The Release Invoices feature can be an important step for a district if the district elects to use the module. Whether or not invoices must be reviewed and released for payment is up to the district. If used, once an invoice is created, the invoice must be reviewed and released for payment by all assigned parties (indicated by the approval flow created for Release Invoices, which can be found in the Setup menu under Approval Flow). In Focus, this step comes after the invoice/invoice batch has been created and posted. After invoices have been released, the batch can be utilized to run a check run for payment.
1. From the Purchasing / Accounts Payable menu, click Release Invoices.
2. Click the Release Invoices tab to display invoices waiting to be approved and released for payment.
3. Depending on your profile and permissions you may or may not see a button that says Show All Users. If you are in the business of reviewing the work of others, you may click the button to see all invoices that have been released or that are pending.
a. Click Hide All Users to hide all invoices to be released but your own.
4. Click Hide Pending to see invoices awaiting approval by other users, click this button to hide all invoices awaiting your approval. To reverse this process and view your pending invoices, click Show Pending.
5. When you are ready to release the invoice, click Approve. Once released, the invoice will disappear from this list. However, all invoices are saved on the History tab, which can be accessed at any time (see Release Invoices History for more information).
Before approving and releasing the invoice, you can review all of the invoice information in the following columns: PO #, Vendor, Invoice #, Invoice Date, Invoice Amount, and the Status. The two last columns contain the button to send the approver a reminder and to View Files and Comments attached to the PO and/or invoice.
6. Click the PO # and Invoice # links to review each of the original records.
7. In the Status column, you will most likely see only the Pending status for those invoices awaiting approval. Hover over the hourglass icon or the word Pending with your mouse to see the Approval Chain. In the image shown, you see the name given to each group of approvers (Project and Ext Day Secondary) and the approvers' names (Murray and Weyer). You also see that Weyer has already approved the invoice for release and the time stamp for this approval. Murray is still pending approval.
8. Click the Send Reminder button to send a reminder in the form of a Focus alert and email to a user in the Approval Chain who still needs to approve and release the invoice.
1. Click the History tab to review all released invoices.
The History tab will house a lot of the same information seen on the Release Invoices tab with a few minor differences: PO #, Released By, Vendor, Invoice #, Invoice Date, Invoice Amount, Status, and View Files and Comments.
Notice there isn't an Approve button, or Send Reminder button. The Released By column has been added and lists the final approver in the approval chain.
Some of the additional features that are available on the Release Invoices tab may not be available here. See Additional Features for more information on these features.
Click Filters to breakdown data.
a. To add more than one filter to a column, click the green plus sign.
b. To delete an additional filter, click the red minus sign.
c. For additional filtering options, click the gray arrow for a filter pull-down.
See Filters for more information.
You can also sort simply by clicking on any of the header names with double black arrows. Click once for ascending results, click twice for descending. In the image shown, the data has been arranged by Invoice Date.
To navigate through the listed pages, click the Prev and Next buttons. To jump to a specific numbered page, type the number in the page text box and press Enter. Note: This option will not display if all data can be shown on one page.
