After an invoice batch has been created, all subsequent editing, amending, updating, printing and posting is done from the 'View Existing Batches' option.

The most recent batch is shown first, and you can move backwards and forwards through the batches until you find the one you want using the navigation arrows.

Click the  button adjacent to the pupil whose invoice you want to view and/or edit.

It is worth spending some time understanding this tab, since it is your opportunity to make sure all is well, and to make any amendments and/or additions.  It is also the place where you can customise the repeating elements of an invoice for individual pupils/fee payers.

Navigation section   This enables you to browse through all the invoices in the batch, or to locate a specific invoice by Invoice Number, Bursary Number, or Pupil Name

Invoice Header  Fields which have a white background are editable.  These include Pupil Name, Invoice Header, Invoice Top Line, Adult(s) Address, Invoice Date and ‘Outstanding Balance’.  It should be noted that editing one of these will only affect this particular invoice in this particular batch, and not SchoolBase or FeeMaster as a whole.

The ‘Invoice Balance’ field reflects the total of the individual lines on the invoice.

NB: The Invoice Total updates as each line is entered or amended and the curser moves off that line.

Invoice Lines  As indicated above, it is possible to add to and/or edit the lines of an individual invoice, and to recalculate the resulting total.  These changes are made in the lower section of the window, which shows the lines which will appear on an invoice when printed.

 Initially, when you first visit an invoice in this way, the lines which appear will be all those which have been added by the system automatically because, earlier in the process, you specified which charges should be automatically added to the invoices of certain types of pupils, or because they were flagged as a ‘Recurring Item’ for the pupil.  In the example above, the ‘Senior Day Fee’ of £4,080.00 is a ‘Regular Item’ added automatically because this pupil is in the Senior School; The Bursary Award of  -£700.00 is a ‘Repeat Item’ which was flagged on the previous invoice batch as such; and the Ballet Examinations fee of  £31.30 was added manually to this pupil’s invoice as a ‘one-off’ charge.

The ‘Type’ column can for all practical purposes be ignored if the correct values were entered when the Finance Codes were created in SchoolBase.  Most accounting systems distinguish between ‘Sales Invoices’ (SI) and ‘Sales Credits’ (SC).  The export routine in SchoolBase will correctly and automatically ‘flag’ transactions whether they were created as a ‘negative amount on a sales invoice’ or a ‘sales credit’.

All these processes should be seen as different ways of getting charges onto pupils’ invoices.  It is still possible, however, to make individual changes to items even if they were originally added during the fee billing or recharging processes.

For example, as shown below, the standard description for Ballet Examinations has been edited to read something more specific: 

It is also possible to manually overwrite the amount for an item on an individual invoice.  Remember, this change will apply to this invoice for this pupil on this occasion.  Next invoice run, the original amount from the ‘Pupil type’ fees table will be used.

To see the effect of changes to the amounts of the fees on the invoice total, click  next to the ‘Invoice Balance’ box.  The total will also be automatically re-calculated when you move to the next invoice or click the ‘Close’ button

Using this button, an individual invoice can be previewed at any time to see what it will look like when printed.

The ‘Copy invoice’ button allows you to produce an exact copy of the current invoice at any time.  It is the same in every detail as the original invoice except that it includes the words ‘Copy Invoice Only’.

Individual repeat items

NB:  As this function is being replaced by the ‘Recurring Items’ function, we recommend that you phase out its use.

It is also possible to set an item as a ‘repeating charge’ which will appear on all subsequent invoices based on this batch for the current pupil until it is ‘turned off’ by removing the tick from the box.

NB   The repeat charge is applied the next time an invoice batch is created by looking back at user-defined previous batch and adding the appropriate invoice lines.

  will update the address changes for fee payers of this pupil which have occurred since the invoice batch was first created.

Adding invoices to an existing batch

You know how it is; you create a batch of invoices so you can get ahead with the process and add recharges etc. … Then a new pupil joins the school and the parents need to have a bill along with all the rest! 

To add an invoice for the new pupil:-

• ensure that the details of the fee payer(s) have been entered (including Bursary Key and invoice split)
• ensure that the batch to which you want to add the invoice(s) is selected
• Find the pupil from the drop-down box beneath ‘Add invoices for:’  Use the ‘Prospective’ and ‘Archive’ check-boxes if necessary
• Press the ‘Add now’ button
• Provided all is well with the fee payer details, you will get the above message and when you open up the batch of invoices, the required one(s) for the new pupil’s fee payer(s) will be there.

The same can be achieved from the ‘Check Pupils’ button described earlier.  This also allows multiple invoices to be added simultaneously.