Accounting Best Practices, Fifth Edition

4–10. Automatically Check Errors during Invoice Data Entry

Errors during the data-entry phase of creating an invoice can result in a variety of downstream problems. For example, an incorrect billing address on an invoice means that the customer will never receive it, which means that the collections staff must send a new invoice copy. Also, if the quantity, product description, or price is entered incorrectly, the customer may have a good reason for not paying the bill. If this happens, the collections staff will have to get involved to work out the reason for nonpayment and negotiate extra payments (if possible) by customers. All of these problems are exceptions and require very large amounts of time to research and fix.

A very useful best practice is to prevent as many data-entry problems in advance as possible by using computerized data-checking methods. For example, a field for zip codes can only accept five-digit or nine-digit numbers, which prevents the entry of numbers of an unusual length. The field can also be tied to a file of all cities and states, so that entering a zip code automatically fills in the city and state fields. Also, prices of unusual length can be automatically rejected, or prices can be automatically called up from a file that is linked to a product number. Similarly, product descriptions can be automatically entered if the product number is entered. An example of a “smart” data-entry system is one that flags part numbers that are being entered for an ...