Accounting Best Practices, Fifth Edition

4–11. Have Delivery Person Create the Invoice

Many companies have difficulty with their customers when the company bills for the quantity that it believes it shipped to the customer, but the customer argues that it received a different quantity and only pays for the amount it believes it has received. This problem results in the invoicing staff having to issue credits after the fact, in order to reconcile the amount of cash received from customers to the amounts billed to them. The amount of work required in these cases to match the amounts billed to the amounts paid is usually greatly in excess of the dollar amounts involved and has a profound impact on the efficiency of the billing staff.

New technology makes it possible for some companies to completely bypass this problem. If a company has its own delivery staff, it can equip them with portable computers and printers and have them issue invoices at the point of receipt, using the quantities counted by the customer as the appropriate amount to invoice. A flowchart of the procedure is shown in Exhibit 4.2. To begin, the shipping staff determines the amount to be shipped to a customer and enters this amount into the main accounting database. The amount in a specific truckload is downloaded into the portable computer of the delivery person, who then brings the truckload of goods to the customer. The customer counts the amount received. The delivery person calls up the amount of the delivery on the screen of the portable computer, ...