Invoice Best Practices

My Exchange Invoices offers visibility into incoming and outgoing electronic invoices and enables buyer accounts payable (AP) and suppler accounts receivable (AR) users to manage invoicing issues.

Daily Tasks

  1. Open Invoices to check for Failed and Stopped invoices.
    1. Use Quick Clicks to filter the invoices that have a Failed and Stopped delivery status.
    2. Open Transactions, click Transactions, click Advanced Search, and select Terminated in the Transaction Status list to determine why these invoices failed.

      Tip: GHX recommends that you use the "Last 3 Days" time period for the search criteria, which will include weekends.

      See Transaction Statuses for a list of Terminated and Stopped reasons.

      See Terminated Invoices below for steps to resolve two common Terminated invoice conditions: incorrect ship-to account information and the EDI 810 business process is not enabled.

    3. Open Transactions, click Transactions, click Advanced Search, and select Stopped in the Transaction Status list to determine why these invoices were stopped.

      Tip: Invoices are stopped by GHX because of rules your organization or GHX sets up that prevent invoice delivery. Reconcile these invoices with your organization’s or GHX’s stop rules.

    4. Save the Advanced Searches as Work Lists so you do not have to re-enter the same search criteria every day.
    5. Point to the exclamation point icon in the Transaction Status column on the Transactions page to reveal the terminated and stopped reasons for each transaction.
  2. Click Invoices to check for invoice exceptions and use Quick Clicks to filter invoices based the exception types.
    • POs with Incomplete Invoice Lines – Lists items and products that are not yet invoiced; these lines may be invoiced at a later time
    • POs with no Invoice – May indicate that items and product charges may be consolidated into larger invoices
      • AP users should ask the trading partner whether the invoices were sent electronically, if they should expect them in the mail, or if they were sent by some other means
      • This exception type may suggest that your organization or the trading partner is not EDI 810 enabled; verify the business process status in Registration Center
    • Invoices with Exceptions – May indicate incorrect pricing
      • AP users should coordinate with their purchasing department to verify proper pricing; they should then contact the trading partner to reconcile the price before paying the invoices
      • AR users should be ready for trading partners who contact them about these invoices
  3. Use My Exchange email and commenting functionality to communicate with your trading partners.

Terminated Invoices

Invoices with a Terminated status were terminated by GHX for many reasons, but the most common reason is because of incorrect ship-to account information.

  1. Open GHX Registration Center.

    Note: If you do not have access to Registration Center, ask a colleague who does. This may be someone in your AP or AR department or someone in IT.

  2. Click My Accounts and search for the trading partner.
  3. AP users can take one of the following actions:
    • Use the messaging tool to contact the trading partner and verify the ship-to information, or
    • Change the ship-to information and submit that change request to your trading partner for confirmation
  4. AR users can update the ship-to information, as needed.
  5. Resend the invoices.

    Note: After ship-to information has been resolved, invoices must be resent to be successfully delivered.

  6. If ship-to account verification does not resolve the issue, troubleshoot other reasons the invoice could not be successfully delivered.

Another common reason that invoices are terminated is because of a registration error in which your organization or the trading partner is not EDI 810 (invoices) enabled.

  1. Open GHX Registration Center.
  2. Click My Accounts and use the invoice's account number to search for the trading partner.
  3. Select the trading partner’s account, click Edit Account, and request the Invoice (EDI 810) business process.
    • When the business process is Denied, review the reason for the denied status
    • When the business process is Pending, your trading partner needs to approve or deny the request
  4. Resend the invoices after the EDI 810 business process is enabled.

    Tip: Ensure the business process is enabled before resending the invoices. Invoices sent before the effective date will continue to fail.

Weekly and Monthly Tasks

  1. Ensure Failed and Stopped invoices and invoice exceptions for the prior week and month have been handled.
  2. Download invoice data for archiving, as needed per your organization's processes.
  3. Review invoice count and spend with trading partners.
    1. Review the Invoice Analytics to discuss invoice counts and spend with trading partners.
    2. Use the Advanced Search to review a specific trading partner’s invoice volume.
    3. Create trading-partner specific saved views to regularly review invoice volume.
    4. Review the Invoice Analytics to examine your overall GHX use and trends.