Generic Invoice business object

The generic Invoice business object sends invoice data into a system that is designated as the "system of record." The destination system is responsible for generating the billing invoice document that is mailed to the customer.

An invoice is a document that summarizes charges for goods or services between a company and another party. Invoices can reflect either Account Receivables or Account Payables. Generally invoices are sent to a Bill-to customer. Currently the Invoice business object is used only by the Account Receivables functional area.

The customer referenced at the Invoice header level is always a Sold-to customer. Customer references at the Invoice line-item level, such as to a Bill-to, are derived from the header's customer. In other words, the Invoice header contains a reference to a Sold-to customer. The referenced Sold-to customer, in turn, references its associated customer partners (such as Bill-to). The identifiers of these associated customers are referenced by individual Invoice line items.

An invoice must reference a single Sold-to customer. IBM assumes that, although the Invoice business object can support multiple customer partners, only one partner of each type (such as Bill-to and Payer) is referenced on an invoice header and invoice line.

The generic Invoice business object supports three types of invoice: Standard, Debit memo, and Credit memo. It contains pricing elements that are stored at the header and line-item level in separate account attributes, such as for taxes, freight, and shipping and handling.

The generic Invoice business object does not support accounting summary invoices that are not actually used for customer billing. Nor does Invoice break out a Bill of Material's (BOM's) line items into component levels. For example, if the invoice for a BOM represents a computer for $5000, the business object does not contain prices for individual components, such as the CPU and monitor.

Business object structure

Invoice is a hierarchical business object that has a header and line items. The following figure illustrates the generic Invoice business object hierarchy.

Figure 1. Generic Invoice business object hierarchy

The Invoice header business object contains such information as invoice number, date, status, type (standard, Debit memo, Credit memo), Sold-to customer responsible for the invoice, identifier of the original invoice (used for Debit and Credit memos), Contract and Contact identifiers, payment terms, and gross and net amounts being billed.

The Invoice header business object references the following child business objects:

Business object attributes
Child business object Description Cardinality
Address Contained by Invoice's and InvoiceLineItem's CustomerRole, contains address data of the Sold-to customer. Invoice includes address data only if the invoice uses a different address from that already stored with the customer.
Adjustment Contained by Invoice and InvoiceLineItem, contains such information about price adjustments as type (for example, discount, surcharge, freight, taxes), rate, and calculation type (percentage, quantity-based, fixed). n
CustomerRole Contained by Invoice and InvoiceLineItem, contains such information as the customer's role (for example, Bill-to, Ship-to, Payer) and address (by referencing the Address business object). n
InvoiceLineItem Contains such information as line number on the invoice, type (for example: material, service, or returnable package), Item identifier, Item quantity, Purchase Order and Sales Order identifiers, Contact and Schedule identifiers, and gross and net amounts being billed. InvoiceLineItem contains Adjustment and CustomerRole. n

Supported verbs

The generic Invoice business object supports the following verbs:

Examining the object

For a listing of the generic Invoice business object's attributes, use System Manager or Process Designer Express.

Related Reference

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