This article is relevant if you need NetSuite to print more detail on check and payment vouchers.

Background

While we are seeing greater movement toward electronic payment methods, the need to explain how payment is applied against bills and invoices helps keep processing costs low. Let’s remember that one company’s accounts payable is another company’s accounts receivable. When a check is cut to pay a number of bills, those payments must be applied to the respective invoices in the recipient’s accounts receivable ledger.

NetSuite’s provided standard check voucher works for simple cases. However, NetSuite’s provided check voucher format does not tell the entire story when credits have been applied against invoices that are being paid.  The credit application information is simply not expressed on the voucher and this may confuse the recipient. One of our clients asked us to help them enhance the check format information to reduce the number of inquires that came into their accounts payable department. Our senior consultant, Elie C., dug into the challenge and solved it. Thank you Elie!

The Applied Credits against Bill Payments Situation

The situation is the following:

1. Vendor Bills: vendor bills are entered as normal
2. Vendor Credits: vendor credits (also known as debit memos) are recorded for any needed reason; optionally, apply the credits to respective open bills.
3. Bill Payments: when working to produce a payment, all the vendor bills including open unapplied credits can be selected to be paid.  This will bind the story together.

In some situations, a vendor bill may have amounts open to be paid where there were credits already applied. In this case, a bill payment may pay a portion of the amount of the vendor bill.  When reviewing the situation, it’s important to express how credits were applied to the vendor bill so that the recipient can understand the cash and credit application sequence.

NetSuite Advanced PDF Check Voucher

The good news is that NetSuite’s Advanced PDF, as opposed to its earlier basic printing engine, gives us control over the situation. The trick to solve this is to loop through the bill payment sublists and express the values.

There are two sublists that are part of the Bill Payment records:

1. Apply (‘apply’): this list provides the traditional method for applying a payment to the bill. It includes information about discounts taken which may be helpful for the recipient Accounts Receivable staff.
2. Credits Applied (‘credit’): this is the list that tells the story about the credits that have been applied against bills that participate in the bill payment transaction.

With this information in hand, we can then customize a standard Advanced PDF check voucher to loop through these lists and output the respective information.

The basic syntax elements are as follows:

1. <#list check.credit as credit></#list>
2. ${credit.appliedto}

See the related image to see the code pattern that should help you enhance your NetSuite PDF definition.

Make NetSuite Behave to your Wishes

The great thing about the NetSuite platform is its capacity to be adapted. Out of the box, NetSuite does a fabulous job taking care of basic requirements. Yet, if you need to go beyond what is offered, you are not stuck. You indeed can make NetSuite behave according to your wishes. The key is to leverage the technology platform to make it act according to your wishes.

If you found this article meaningful, feel free to get notifications of new articles. If you would like to get control over your check printing situation, let’s have a conversation.

Marty Zigman

Holding all three official certifications, Marty is regarded as the top NetSuite expert and leads a team of senior professionals at Prolecto Resources, Inc. He is a former Deloitte & Touche CPA and has held CTO roles. For over 30 years, Marty has produced leadership in ERP, CRM and eCommerce business systems. Contact Marty to set up a conversation.

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