the invoice based on the actual picked quantity of leather….which again is driven at the shipment level

For some projects, we have to reserve quantities for a few weeks, so to show proper inventory allocations we have to have goods allocated against a shipment…..and such customers do require us to submit Proformas for payment which has to be the Shipment document. 

Hope that explains it.

Userlevel 5
Badge +3

@rharvey6 , thanks for clarification

If knowing (and charging) the exact amount of payment for what is to be shipped (+freight) is a must, then I can only suggest to write a customization which updates sales order’s line quantities and freight  with what was allocated in a shipment.

This is basically the work-around you described except for you do not have to cancel shipment. Such customization will allow to update order while it is in the Shipping status, Make sure to use SetValueExt assignments and cache updates to calculate order totals properly.  Also make sure to use Shipping Terms with Order Based freight 

After these calculations, you can create a proforma from a sales order and also charge payment (again, order should not be driven from Shipping for it)

I believe  that neither this customization nor freight setup are straightforward, but it should be doable.

To my knowledge, more feasible options necessitate charging (authorizing?) prepayments with estimated amounts, and capturing final amounts on invoice 

Userlevel 1

Thank you @mvolshteyn - will look into that. We do sometimes get deposits, but in those cases, that is against the sales order before we pick, final quantity picked still drives end cost and in these deposit cases by the time we get the final payment, goods are ready to ship so we can confirm shipment and create invoice to then accept final payment.

The Shipping portion is a whole other matter…..nothing I’ve seen integrated with Acumatica handles what we require….evaluating Pacejet at present but all the ShipEngine/others are more online marketplace single shipment based and do not address our B2B needs….but that’s a whole separate post.

Thanks for your time & help.

Userlevel 7
Badge +11

Hi @rharvey6 

Here is another alternate option which may work for your requirement without customization. 

  • One can create a payment against Sales order while shipment is in process 
  • So, you create a shipment, and say the adjustments are on (picking process). 
  • When you determine the amount to be paid, receive payment against Sales order using ‘Create Payment’ option. You can even update Shipment number on document note of this payment created
  • Shipment is not confirmed yet, say its in reserve state for few days as indicated on your requirement, but payment is received against that shipment from Sales order
  • Whenever the shipment is processed into an invoice, the Payment received against Sales order does get applied to the Invoice ( you can alter the application amount as required).

Here is a screenshot from my local instance, created a shipment and received a payment against Sales order which is ‘in Shipping’ status. 

Hope this helps,

Regards,

 

Userlevel 5
Badge +3

@vkumar , if there is an over-shipment wrt to the original order, and payment amount needs to exceed the original amount, you can’t just apply the payment to this order (will receive the ‘Amount Applied to Order cannot exceed Order Total’ error).

Also, there was the a requirement to create proforma for payment. Since shipment does not contain any financial information, sales orders screen looks an appropriate place for it

For these two reasons, sales order needs to be adjusted for shipment (certainly in case of overshipment) and probably in case of unndershipment) through a customization. Only after this, payment for so in shipping status can be recorded per your suggestion

Userlevel 1

Firstly @mvolshteyn & @vkumar , have to say, as new to Acumatica and this community, the fact there is even active feedback at all is so helpful compared to our previous system so thank you both.

@vkumar - thank you on that, that thought & step was missing on my end.

Couple of work-arounds we are discussing without customization were the following:

  • Allocate stock against the Sales Order via the Line Details. Issue with this is that we cannot use the Pick/Pack/Ship functionality for scanning/allocating stock in the warehouse, but it would work in theory
  • Creating a custom report on the Shipment screen that prints out in effect the “invoice” with quantity & $ figures and a label Proforma Invoice. Issue here is as @mvolshteyn details though if Shipment amount is greater than SO, we cannot take payment on the Sales Order (if less no issue). 

I think we will have to customize in the end like @mvolshteyn mentioned to get exactly what we want within the constructs of Acumatica.

 

Userlevel 3
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This is a big issue for us as well.  It is a strangely arbitrary workflow rule that you can’t accept a credit card EMV payment while an order is in Shipping status.  In our case, we need to ship to get an order to our retail location, but when the customer comes to pick it up and pay with their credit card, our only option Prepare Invoice or to manually enter a Create Payment--can’t use the EMV terminals to swipe their card because Acumatica won’t allow it until it’s invoiced.  We don’t want to invoice at this time for clerical correction reasons.  So why can you enter a credit card payment manually, but you can’t take an EMV terminal payment?  

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