Customise the fields and options on orders, invoices, and credit notes

Layouts determine what text fields and options your team sees when they're creating orders or processing invoices, and whether those fields are at header or line level.

Compleat comes with three default layouts:

• An invoice layout
• An order layout
• A credit note layout

We recommend that you take a look at your default layouts and customise them to suit your company's needs.

You can create new layouts for different scenarios, and set up rules so that those layouts come into effect only when they're needed. For instance, you might create a layout that comes into effect when you receive an invoice from a supplier related to your PR events, and customise it to only include the fields you need to fill out for PR event invoices.

 

 

This article tells you everything you need to know about creating and customising layouts, including:

• How to create and edit layouts
• How to create settings groups to restrict users' access to layout fields
• How to enable the posting of invoices to your finance system

 

Access Layouts

You need to be an iCompleat administrator to access and edit Layouts in iCompleat.

 

1. On the iCompleat homepage, go to Configuration.
2. Click Layouts.

 

Editing layouts

Order layouts have three main configuration tabs: Basic details, field configuration, and Settings groups. Invoice layouts have the same configuration tabs.

Here's a quick explanation of what each of the tabs lets you configure.

 

Basic details

In the basic details tab, you can edit the Name and Code assigned to the layout.

You'll also see a blue banner indicating how many transactions are using the layout, and which stage those transactions are at.

 

 

The Active toggle lets you control whether the layout is in use. You can return to the layout to switch it on and off using this toggle at any time.

 

 

The Post to financials toggle lets you choose whether or not the transactions that use the layout should be posted to your finance system.

 

 

If you import your iCompleat data using our APIs, you can choose whether iCompleat will post layout data using the Post to Webhook toggle.

 

 

For invoice layouts, you'll see a drop-down asking Would you like to map this layout to a particular journal type in your finance system? which lets you determine the transaction type that documents will be posted to your finance system as.

 

 

If you're using Integrated Online Buying and creating an order layout, you'll also see the Link layout to specific supplier drop-down. which lets you assign the layout to one of your Integrated Online Buying suppliers.

 

 

 

Field configuration

The Field configuration tab lets you choose which fields will appear on a layout. You can configure different behaviour for each field depending on the field type; for example, whether a field will appear at header or line level, or whether a field is optional or required.

 

 

Depending on the type of layout you're creating, some fields will be required by default and you cannot switch them off.

The fields available to configure in this tab may vary depending on the type of transaction the layout is for, what custom fields you have configured in the Custom Fields area of iCompleat, and whether you're connected to a finance system.

Any custom fields from your finance system appear on your default layouts. iCompleat already caches information about whether layout fields should be required or optional from your finance system, and applies them to the fields on your default layouts. You can edit the layout and override these defaults if you need to.

The main fields are:

• Comment (invoice layout only) - Used to add a general submission comment to an invoice that other users who interact with the invoice will be able to see.
• Supplier name 
• Supplier comment (order layout only) - Used by order creators to add a comment for suppliers, like delivery instructions or comments on the order.
• Justification comment (order layout only) - Used by order creators to let potential approvers know the reason they're placing an order.
• Payment due date - The date the invoice will become due for payment based on the payment terms configured in your connected finance system. If the payment due date is unavailable, the field will default to the Default payment due date set up in Configuration > Company > Behaviour settings.
• Posting date - (iCompleat integrated with ERPs only) The date the transaction is posted to your finance system will be included on the posted transaction.
• Line items - Lets you choose whether each line item requires a code, description, or both.
• Account code
• Currency code
• Tax code - If you set the tax code to be at header level, all lines on a transaction will be coded with the same tax code when posted to your finance system.

Other self-explanatory fields available to configure on layouts include, depending on your custom code settings:

• Department
• Cost centre
• Project
• Any other custom fields imported from your finance system, or that you've added in the Custom fields section of iCompleat

Under Other Settings below Layout Fields list you can choose whether to post item codes only, descriptions only, or both item codes and descriptions from transactions.

 

 

Variance

For invoice layouts, you'll see the Variance tab. In this tab, you have the option to switch the variance feature on or off using a toggle. Switching this on means that invoices using the layout will continue to be automatically processed if the invoice total varies from that of its matching order.

You can choose to switch this feature on for matching variances and/or tax calculation variances. You can manually adjust the variance amount allowed for each option using the up/down arrows, or by typing it in. Variance can be calculation by either percentage or value.

If you choose not to use the variance feature, when a price variance occurs between an invoice and its matching order, the transactions won't be fully matched, and the invoice's status will be either Part match or Over match as appropriate.

 

 

Balance lines (Sage 50 only)

If you're connected to Sage 50, you can configure invoice layouts to automatically add a balancing line to a transaction if there's a slight discrepancy in tax between the lines and the invoice total. This discrepancy may happen due to rounding when the tax value is calculated.

When this feature is switched on, a balancing line will be added to the transaction when it's sent to your connected finance system correcting the sum of all the lines on the invoice. You can also choose the codes you'd like to apply to the balance line here.

With the feature switched off, Compleat will allocate the difference to a line on the transaction at random.

 

 

Settings groups

Settings groups allow you to configure the behavior of different groups of users so that they only have access to the codes they need when they are processing transactions. This not only means that transactions are less likely to have the wrong codes accidentally assigned to them, but makes processing invoices, credit notes, and orders much quicker and simpler.

Settings groups are assigned to layouts, and the codes you can configure within a settings group depend on the type of layout (ie. invoice, credit note, or order) and the fields that you have configured on that layout. You can apply default codes to a settings group, as well as restrict a settings group’s access to certain codes, or even the suppliers available when creating orders or coding invoices.

 

 

A default settings group is created for each of your layouts. It contains all the users in your company, and allows them access to all the codes. To apply default coding, or restrict a specific group of users' access to the codes, you can create a new and separate settings group containing those specific users. As a user can only be in one settings group at a time, they will automatically be removed from the layout's default settings group and moved into the new settings group you have created with their own unique access to select codes.

When creating a new order, your Marketing team may only need to use the ‘PR and Advertising’ and ‘Events’ account codes, while your Sales team may only need to use the ‘Promotions’ account code. You can create a separate settings group for each team within your Order layout, and restrict their access to the account codes that are relevant to them.

In the case of the Marketing team, you might also want to set the default account code value to ‘PR and Advertising’ if the team makes most of their orders using that code. This means that all new orders they create will default to the ‘PR and Advertising’ account code. They could then select the ‘Events’ code which is also available to them.

To create a settings group within a layout, click the Settings Groups tab, and click New settings group.

Give the settings group a name, and select users to add to the group from the drop-down on the right.

 

 

When you've added the correct users to the settings group, click a code category on the left, and then choose your desired settings for that code category from the drop-downs in the pane on the right.

The Default value field is the default code that will be automatically selected when a user in the settings group is handling a transaction. Users in the settings group will still be able to select from other codes in the system if they need to.

If you'd like to restrict the other codes available to the settings group apart from the default code, you can turn on the Restrict values offered? toggle, and then tick the codes you'd like to be available to them.

 

 

Duplicate a layout

If you need to create multiple layouts with similar settings, the quickest way to do this is to create one layout and duplicate it to suit your additional needs.

Duplicating a layout will create an exact copy of the layout, including any security settings, that you can then edit and fine-tune.

To duplicate a layout, open it, click Actions in the bottom-right of the layout, and select Duplicate.

 

 

The main Layouts menu appears with a list of your layouts, now including a copy of your duplicated layout with a title such as "COPY1". You can now click the layout to open it and edit it as you wish.

 

 

Layouts for Integrated Online Buying suppliers

To create orders using Integrated Online Buying suppliers, you'll need to create a new layout for each relevant supplier, and then link the supplier to the layout. If the settings for each supplier will be identical or similar, it might be quicker to create one Integrated Online Buying layout and duplicate it for each supplier.

To create an Integrated Online Buying supplier layout, begin creating a new order layout, and select an Integrated Online Buying supplier from the Link layout to specific supplier drop-down.

 

 

 Still got questions? Comment below and let us know how we can improve this article.