Some enhancements to freight bills of lading – Misc items

First, note that clients use two methods to post freight bills of lading to A/P.  In one, the freight vendor and rate is captured in Receipts to Stock in the same entry where a product bill of lading is entered.  In the other, a freight bill of lading is created from the Invoice Register, with each bill of lading tied to a specific invoice.  For those using that second method, we’re making this enhancement:

Miscellaneous Freight Items by Customer:

At issue is that some accounts have predictable add-ons to their freight charges, charges that our Best Buy calculations based on mileage aren’t seeing — think bridge tolls, for example.  These costs are covered in the margins on the invoice, but the problem remains that freight charges coming out of the order are not sufficient to explain the higher amount seen in A/P when the vendor’s freight bill is being entered.  The sponsoring client wanted a way to set up, from confirmation, some of the adjustments needed to balance the freight BOL in A/P.  There are three parts:

1) We have now in Best Buy Adjustments a new option to record, by customer, events that may occur to boost freight charges.  We record here a default amount and the G/L code we’ll use to expense this off.

2) Confirmation has a step to record which, if any, of these possible events are happening on the current invoice.  The user can accept or alter the default amounts.

3) In A/P, when handing a freight BOL, the source order is polled to see if some adjustments should be made automatically. The user is then left to adjust off any balance remaining after these known adjustments are made.

The end result is that A/P can process faster because there is now less variance seen between the vendor invoice and the expected freight charges.

Bill Smallwood