Invoice Suggestion Worksheet

A journal-style worksheet that stages every rental order due to be invoiced, shows what each one would bill before anything is created, then turns the orders you keep into draft or posted invoices in a single run.

How it fits in

The Rental Invoice guide covers invoicing a single order from its own Create Invoice action. The Invoice Suggestion Worksheet is the batch counterpart: instead of opening each order in turn, you pull every order that is due into one sheet, review what each would charge, and create the invoices together.

It is deliberately review-first. Suggest Lines only stages a preview; nothing is written to the ledger until you choose Create Invoices or Create and Post. Every figure you see, the amount, the tax, the total in local currency, is calculated from the same engine that produces the real invoice, so what you preview is what you post.

You reach the worksheet from Tell Me by searching for Invoice Suggestion Worksheet.

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Job-linked orders come through too. An order linked to a project appears with Type Job and produces job planning lines instead of a sales invoice when processed. It sits on the same sheet and is handled by the same run, so a mixed batch of ordinary and job-linked orders is fine.

How it works

The shape of a single invoice run, from the worksheet:

1
Choose a worksheet batch

Pick a Worksheet Batch at the top of the page. Each user keeps their own named worksheets, so your staged rows are yours alone, and the sheet reopens on whichever batch you last worked in.

2
Suggest Lines

Run Suggest Lines, enter a Posting Date, and the worksheet gathers every rental order due for its next invoice, or that has never been invoiced, as of that date. Each qualifying order becomes one row showing its amount excluding tax, its tax, its total, and its total in local currency. Narrow the fetch with the request-page filters if you only want part of the customer base.

3
Review and untick

Read the staged rows. Drill an amount to see the rental lines behind it, drill Rental Order No. to open the order, or drill Bill-to Customer No. to open the customer. Untick Include on any order you want to hold back this run. The Totals at the bottom always reflect just the ticked rows, so you can see exactly what the next run will raise.

4
Create the invoices

Create Invoices raises the draft sales invoices, and job planning lines for any job orders. Create and Post raises and posts them in one step. Either way you are told how many were created (and posted), how many credit memos and job orders were produced, and any rows that were left with an error, then offered to open what was created.

5
Processed rows stay as a record

A processed row is not removed. It stays on the sheet with its Status set to Created or Posted and a Document No. you can drill into to open exactly what it produced. Recalculate refreshes the figures on the rows you have kept, without losing your selection, so you can re-check the numbers after a rental line has changed.

Illustration. The real screen can differ in detail. The sheet at step 3, after Suggest Lines for 31/10/2026. RO-1003 has two rows: its next invoice, and a Credit Memo row with a negative amount for a unit that came back early. The amounts for RO-1002 could not be worked out, so the row shows 0.00 and the reason in Message, in red. It has been unticked, so Totals count the other three rows. Business Central adds the Excl. VAT and Incl. VAT wording to the amount and total headings itself. The Status, Document No., Combine, Combine Group No., Customer Name, Currency Code, Tax Amount and Amount (LCY) columns are left out.

The worksheet columns

Include is the only thing you decide on this sheet. Everything else is the output of Suggest Lines, so it is read-only and drills through to its own source.

Lines
Include
Tick to process this order on the next run. Editable only while the row is Pending; once a row has been processed it is locked and greyed, so a finished run cannot be re-run by accident.
Status
Pending (staged, not yet processed), Created (a draft document was raised), or Posted (the document was raised and posted).
Document No.
The document the row produced. Drill to open it: a draft or posted Sales Invoice, a draft Sales Credit Memo, or the job planning lines for a job order. Blank until the row is processed.
Rental Order No.
The rental order behind the row. Drill to open the order.
Type
Invoice for an ordinary sales invoice, Job for a job-linked order that produces job planning lines, or Credit Memo for an early-return credit (see below).
Bill-to Customer No. / Customer Name
The customer the invoice will be raised against. Drill Bill-to Customer No. to open the Customer Card.
Currency Code
The order's currency. Each row is in its own order currency, which is why the currency-mixed totals below matter.
Amount Excl. Tax / Tax Amount / Amount Incl. Tax / Amount (LCY)
The previewed figures for the row. Drill any of them to open Suggested Invoice Lines, the calculated invoice lines the amounts were built from, so you can check the basis before anything is created. Each line shows the rental line it comes from, the period it charges (Rental From and Rental To, both days included), and how its Quantity is made up: Rental Quantity is the number of units, Non-Working Days the days taken out of the period, and Price Term what one period is. Three radios for the 30 days of April on a daily term show Quantity 90 with Rental Quantity 3. The lines are the ones the invoice will carry, so a pooled block set to bill a line for each unit shows a line for each unit here too.
Message
On a Pending row, a warning of what would stop the row processing (highlighted so it stands out). On a processed row, history of the run. Empty when there is nothing to flag.
Illustration. The real screen can differ in detail. The same four rows after Create & Post Invoices. The two invoice rows are Posted. The Credit Memo row is Created, because a credit memo is never posted from here. Each of the three shows the document it produced, its Include is cleared, and its Status and Document No. are greyed. RO-1002 was not ticked, so it is still Pending and keeps its message. The top and bottom of the page and the other columns are left out.

The Totals section

A journal-style summary at the bottom of only the rows currently ticked. Processed rows are never counted, so this is always what the next Create Invoices will raise.

Totals
Included Rows
How many rows are ticked to be processed on the next run.
Total Excl. Tax / Total Incl. Tax
The total of the included rows, before and after tax. Because each row is in its own order currency, these only mean something when the whole batch shares one currency.
Total (LCY)
The included rows converted to local currency. This is the one total that stays meaningful when the batch mixes currencies.

Actions

Process
Suggest Lines
Fetches the rental orders due to be invoiced as of the posting date and stages a row for each. Suggest Lines owns the posting date: it stamps the date onto the batch so the staged rows and the date they were built for stay together across sessions.
Recalculate
Recomputes the amounts on the rows you have kept so they reflect the latest rental line changes, without rebuilding the list or losing your selection.
Create Invoices
Creates unposted sales invoices (and job planning lines) for the included rows, then marks those rows Created and records the document they produced.
Create and Post Invoices
Creates the invoices for the included rows and posts them, marking those rows Posted.
Preview Invoice
Opens a pro forma preview of the selected order's invoice as at the worksheet's posting date, so the figures can be checked in document form before anything is created.

Narrowing what Suggest Lines fetches

Suggest Lines opens a short request page. Leave it as it is to fetch the whole due population, or filter it to scope the run. The filters available are Invoice Batch, Billing Cycle Code, rental order No., Bill-to Customer No. and Responsibility Center, so you can run, say, just one billing cycle, one customer, or one responsibility centre at a time.

Illustration. The real screen can differ in detail. The page that Suggest Lines opens. Posting Date is the date the orders are tested against, and the date the worksheet then shows. With the five filters empty, every order that is due is fetched. The billing cycle filter is headed Billing Cycle. Choosing OK clears the rows already in the batch and builds them again.
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Worksheet Batch and Invoice Batch are two different things. The Worksheet Batch is the named sheet you work in, one per user, and it holds your staged rows. The Invoice Batch is an optional tag you set on a rental order (on the order itself), used only as a Suggest Lines filter to scope a run to a chosen set of orders. Similar names, unrelated jobs.

Early-return credits on the worksheet

When a unit billed in advance is returned early, the unused tail of the period it was billed into is owed back to the customer. That credit surfaces here as its own row with Type Credit Memo, alongside the ordinary invoice rows, so you review and raise it in the same run.

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Credit memos are always raised as drafts. Processing a Credit Memo row creates an unposted Sales Credit Memo (or a negative job planning line for a job order). The worksheet never auto-posts a credit, even under Create and Post, so a credit always gets a human review before it hits the ledger. A line billed in arrears is only ever charged for time already used, so it never raises a credit.

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