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How to Bill a Customer to Another Account

Invoice to decides where a customer's invoices and statements go: to the customer itself, or to another customer such as a head office. It is on the Invoicing & tax card of the Credit & terms section of the customer screen; open the customer from Customers and select Credit & terms in the sections rail.

How do I send a customer's invoices to another customer?​

Open the customer, select Credit & terms in the sections rail, and search for the other customer in the Invoice to box on the Invoicing & tax card; then save. This is how you bill a site or branch to its head office.

  1. Open the customer from Customers.
  2. Select Credit & terms in the sections rail on the left of the customer screen.
  3. Find Invoice to on the Invoicing & tax card. While the customer is billed to itself it says "This customer. Invoices and statements go to it directly."
  4. Type at least two characters of the other customer's code, name or address in the search box under it, whose hint reads "Bill another customer instead — search by code, name or address".
  5. Choose the customer from the matches.
  6. Select Save at the top of the customer screen, or press Ctrl and S together (Ctrl+S).

Until you save, the choice is only on your screen. The other customer's name is shown straight away, so you can check you picked the right one before you save.

The Invoice to search finds active customers only. If nothing active matches what you typed, the list says "No active customer matches." A customer that is not active cannot be picked here.

You can also set Invoice to when creating a new customer; it is part of the same save.

What changes when a customer is billed to another account?​

Once saved, the customer screen shows the other account as the one that pays. On the Credit & terms section, Invoice to shows the other customer's name and code, with the line "Invoices and statements go to the parent account, and its balances are what this screen shows."

  • The balances are the other account's. The Credit control card shows what the parent account owes, not this customer, and says so: "These are … balances. This customer is billed to that account, so that is where the money is owed." This is your accounts system's rule: the money is owed where the invoices go.
  • The header says who pays. Under the customer's name at the top of the customer screen you will see billed to and the other account's name.
  • The name is a link. Select the other customer's name under Invoice to to open that customer. Use Back to return to this customer; you come back to the same section with anything you had typed still there.

On the Customers list, the other account's name can also be shown in an Invoice to column if your list's columns include it. To see every customer billed to one head office, add the Invoice to column to the Customers list and filter it: choose Contains and type part of the head office's name. To see the calls billed to it, use the Invoice to filter on the Calls list.

How do I stop billing a customer to another account, or change it?​

Go to the Invoice to part of the Invoicing & tax card, in the Credit & terms section of the customer screen, and either remove the other account or pick a different one; then save.

  • To bill the customer directly again: select Remove beside the other customer's name. Invoice to goes back to "This customer. Invoices and statements go to it directly."
  • To bill a different account: type in the search box under the current account, whose hint reads "Bill a different customer — search by code, name or address", and choose the new customer.

Then select Save at the top of the customer screen. If you change your mind before saving, select Discard on the Unsaved changes bar to go back to what was last saved.

The balances on Credit control follow the saved choice, so they change to the customer's own figures, or the new account's, after the save.

Why was my Invoice to change refused?​

ABM Service checks the invoice-to account when you save, and refuses the save with a message in a banner at the top of the customer screen if the account cannot be used. Nothing is saved; your changes stay on screen so you can fix them.

  • "The invoice-to account does not exist." — the customer you picked was deleted, or could not be found, by the time you saved. Search for it again, or pick another account.
  • "Billing account currency does not match this customer's." — the account you bill to must keep its money in the same currency as this customer. This is checked when a new customer is saved, because that is when the new customer's Currency is chosen. Pick an invoice-to account in the same currency, or change the new customer's Currency on the Invoicing & tax card.

A customer's currency cannot be changed once it has been saved, so choose the currency and the invoice-to account together when you create a customer that will be billed to a parent account.