Checking a contractor's invoice against the ledger

A contractor is settled one of two ways, chosen on their Pay tab:

• Self-billing — the workspace writes their invoice from the approved work on the ledger. See self-billing a subcontractor.
• Invoice check — they send their own invoice. You enter it as a bill, and Maliru checks every line against their contractor ledger.

Setting it up

An invoice arrives as a bill from a supplier, so invoice check needs one. Open the person under Users, choose Pay, then Show pay:

1. Press Supplied by a company and choose their supplier under Supplied by. Only a supplier with a subcontractor deduction status can be chosen, so a sole trader needs a supplier record of their own, with its status set under Commercial › Bills › Suppliers. Being supplied takes them off the payroll: they get no pay run line of their own.
2. Beside Settled by self-billing, press Change, choose Invoice check under How they are settled, and Save.

People settled by invoice check are not on the supplier's self-billed bill. They send their own invoice.

Checking an invoice

Enter the invoice as a bill with its lines, as for any supplier. Allocating each line to its Job makes the match exact. Then open the bill and press Check against ledger, which appears when the supplier sends somebody settled by invoice check. A contractor's invoices are also listed on their ledger, under Their invoices. You need the Manage pay rates permission and the Crew plan.

The check reads the work of everybody that supplier sends who is settled by invoice check. It starts on the calendar month of the invoice date; to cover another period, change Work from and Work to and press Check again. A line that quotes a reference or names a job can also match unpaid work from up to a year before.

Each invoice line comes out as one of four results:

• Matched — the work is on the ledger, and they claimed no more than we recorded. A credit on the invoice matches too, and reduces it.
• Claimed more than we recorded — the difference is queried. Work that is on hold, disputed, not yet approved, already in an open run, or has no pay rate counts as not recorded, and the reason says so.
• Not in our records — nothing on the ledger matches it.
• Already paid — the work was paid by an earlier run or bill, which the reason names.

Why says how each line was matched:

1. By reference — the line quotes a ledger reference such as ML-12.
2. By job and item — the line's job, or a job title written in it, together with a rate-card item's code or description, or a stage name.
3. By job and quantity — the line's job and the same quantity.
4. By job — the line's job, taking all the work we recorded on it.

Lines are matched in their order on the invoice, and each piece of work can be matched once. The same invoice always gives the same result.

Work we recorded that the invoice does not claim is listed underneath.

Approving

When everything matched, press Approve. When something is queried, say what under What is queried and press Approve matched, query the rest.

The approved work is then settled: no pay run and no other bill will pay it again. On the bill, Ledger check shows what was approved, what was queried and the query, for whoever pays it. Approving the check does not approve or pay the bill; that stays under Bills. Voiding the bill unsettles the work.

If a check was wrong, Reopen it, with a reason, and check again. A check can't be reopened once money has been paid against the bill: record a supplier credit under Bills instead.