Consuming Prepaid Services
Prepaid Services can be used or consumed in several ways. On the one hand, they can be used in Sales Orders or in Sales Invoices. On the other hand, services (which have no connection to a Sales Order) can also be charged against a Prepaid Service via Projects.
Consumption via Sales Orders
When consuming via Sales Orders, items are added to the order which are not marked as Prepaid Service. At the same time, the Prepaid Service itself to be charged or consumed is selected in the Prepaid Services No. field. The selection is thereby filtered on the basis of the customer (Sell-to Customer No.) from the Sales Order.
When Posting (Invoicing) the Sales Order, one or more new lines are automatically created on the generated invoice as balance lines. These balance lines represent the consumption that will be deducted from the specified Prepaid Service. The balance line(s) will be created at runtime and the fields will be filled automatically. At the same time, a Ledger Entry associated with the balance line (with Entry Type=Consumption) is created for Prepaid Services and these are reduced accordingly.
Transfer of deferrals to revenue account
For balance lines, the Gen. Prod. Posting Group is set based on the setup (Gen. Prod. Posting Group Deferrals field in Prepaid Services Setup), so that the amount is rebalanced - based on the General Posting Setup - with the posting to the deferral account. At the same time, the item's Gen. Prod. Posting Group will post to the revenue account in the associated invoice line, as usual.
The quantity for balance lines is always a fixed negative value of -1 and cannot be changed.
Regardless of the number of sales lines and items used, only one balance line is ever created per Prepaid Service No..
Adding balance lines in sales invoices
In addition to the automatic creation of balance lines, they can also be added manually to a Sales Invoice that has not yet been posted, if required. To do this, a value must be specified in at least one invoice line in the Prepaid Service No. field. With the execution of the action Add Prepaid Service Balance Line (execute via action group Actions/Functions), these balance line(s) will be created. At the same time, corresponding Ledger Entries are created for the Prepaid Service, so that the residual budget is always updated immediately. Deleting a balance line also deletes the related Ledger Entry.
The function for adding balance lines is basically also available in Sales Credit Memos that have not yet been posted. However, the purpose here is primarily to restore a document created by the system.
The action is always executed for all document lines. All Prepaid Services are taken into account.
Once balance lines have been created, they cannot be modified.
When balance lines are deleted, the corresponding Ledger Entries are also deleted.
Manual creation of ledger entries
Prepaid Services can also be reduced manually using the Create Ledger Entry action (action group Process on the Prepaid Service Card). Further details on manual creation of Ledger Entries are explained in more detail in this part of the DYCE documentation.