When Accounts Payable payment transactions are processed automatically, the invoices to be paid are selected using the Pay Date field in each invoice. The Pay Date field is used to specify the date that an invoice should be paid. The pay date is calculated automatically during invoice entry based on a system parameter or on the information from the vendor record being processed and based on the payment terms that are being used for the invoice.
The pay date for each invoice can also be easily modified after the invoice has been saved using the Vendor Invoice Lookup or the Paydate Management programs. The Paydate Management program allows you to sequence the open accounts payable invoices in your system in Pay date order, and it can also be used to quickly select and update the Pay Date field of one or more accounts payable invoices.
A pay date cut-off (usually the current date) is used to determine which invoices are to be included in a computer generated check run or wire transfer. Once the pay date cut-off has been determined, the Paydate Management program or the Proposed Disbursements report can be used to preview the invoices and amounts that are included in the pay date cut-off to be used.
The Paydate Management program can be used to both display the open invoices and to adjust the pay dates of each open invoice as required for the current payment processing run.
Once you have manipulated the pay dates as required, the Proposed Disbursements report can be run with the same pay date selection that will be used during payment processing. This report provides a preview of which invoices will be selected during payment processing.
Once the report is produced, the pay date for each open invoice can be adjusted as required. The Invoice pay dates are manipulated and the report is re-run until the Proposed Disbursements report shows the correct invoices and amounts. Once the Proposed Disbursements report shows the desired invoices and amounts, a check or wire transfer payment is generated using the Create Checks or Wire Transfer program using same selection logic as that used to produce the Proposed Disbursements report. Invoices with pay dates prior to or equal to the cut-off date are processed, and invoices with pay dates greater than the pay date cut-off are not processed.
If the invoice total for a check or wire transfer is less than 0, the Create Checks or Wire Transfer program will skip creation of the payment and it will display a notice that one or more payments were skipped by the program.
If any invoices being processed in the check run are for vendors with the Autopay flag set to N (indicating that the vendor is on hold and should not be included in a normal check run), the system will also skip creating the check or wire transfer for the invoices for the vendor.