I took a look at the invoice module on the demo site. It seems to be a simple custom module, with some fields, and named “Invoices”. Is there any more to this that I am missing? Are there any payment terms, and follow-ups, for example?
There is a lot more to it than that! the invoices and line_items are separate modules, there is also a lot of other custom coded functionality and JavaScript in their. Invoices is just one module of the Advanced Open Sales package.
You should really do your research a bit more thoroughly…
This IS part of my research. I’ve long grown out of being made to feel embarrassed for asking questions.
So, when I’m normally dealing with invoices, I need to the ability to see when they have been raised, and their payment terms, and to send reminders when the terms deadlines are being reached or exceeded. When an invoice is cancelled, a credit note needs to take its place. This leads to a statement of account, showing the payments received, the credit notes applied, the current balance.
Is all this handled in the invoice module? I can’t see it, so I am guessing it is out of scope. So what is in scope? I think it needs to be better explained, because for invoices to be useful, they will need to fit into the bigger picture.
What the invoices module does not do is not what I have any problem with. What I find difficult is the promise that it “does invoices” then provides something that has a very unclear use-case.
– Jason
It doesn’t handle everything you just suggested right out of the box for example payment terms could be added as a service line to the invoice or it could be added to the invoice pdf template. It could also be added as custom module related to the invoice. Things such as sending reminders and raising credit notes can be done using Suite’s work flow module.
So no it is not set-up to handle any particular work flow model out of the box but SuiteCRM as a whole could be configured to do everything you described.
Okay, thanks.
The financial side of any business is a complex thing to manage, but there are pretty standard and accepted procedures to follow. Many financial systems handle the ledger then kind of bolt invoicing on the top for a convenience, but can be difficult to use because there is no CRM behind it. SuiteCRM (and some other CRMs) bolt invoicing on the top for convenience, but that is difficult to use because there is no financial package with all its functionality behind it.
So some invoicing functionality overlaps between the CRM and the inevitable financial package the business will be using. I am trying to get to grips with how this overlap would work in practice, because when things aren’t joined up, they can be a nightmare to manage. Hopefully others here will have some experience they can share?
– Jason
I don’t think any crm would meet your particular needs right off the bat. It sounds like you would need it to be customised to your particular business processes. This is something we do all the time at SalesAgility.
I cant say weather your requirements could be met by just configuring suite or if it would required custom development work. But I have personally worked on several Sugar/Suite projects that had complex business processes going on behind the scenes.
For example if you were a client of ours we would send out a Business analyst to map all your process onto suite and then come up with a specification of exactly how that would be implemented.