Configuring Schedules for Recurring Documents

Some accounts payable documents repeat regularly, such as monthly rent bills, or quarterly or annual insurance bills. That is, at regular intervals, documents with the same amount and most of the same settings need to be entered. To automate the process of adding the recurring documents to MYOB Acumatica, you can create schedules for them. Accounts Payable documents of the following types can be added to the schedules: Bill, Credit Adjustment, Debit Adjustment, and Prepayment.

In this topic, you will read about the steps you need to perform to schedule document generation, to run a schedule, and to process the generated documents.

Scheduling the Generation of Accounts Payable Documents

You can automate the process of creating the recurring documents by doing either of the following:

• By adding a particular document to an existing schedule on the Bills and Adjustments (AP301000) form. On this form, open the document to be scheduled and on the More menu (under Other), click Add to Schedule.
• By creating a specific schedule and assigning one document or multiple documents to that schedule on the Recurring Transactions (AP203500) form.

A schedule defines how many times and how often specific documents should be generated. For each schedule, on the Recurring Transactions form, you can specify a fixed number of times the schedule should be repeated (by specifying a required number in the Execution Limit (Times) box), or you can permit unlimited schedule executions by selecting the No Limit check box.

You also define the frequency of the schedule executions by selecting one of the following option buttons on the form:

• Daily: The documents should be generated daily or every x days.
• Weekly: The documents should be generated once a week or once every x weeks.
• Monthly: The documents should be generated once per month or once every x months.
• By Financial Period: The documents should be generated once per financial period or once per x financial periods (or in every xth financial period).

You can assign one document or multiple documents to a schedule. Once a document is assigned to a schedule, its status changes to Scheduled.

Attaching Relevant Documents to Schedules

To make the tracking of documents easier for users and to facilitate auditing, you can attach to each schedule the scanned documents or electronic versions of the documents that are the basis for the schedule you have created. To attach a file to the schedule, on the Recurring Transactions form, you perform the following steps:

1. In the Schedule ID box, you select the schedule by its ID.
2. On the form title bar, you click Files. This opens the Files dialog box.
3. In the dialog box, you click Add File on the table title bar. This brings up the Upload File dialog box.
4. In the Upload File dialog box, you click Browse to locate the file, and then click Upload to import the file and close the dialog box.

If multiple unrelated documents are assigned to the same schedule, on the Document List tab of the form, for each document in the table, you can click the staple (at the beginning of the row) to attach a file or multiple files explaining why this bill is generated periodically.

Running Schedules

To generate documents in accordance with the schedule, you run the schedule periodically by using the Generate Recurring Transactions (AP504000) form.

When you run a schedule, the system uses the original document as a template to generate similar documents. The documents generated by a schedule differ from the template document as follows:

• Date: The date of each document is determined by the schedule you have configured.
• Reference number: A new reference number is generated for each document in accordance with the numbering sequence specified on the Accounts Payable Preferences (AP101000) form.
• Tax rate: If a tax or taxes are applied to a document, the system calculates tax and taxable amounts in the document by using the tax rates effective on the date of the document creation. Thus, in documents generated according to the same schedule, the tax amounts can differ. You can find the tax rate used by the system in each particular document on the Tax Details tab of the Bills and Adjustments form.
• Currency rate: If a currency of a document differs from the base currency set in the system, the system uses for conversion the currency exchange rate effective on the date of the document creation.

No matter how many times you run the schedule, documents will be generated only as required by the schedule. The system determines whether it should generate documents depending on the current date, the schedule's start and expiration dates, the schedule type, and the date when the documents were last generated. After the required documents have been generated, the system updates the Last Executed On date on the Recurring Transactions form. Thus, no documents will be generated ahead of time, but missing documents for previous due dates can be generated by running the schedule once for each missed due date.

For example, imagine that you schedule a document to be generated weekly on each Tuesday an unlimited number of times. If you run the schedule every week on Wednesday, one document will be generated each time. If you run this schedule every day, the documents will be created only on Tuesdays. If you want to run this schedule only on the last Wednesday of each month, run it four times to generate one document each time.

The documents generated by the schedule have the Balanced status, and can be released or posted, as any other documents can. You can change the transactions' amounts, if needed. To view and edit a particular document, use the Bills and Adjustments form. If you make any corrections, the bill can be released only if its status remains Balanced. You release the document or approve it for payment as you do for any other document.

Editing Template Documents

You can edit the template document (that is, the document with the Scheduled status) any time you need to. On the next schedule run, the system will use the modified version of the document for generating documents.

Also, you can remove a scheduled document from the table on the Document List tab of the Recurring Transactions form by using Delete Row on the table toolbar. The system changes the status of the document to Voided and does not use the document anymore for generating documents.