create a manual invoice

discounts and no charge items

Receivables Handbook for Local Units

Report Catalog

Welcome to the online help for Harvard's Accounts Receivable system

Accounts Receivable (AR) is one of Harvard's web-based Oracle systems. It's used to

• create customer invoices and credit memos
• answer invoice-related customer account questions
• run Accounts Receivable reports, and
• track collections activity.

Overview of the AR system:

Getting customers into the system: Customers must be set up in the Customer Master File (CMF) before an invoice can be created and sent to them. If a customer or customer site is not in the system, complete a Customer Setup / Maintenance Form (Excel) and send it as an e-mail attachment to ar_customers@ harvard.edu, or fax the form to 617-496-5632.

Single requests to set up a customer usually take no more than four hours to process. For multiple customer setups, the Customer Hotline (5-9192) needs 24 hours to process every 50 customers requested.

Getting invoices into the system: Invoices are entered into the system in one of three ways. They can be

• entered manually into the AR system by a local billing unit
• entered into the AR system by Central AR (for units with very few invoices), or
• loaded via a file from local billing systems to the AR system.

"Complete" invoices: Invoices that are marked "complete," regardless of the method used to enter them into the AR system, are printed out and sent to customers by Central AR three times a week (on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday). Sweeps of local unit billing system invoice feeds (files) happen daily at 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. All complete invoice accounting (whether fed or entered manually) is pushed to the GL daily at 6 p.m.

Customer payments are sent to the Harvard lockbox (Harvard University, P.O. Box 4999, Boston, MA 02212). Local units receiving payments should send them directly to the lockbox. Payments for invoices billed using the AR system should never be deposited through Cash Management.

Credit memos are used to reduce the amount owed by a customer on a particular invoice. No credit should be entered that does not reference the original invoice. In addition, all credit memos should be entered with an appropriate reason code.

You can create "standard memo lines" to make it easier to prepare invoices for items you frequently bill. Standard memo lines let you define an item (for example, "Regular Boxed Lunches") that you want to appear in the "Invoice Description" field on the printed invoice. If you frequently bill for an item, you can select it from the list of "standard memo lines" so you don't have to enter it each time you create an invoice.

Getting details about a customer account: Details about an account can only be viewed by someone set up with the correct Oracle AR responsibility. Contact your local security representative if you need additional AR responsibilities.

AR Reports: Nine AR reports are available in CREW:

• Account Status Summary
• Bad Debt Recoveries
• Bad Debt Write Off
• Billing Detail
• Billing Summary
• Inactivated Customer Sites
• Outstanding Customer Aging Summary
• Past Due Invoices
• Reprint Selected Invoices (use this report to print out a copy of an invoice)

Collecting overdue bills: All collection activity must follow federal and state collection laws, as well as adhere to Harvard's collection policies. Only staff set up with the Oracle responsibility for doing collections may make collections calls. All collection calls must be recorded in the AR system. If you are unsure of your collections process, call Central AR (495-3787) to find out who is responsible for collecting on your billing unit's accounts.

Central AR Bad Debt Reserve Policy: The bad debt reserve contribution will be calculated by using the bad debt expense, less any recoveries received, for each of the prior three fiscal years. These numbers are then divided by the net sales for each year. The average bad debt expense ratio for the prior three years will then be multiplied by the tub's current year June 30th receivables balance. Starting in fiscal year (FY2007) only reserve contributions of $5,000 or more will be posted to the General Ledger. Any balances less than $5,000 will be returned to the tub.