The Invoicing Process: An Overview
Below is a broad overview of the process. Make sure you understand this before you start looking at detailed instructions.
Throughout the process, you will need to use internal notes on LibAnswers Tickets to indicate any concerns or hold ups and record dates of progress.
Whole Invoicing Process
If you would prefer a guide with pictures, you can follow the whole process in this word document: Whole Invoicing Process.docx - there are no images with this guide
Before you process any payments you will need to:
Check if the supplier has sent a quote or an invoice. As of September 23 Finance will no longer approve POs that have an invoice attached, it must be a quote.
If you receive an invoice rather than a quote, reply to the supplier and request they send over a quote.
Open the invoice's ticket in LibAnswers- ensure it is tagged as an invoice, and is claimed by you.
Open and log in to eBis https://ebis.uos.ac.uk/e.bis/login.html
Open and log into WMS and navigate to the Acquisitions Tab
Open the MASTER Financial Records spreadsheet.
Open the 23-24 Invoice folders. The invoice you are paying will need to be filed in the appropriate subfolder within this large folder.
You may also need a single supplier justification form. These are for payments over £10,000 which are not for 'regular' suppliers (i.e. you do not need one for JISC, or Browns). They may also be suppliers that are part of a framework and therefore will not need a SSJ. A blank template can be found here: TEMPLATE Learning Services UOS Single Supplier Justification Form.docx. Please download this form and fill it in on your computer, not in sharepoint.
Before you can process anything on eBis we need to do some foundational work.
1- The Financial Records Sheet
The first step is to enter the details of your invoice into the Master Financial Records Sheet. Find the correct tab for the type of invoice. All Journals, Databases, Software Licenses and Subscriptions should already be listed in the appropriate tab. Any ad-hoc spend (i.e. monthly book or ILL invoices, one-off eBook invoices, stationery invoices) need to be entered into the appropriate ad-hoc tab.
For all invoices you will need to enter:
The Total Cost of the invoice (including VAT). If the invoice is a foreign currency invoice, convert the amount to GBP using https://www.xe.com/ and put the GBP amount in the spreadsheet. Add the original foreign currency amount as a note on the cell.
For Ad-Hoc invoices you will also need to add
2- The SharePoint
Now we've identified the budget code and title, we can upload our invoice to the relevant folder in the sharepoint.
There is a folder for each budget code (if you can't see one make one).
Upload the invoice, rename it if necessary to make it clear what the invoice is paying for, and what the invoice number is.
2.5- Single Supplier forms
If an invoice is over £10k there are two possible types of supplier they could be;
1) They are signed up to a national framework that offers universities certain prices for goods. The most common is the Southern Universities Purchasing Consortium (SUPC).
2) They are independent from the above and require a single supplier form. This option should be the less common one.
Suppliers Part of SUPC
Below is a list and it has been noted on the Supplier Description on the master tracker. These suppliers do not need a single supplier form BUT they should have noted on their quote/sales order they are part of this framework.
LC to add list
If the invoice is worth over £10,000, and it's not from a regular supplier, you'll also need to complete a single supplier form. Simply put in the name of the supplier and the value of this invoice, and make sure you update the date at the bottom. Then save this to the SharePoint with the name 'Single Supplier Form ORDER TITLE' i.e. Single Supplier Form T&F Read and Publish 900028381
3- Worldshare Acquisitions Invoices
We use WMS to track our budget spend for all invoices. Regular book invoices (such as the monthly invoices from Browns and ProQuest) are already taken out of the budget through the normal acquisitions process. Any invoices for Journals, Databases, Book Stationery, or One-Off Book purchases need to also be put into WMS so they can be taken out of the budget. Interlibrary Loan invoices and Software invoices do not go into WMS.
To do this for Journals and Databases, we need to 'receive' them in WMS (they should already exist as an order, if not speak to the librarians/kim)
For ad-hoc invoices (i.e. one-off eBooks and book stationery)
Once you've completed all the steps above, you're ready to move on to eBis and creating a Purchase Order.
Creating Orders - for a guide with images, click here Creating Amazon Orders on WMS (best viewed in desktop app)
This must be done before you can add items to the order.
Acquisitions Tab->Orders->Orders->New Order
Fill in the order information as below and save:
Order Name: Same as Trolley/List name
Order Type: Purchase Order
Vendor: Amazon GB
Vendor PO#: (leave blank)
Tax Handling: Tax Item Cost
Comments: (leave blank)
(Amazon is the example, use the vendor that has been purchased from ie. Blackwell's. If the vendor hasn't been ordered from before, refer to the Systems Administrator to add a new vendor to WMS).
Adding items to the order
Search for the item in Discover items
Acquisitions Tab->Discover items
Check the ISBN matches the book ordered from vendor. Sort by Library Count Highest make sure you are picking Print Book, English and always try to pick a record that is says Full and has the highest number of libraries using it.
Check order is correct
Add to Order
To the right of the selected item, click Add to... for a drop-down menu. Select Order
In the dialogue box pop-up search for the Order you created and click Add you will see items count will increase.
If there is more than one of the same item, add a line for each item rather than increasing the quantity on the order line.
Repeat this process until all items are added to the order.
Adding Budget/Fund location etc to orders
Orders->Orders search for the order
Once you have added every item to the Order you will need to add the Budget/Fund, Location, Qty, Unit Price and Shipping Cost - if there is more than 1 item on the order you can add the delivery charge to any item.
When you have added Budget/Fund, Location, Qty and the unit price place the order by clicking Place Order.
To create a Purchase Order for approval you need to:
Once you've sent the Purchase Order for Approval make sure to note the date of this on the LibAnswers ticket.
Purchase Orders are sent to various members of the Library & Learning Services teams for approval, and can therefore take between 30 minutes and 3 weeks to be approved. Once they've been approved you should get an email that looks like this:
Once you have an email like the one above, you can move on to the next step: Paying the invoice
Once a Purchase Order has been approved we have a couple more steps to complete before the invoice can be paid. If you've previously closed the LibAnswer ticket and sharepoint it is a good idea to reopen them before proceeding.
The first step is to add the date the PO was approved to the databases or journals spreadsheet if this is being used.
Generating a Purchase Order Document
Getting an invoice from the supplier
Now you can move back to eBis to complete Receipting
Receipting a Purchase Order for Payment
Marking an Invoice Paid on WMS
Sending an Invoice to Finance
Now we can send the invoice for payment to finance,
Dear Finance,
Please see attached invoice (INVOICE NUMBER) for payment in relation to LSER/(PO NUMBER)
Kind regards,
(Your Name)
You have successfully paid an invoice!!
To Reverse Receipt click here - how_to_reverse_receipt_an_order (6).docx
To Close a PO Request click here - how_to_close_an_order (22).docx
The POs are currently in the unreceipted state. To close them down, you need to go back into the POs and receipt the PO at £0 and tick the complete box.
Go into Receipting, select the PO and then Edit Line Details to update GRN by putting 0 in the value received field.
You also need to make sure that you tick the complete box.