Understanding invoice statuses in Audit: which invoices you should pay and which you shouldn't
At 7bridges we use the term 'Prepay Audit' to describe the way Audit can work for our customers using the 7bridges software. At its core, Prepay Audit means auditing a logistics provider's invoice before you then pay it. This is in contrast to 'Postpay Audit' where the auditing happens irrespective of whether an invoice has been paid or not.
This document described the steps of processing the invoice as well as a guide to the different invoice statuses
Invoice processing
Here's how the 'Prepay Audit' process works for each invoice:
1. Data added to the 7bridges software
Invoices are received from your logistics provider and that data is ingested into the 7bridges software. These invoices are delivered in a number of ways and, once ingested, you can see the data in the Invoices section of the software. At this point the status of the invoice will be 'Processing'.
2. Invoices are checked for any issues
This is the core part of Audit: a number of different checks are made of the data in the invoice to ensure you have been charged correctly. You can see the details of these different checks here.
3. Spend alerts are processed and disputes raised
Any outputs from the Audit checks are generated as 'spend alerts'. At this point the invoice status will be 'Needs action'. These spend alerts are then sent as disputes to the respective logistics provider to ask for credit notes. There are some spend alerts that are more about contract leakage and these should not always be disputed but can be exported or sent on as leakage actions to process offline.
Whilst there are outstanding disputes on an invoice the invoice status is 'Disputed'.
4. All spend alerts and disputes resolved/cancelled
Once any spend alerts are processed and any disputes resolved or cancelled the invoice has passed Audit. It's status is now 'Ready to pay'.
It's also worth noting that if no issues are found with an invoice, then its status will move straight from 'Processing' to 'Ready to pay'.
You can also override the Audit prepay process and manually mark an invoice as ready to pay. Simply click the button in the Actions drop down at the top of the invoice detail page or the button in the Audit spend section of the page. Overriding an invoice status like this is a non-reversible action.
By running through this process for every invoice, you can be sure that invoices marked 'Ready to pay' are legitimate costs from your logistics service providers.
Understanding the invoice status
Here is a detailed description of what each Invoice status means
Processing
-
All the shipment charges in the invoice are being audited
- It will stay in the state until all charges have been checked against every applicable (contract breach) Audit check - whether they pass the Audit or generate an appropriate spend alert
Needs action
-
There are spend alerts generated that need to be processed into disputes or archived and ignored
- OR The spend alerts have been processed into disputes but those disputes haven't been sent to the Provider yet
- OR there were errors in the Audit checking of a particular charge/charges - the errors will be shown on the invoice page
- OR there has been a change in the outcome of an Audit check: one of more charges that previously passed the Audit check have now failed and a spend alert has been generated. This is a rare case but it flags the invoice as 'Needs action' even if it may have previously been 'Ready to pay'
Disputed
-
Any spend alerts that were generated have now been added to one or more disputes and sent to the respective provider; these disputes are still open and not yet resolved or cancelled.
Ready to pay
- All charges have either passed every applicable (contract breach) Audit check or any generated spend alerts have been disputed and resolved with the provider.