How does client offices affect invoicing (creating offices/sub accounts from existing clients)?

Unfortunately, client offices are treated as separate clients when it comes to invoicing. 

At least, we couldn't manage creating ONE invoice for separate offices.

Hi guys,

Not sure if possible, but perhaps something similar to this http://xtrf.userecho.com/forums/8-questions-answers/topics/636-solution-to-assign-work-to-multiple-users-within-an-external-slv/#comment-2166 can be used on the client side. It may be worth asking.

Hi Leo,

Thanks for the suggestion! I was considering writing a macro to change the customer after the job was closed, but it would do more harm than good in our environment.

We couldn't make statistics (think about profitability) by client offices, or we should "invent" another workaround (i.e. a custom field or something like that), adding another layer of complexity.

We merge the invoices manually in the invoicing software we normally use. Note that we cannot use XTRF for invoicing because of Hungarian tax regulations, so we need to transfer data anyway.

We did the same. I think that is the best solution.

Hi Lazlo,

Thanks for sharing, it´s always interesting to know what issues colleagues are hitting and how they´re dealing with them =:).

We're actually currently using branches for a different purpose. In the case where we have two people working for the same company, but they need different accounting contacts, we use the branches. 

We are doing this because without the branches, we can't use accounting contact because the accounting contact is set at the client not the project level.

We can't use the project contact, because the accounting contact isn't the project contact.

For us, being able to set the accounting contact at the project level would solve our issue, but in the mean time, the branch works for us for this purpose - not ideally, but it works.

There is a better way if I understood correctly.

We have multiple entities that we need to invoice (Company Inc, Company Ltd, Company AG).

However the client has 1 CMS that we pull content from and that needs to be assigned to Company Inc.

In the past, I would have to have the project fully completed so as to not break the integration. Then I would change the client for invoicing purposes. 

However, this workaround works better in this case:

Have 1 main client in XTRF

create a new contact and use the daughter company details for address.

Quotes:

Client > Main data > Templates > Client Quote Confirmation (have XTRf create a custom template to pull Contact address details)

Invoices:

Invoice > Client data > Send invoice to > Select contact from daughter company.

The quote/invoice with still have Parent company name but daughter company name and address below. 

Hi Meghan
Maybe I'll throw in a couple of words about the "theory" in the Offices.
This functionality allows you to change a client on the invoice if the client profiles are "linked" with the Offices functionality. It doesn't interrupt the regular invoicing process. 
A simple example, let's say you have 2 Clients: Client A and Client B, linked by the Offices functionality.
You create a project for the Client A. The project is completed and you raise an invoice for it. Client A will be automatically selected on the invoice. The Offices give you an option to manually change Client A to Client B on the invoice. All relevant information is updated, client name, address, payment terms etc.

The Offices functionality allows you also to share Contact Person between linked client profiles. So without duplication, one contact can be set as the default invoicing contact for the group of clients.

Hi Marek,

This sounds interesting! We mainly use offices for contact sharing functionality, as we didin't notice this invoicing feature.

On the other hand, can you create ONE invoice for several offices? We would be interested more in this functionality :)

Thanks,

Laszlo

Hi Laszlo

You can have only one client on the XTRF invoice, that's one of our sacred rules;) but if you ask if it is possible to gather projects from several offices on one invoice, then Yes, it is possible.

It requires some manual input thou. First and most important, the client profiles must be linked with Offices. 
Let's consider again my Client A and Client B. Both clients have projects in the XTRF which you would like to put on one invoice and send it to one of them.

At the beginning, the procedure is the regular invoicing. You create an invoice for the Client A, then you go to the Client Data tab of the invoice where you can change the client to CLient B.
Now you can add more tasks to the invoice and automatically system will show you only the tasks from projects of Client B. Save at the end and that's it. 
Now you need to decide which client should receive this invoice. If the invoice should go to the Client B, leave it as it is. If the invoice should be sent to the Client A yo need to go back to the Client Data tab and change the client back to Client A because the XTRF invoice can be issued only for one client profile.

This is good to know. 

Can this be automated with periodic jobs?

No, there's no way to automate this. This option is available only in the manual invoice creation mode. 

Hi Marek,

Thanks for the workaround! It really helps as the tasks' client setting remains intact.

Laszlo

hi Marek, regarding this discussion, we have a similar case where we have one parent company with more than 30 subsidiaries, of which it's not clear in the company name that they belong to the same parent. We now changed the company name, so it's clear for our accountants that projects created on subsidiary level should be invoiced to parent company. We do have to create our projects on subsidiary level, as they all use different memoQ resources. But we would like to avoid having to change the company for the invoice (either when the project is closed or in the invoicing stage). Could you consider the possibility of setting an "invoice company" in the invoicing tab of the company, so that we don't have to change it manually each time?

Let me convert it to a development idea. I do not think this was mentioned before.

I have a related question please - when you create a client office, can you somehow transfer the pricing and language combinations, etc. from the main client?
We have a client who often requests that projects are assigned to different client offices, but it would be a lot of work to replicate the details.