Here, we will create several Sales Orders from various members of a Trading Group. All the orders will be delivered to the Order Customer, although they could be delivered to other members of the group, and the Head Office will be invoiced for all the Orders on a single Consolidated Invoice.

The Sales Ledger Customer account of the Customer to be invoiced must be flagged as the Head Office.

The Sales Ledger Customer accounts of the Customers who will be placing the Orders, the Sub Offices, must be associated with the Head Office Customer account. This forms the Trading Group; members of a Trading Group must share the same VAT status.

Enter a number of Sales Orders for members of the Trading Group. Use the Sub Office Customer as the ordering account. The delivery address of the Sub Office Customer will be displayed in the Deliver to address field.

Remember, the VAT Status on all delivery addresses must match if the orders are to be consolidated.

The invoice address of the Head Office account will be displayed in the Invoice to address field. The account details of the Head Office Customer will be shown above the address field.

The delivery can be processed straight away, if this is your normal method, but do not process the Invoices. The Orders must be sent to the batch to enable them to be combined into a single Invoice.

Deliver two or more Sales Orders from the batch, if not done on entry, but do not process the Invoices.

Go to Invoice Orders.

On the Sales Order Batch Selection window, select Consolidate from the Process Method menu.

Enter or select the Head Office Customer Code in the Invoice Account or Head Office fields and click on Display to retrieve the batched orders to be invoiced to the Head Office Customer.

Activate the orders by changing the Posting Status to YES. This can be achieved by double clicking on the line or using the switch buttons.

Click OK to print and update the Consolidated Invoice.

Only orders with the same Invoice Customer (name and address) and for the same currency can be consolidated. These orders must have identical settlement discount terms.

If the batch contains a selection of orders that are all to be invoiced to the same Head Office but a different Invoice address has been selected on one of them, only the orders with the same Invoice address will be consolidated.

If the batch contains a selection of orders that are all to be invoiced to the same Head Office but one of them contains different settlement terms, only the orders with identical settlement terms will be consolidated.

In both these examples:

A single Consolidated Invoice will be produced for the orders that comply with the rules.

Individual invoices, with the Consolidated layout, will be produced for those orders that could not be processed as part of the combined Consolidated Invoice.

This option, found in System Options on the Documents tab card, stops the System from prompting to print Delivery Notes.

If you select this option you will not be able to use the Consolidated Sales Invoices functionality.

You would select this option if you use multi-part stationery to print Invoices and Delivery Notes together, or if you have no need for Delivery Notes.

Multi-part stationery that combines the printing of the Invoice and Delivery documents will not be suitable for Consolidated Invoices as the header details for the Invoice and Delivery documents will usually be different.

There is an Access Crystal version of the Consolidated Sales Invoice. If you already use Access Crystal Sales Invoices, the Access Crystal Consolidated Sales Invoice will also be used.

To select Access Crystal Sales Invoices, go to System Options. On the Documents tab card, select Crystal Documents. On the ACD options window, tick Sales Orders Invoice.

If a number of orders are activated for Consolidation, the detail window can be selected and all unprocessed and part processed detail lines from all the selected orders will be displayed. These lines can then be selected for processing in the normal way. To assist with selection the order number will be displayed in front of the item code.

Use Ctrl+Click or Shift+Click to highlight and select multiple lines.

If the Full Processing option is chosen, only the quantity delivered and updated as delivered for each detail line will be invoiced unless Invoice Full Order is chosen in the System Options.

Invoice Full Order allows you to Invoice the whole of a batched order even though a Delivery Note has not yet been produced, or there is insufficient Stock to fill the Order. This option is found in System Options on the Documents Tab (below Sales Orders - Other Options).