Exact Globe+

Why is the sales order invoiced completely despite enabling the setting “lines only” in the fulfillment screen ?

Issue:

When doing a partial delivery to a customer, the user ticks the option " Lines "  " Fulfillment/return only " in the fulfillment screen. The user expects that the invoice generated for this shipment only contains invoice lines for this particular fulfillment, however the invoice created is for the entire sales order.

Solution:

The settings in the Entry data section of the fulfillment screen for invoice generation, to only invoice the lines that are fulfilled or returned has the following functionality:

• If the user enables the option the invoice generated will only be for the fulfilled or returned sales order lines of that particular fulfillment.
• If the user disables the option (Which is the default setting) the system will generate an invoice for the delivery that is done at that moment, but also for the sales order lines that were already done in the past, but where no invoice was generated yet.

In other words, if the user does not change the settings for invoicing in the sales order fulfillment screen, the system will by default only invoice what is delivered at that moment and what was delivered in the past, but not yet invoiced.

Example:
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Assume you have a sales order with three sales order lines. The first partial fulfillment you disable the setting to Generate invoices. I.e. for the first shipment no invoice is generated.
 
When doing the second partial delivery, the user enables the setting to generate an invoice, but also enables the setting for "Lines Fulfillment/return only". This means that now an invoice is generated, but only for the sales order lines done in the second delivery.

When doing the third partial fulfillment, the user enables the setting to generate invoices, but leaves the "Lines Fulfillment/return only" disabled. This time an invoice is generated, containing the delivered lines for the third shipment, but also the sales order lines for the first fulfillment, since they were not invoiced yet.
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However, the user now experiences that even though the option to only invoice the fulfilled or returned lines, the system is generating an invoice for the entire sales order, despite the fact that the user is only doing a partial delivery. What is the cause of this ?

The reason for this happening is the payment condition. If the payment condition contains more than one payment term, the option Lines Fulfillment/return only is ignored. You can switch it on or off, it doesn't matter. The generated invoice for a sales order with a payment condition with more than one payment term will always be done for the entire sales order in one go.

When going into the Sales order conditions screen you will find a button "Invoice partial Deliveries". This button turns multiple payment terms into one payment term, allowing partial fulfillments being invoiced specifically again.

The reason it is not possible to specifically invoice partial fulfillments with multiple payment terms is to prevent the customer, in case of large sales orders with many partial deliveries and more than one payment term, to end up in a maze of small outstanding items that nobody understands anymore what they represent or when they need to be paid.

See also:  Document: 11.540.504 - Release 360: Invoice fulfilled/returned lines only