Claims and invoicing

This area is where you can create and manage your claims and invoices as well as allocating payments.

The commission claims process is designed to provide an inclusive approach; from claim to reminder,  payment allocation and finally invoicing.
The process is split into four stages:

1. Create claims and send these via email.
2. After 28 days send the first reminder to venues with a summary of all outstanding claims.
3. A further reminder can be scheduled eg 14 days later or 42 days after the original claim date to all the venues with outstanding claims.
4. Allocation of payments and the creation of invoices to receipt these claims.

TIP: You can define the Bill Due Date for Accommodation and Conferencing together with the Second Reminder Date in DETAILS TAB within SETUP > OFFICE PREFERENCES.

Accommodation – claims for accommodation are raised automatically by the system on the day of departure of the last guest (or as defined by you within Setup > Office Preferences – see TIP above).   Make a note in Private Notes on the front screen of the reservation if you wish to remind yourself to reconcile first.

Conference – a claim is automatically raised by the system after the departure date related to your chosen Bill Due Date as defined in the Set up >Office Preferences, you should allow enough days to give you time to reconcile the charges for the event and if necessary to obtain a copy invoice for the event using the REQUEST INVOICE facility within the reconciliation Module. 

Preparation to run the claims - generally, accommodation claims are left unchecked, as the majority do not need any reconciliation.  To check the conference reservations simply run an Operated Report from the Reports Module for the period you are interested in, remembering the operated report is based on departure date, and that conference bookings are claimed 14 days (or whatever parameters you have defined) after departure.  Use the report to check that all the conference bookings have been reconciled and also use this report to ensure that the venues used have a valid email address entered for accounting purposes. 

Exchange rates - These are locked at the time of the claim as the period between when a booking was made and claimed can be quite significant and the venue will only pay based on the current exchange rate. There may still be some slight variance when the claim is paid; this is dealt with later in the allocation process.
GRATIS will generate bills in Sterling, Euros, and US Dollars; reflecting the currency setting for each reservation.  All UK bookings will be claimed in Sterling, all European bookings where a Euro tick has been placed in the countries table will be billed in Euros.  All other countries will be claimed in US dollars.  Exchange rates are automatically updated overnight by direct feed from XE.com.

Processing Claims
Individual Tab

Click once on the Create New Claims command button to return the following screen that will display ready to claim:

If the total does not match the invoice, update the charges table to reflect the invoice total by returning to the reconciliation module.  If there are non-commissionable extras on the invoice add them into the booking as ‘Extras’, category ‘O’ at 0% commission.  This is done to ensure your Management information captures all spend

Next click the Claim Selected button, the claims you have selected for sending will disappear from the list and appear as Claimed in the actual booking, you can then close this screen.

Reprint Invoices/Claims Tab

TIP: At this stage, it is advisable to create and print a summary of the claims that you are about to send for your records and to ensure you are happy with the claims.

Reprint Commission Claims Summary. – This is the document you would use to see what claims had been raised on which date and which claims are still outstanding. If any claims appear on this report then they have not been settled and are effectively outstanding. Click once on this command button to produce a report of ALL outstanding claims.

TIP: If you have a supplier meeting and wish to check whether they owe you anything, simply select their company from the appropriate drop-down list and click on ‘Reprint Commission Claims Summary’.  This will give you all the commissions this supplier owes you.To send individual claims, select the date range for which you wish to claim and click once on the Email Commission Claims command button. All claims due within this range will then be displayed on the next pop-up box:

Tick the check-box next to the venues and click on the Email Selected command button.
GRATIS will then transmit your claims (multiple claims for one supplier will all be included in one email).

Re-sending a claim
Sometimes you may need to find a specific claim to either resend or reprint. To do this go to the Individual Tab and select from the drop-down picklist

Click once on the reprint hyperlink to the right and the claim will be created, select the email command button and the following dialogue box will appear for you to send your message and attached claim:

Sending Reminders

To send reminders after 28 days, at the bottom of the screen locate the Reminders section & complete the From Venue name starting with ‘A’ and To Venue Starting with ‘Z’ then select the command button Email Reminder to Venues.

The following pop-up box will be displayed for you to manage the process:

Select which venues you want to send the reminder to and Click on the appropriate command button, 1st Reminder, 2nd Reminder.

Payment Allocation & Invoicing

From the Home screen click on Claims & Invoices select the Allocate Payments Tab.

The top section is where you identify your banking.  You can put all your banking in for the day, so all the payments you have received for that day you can allocate as a batch or you can put them in individually.  Until you are fully comfortable with the system, we would recommend that you enter the banking details on a payment by payment basis, (which may, in fact, cover more than one claim).

Scenario 1 – Venue pays exactly the right amount in one cheque
• Select paying in date.
• Select currency.
• Select payment method.
• Select Bank A/C.
• Enter pay-in value.
• Enter pay-in slip number.
• Select venue that has sent cheque.
• Select Edit, bottom left

Enter in the ‘Amount’ in the lower section and the ‘Available Amount’ will auto-complete itself
• Select ‘Auto Allocate’ to settle this amount.
• The available balance will drop to zero.

The same process happens if you have been paid for more than one claim and this settles all outstanding claims, the system will allocate the funds automatically to settle all outstanding amounts.

• Select ‘Update’.
• A note will appear stating an invoice has been created that you can print if you require.

Scenario 2 – Venue pays the credit charge
The amount paid by the supplier should be entered into the top section Banking Summary as a payment as before.

‘Auto Allocate’ the payment if it’s the only claim with that supplier.  This will leave a balance in the ‘Available’ box, which is the credit charge.
Enter this over amount into the ‘Credit Charge’ box.
Select update and an invoice will be created; this will detail the payment of the credit charge as a separate amount.

Scenario 3 – Venue under-pays and you wish to continue claiming for underpayment

The amount paid by the venue should be entered into the top section Banking Summary as a payment as before.

• Again if it is the only claim outstanding you can use Auto Allocate and GRATIS will warn you that there is a shortfall and enter the amount in the shortfall column.
• Now select Update and the amount that has been paid will be invoiced and the shortfall will sit as a balance. This should then be printed off and sent to the venue with a covering letter requesting the shortfall to be settled.

A copy of the invoice shows the shortfall; that is the balance outstanding.

The remaining will be generated as a reminder to the venue the next time reminders are sent.

Scenario 4 – Venue under-pays and you wish to write off the amount underpaid

The amount paid by the venue should be entered into the top section Banking Summary as a payment as before

• Again if it’s the only claim outstanding you can use Auto Allocate.  GRATIS will warn you that there is a shortfall and enter this amount in the shortfall column.

• To write off the difference, enter the amount of the shortfall into the adjustment column.  This will then take the amount out of the shortfall to balance the claim.

• Now select Update GRATIS will create an invoice balancing the claim by placing the amount you decided to write off in the adjustment/discount column.

• The key point is the commission is reduced but the venue and client spend are not, ensuring that the management information is accurate.

Scenario 5 – You have multiple outstanding claims from a venue and only wish to allocate the payments to the correct reservations.

The amount paid by the venue should be entered into the top section Banking Summary as a payment as before

Now select the Edit button and a number of claims for that venue will appear.

Enter the amount you wish to allocate, which in this case is the same amount as the amount paid in.

Enter into the Booking No. field the number of the booking from the list below that you wish to allocate a payment against.  You can copy and paste it from the list if you wish.

Now tick the Allocate box adjacent to the booking reference in the Claims list and the amount will now appear as a payment.

The Available balance has reduced by the amount of the claim just allocated.

Repeat these steps for the second allocation and then select update to create the invoice for these amounts.

Scenario 6 – You have multiple outstanding claims from a venue and on one occasion they pay the credit charge and on another claim, they pay you an insufficient amount, which you want to write off, or want to claim this shortfall

The amount paid by the venue should be entered into the top section Banking Summary as a payment as before.

Now select the ‘Edit’ command button.

Enter in here the Amount you wish to allocate, which in this case is the same amount as the amount paid in.

Overpayment

Next in the charges section complete the Payment field with the actual amount of the claim, in this case, £1700.00. 

Now make your adjustment by entering the credit charge, in this case, £6.48.

The Available balance has reduced by £6.48, the amount of the claim just allocated.

Underpayment – write it off

Now in the charges section complete the ‘Payment’ field with the amount of the underpayment, in this case £46.80.

Now make your underpayment adjustment by entering the Adjustment, in this case £37.20

The Available balance has reduced by the amount of the claim just allocated and is now zero.

Scenario 7 – You are paying the total hotel bill on behalf of your client and wish to deduct your commission from the payment as a ‘contra’ payment

This is more a series of process that needs to be followed in GRATIS rather than a routine that GRATIS performs.

• Create the commission claims.

• Create the Claims Summary Report

• Create a second or however many clients you have, Claims Summary Report, this time selecting the client you are paying the bills to the venues on behalf of.

• Now ‘Email Commission Claims’ in the normal manner, and this will produce a similar list to the one below:

From your client-specific claims summary select all the venues that you want to contra the commission off from your summary sheet and print these claims.

• Next, deselect these and select all the rest of the claims and send these in the normal manner.

• Using the client-specific claim summary or the printed claims, go to the allocate payments and allocate these commission claims as if they had been paid.  In the payment details enter ‘contra’ so that you know what’s happened in the future when you look back.

• GRATIS will automatically create invoices for these, in the normal manner, which can now be attached to the payment to the venue so that the venue is clear.

• Now go back and recreate ‘email Commission claims’ in the normal manner, which should only have the venues on it where a contra arrangement occurs.

• Check all the claims you have printed, and if they only have claims on that relate to bookings that you have contra off then select to email them, but when they get to your e-mail either delete them and do not send them, or send them with a message telling the venue that this commission has been contra off against the client's invoice from the venue.

• Claims where there are 2 claims or more, send this to the e-mail, but add a message in the email prior to sending stating which one is due for settlement and which one has been contra’ed off.

• The last step is to create the invoice report for these reservations in the normal manner to go into your accounts system.

Creating your invoice report for importing into an accounting system

From the Reports Module, select Invoice Report and choose the dates of the invoices you require in your report.  Select Preview and your report will be created.

GRATIS creates a report of the invoices you have created by invoice date.  This can then be easily exported to MS Excel, by just selecting the export to MS Excel command button.  The report contains:

Things to be aware of:

The Accounts Agency Reference is the one from your accounts system and has to be entered into GRATIS on the venue details module for each venue you invoice.  Many organisations will already have these established for each venue, and also a routine for creating them in the accounts package when they have not been used in the past.  You can run the invoice report as many times as you require and it’s a good way of finding entries where the Accounts Agency Reference is missing, and then going into GRATIS and putting these references in for the future, and to re-run the report.

The other fields in the report are automatically created by GRATIS.  The GRATIS supplier code is provided as some users may wish to use this as their reference in their accounts system.

Once you have the report in Excel, you may need to add additional columns before importing into your accounts system, typically a column identifies what each line is, so in SAGE an extra column at the beginning with si in each cell, signifying Sales Invoice.  Also typically a column allocating the invoices to an appropriate nominal code, so in SAGE this would be normally 4000, once again add a column in the appropriate location and past 4000 into each cell within this column.

Equally some of the columns may not be required for the import of your account, and can be simply deleted from your Excel spreadsheet.