Back to V300: Project Accounting for Construction

Lesson 17: Preparing Joint Payments

Part 4: Payments

In this lesson, you will learn to process joint payments in the system.

Joint Payments: General Information

A joint payment is a payment generated for an accounts payable bill that is made payable to joint payees: your vendor, whose work is tracked as part of the project, and another supplier or contractor who supplies materials or work for this vendor directly. By issuing a joint payment, you ensure that subcontractors pay their suppliers for their materials or their work on the project. In Acumatica ERP Construction Edition, you can create an AP bill for the vendor you work with and specify other vendors in the bill who are not a part of a project but partially provide services or materials for the project. Then you can create a joint payment for this bill to the vendor you work with and to its supplier or subcontractor.

Learning Objectives

In this lesson, you will learn how to do the following:

Create an AP bill to be paid with a joint payment
Specify a main vendor and joint payees for a joint bill
Specify joint amounts for diﬀerent lines of a joint bill
Create and process joint payments for a joint bill

Applicable Scenarios

You process a joint payment to register that the payment for the work performed for a particular project was made jointly to two or more parties.

Creation of an AP Bill from Joint Payees

You enter a bill by using the Bills and Adjustments (AP301000) form. The Summary area of a bill includes information about the vendor, the payment terms, the amount, the currency used for the transaction, and other information. In a joint bill, you specify the vendor that is working directly with you on the project as the main vendor of the bill. On the Details tab, the bill can have multiple detail lines or it can have a single line that summarizes the performed work or purchases. For details on creating a bill, see AP Bills: General Information. Aer you have specified all the required bill information, you add joint payees to the bill. To indicate that a bill represents the work performed jointly, you select the Joint Payees check box in the Summary area. For each joint payee involved, you specify the settings on the Joint Payees tab as follows:

If a joint payee is registered in your system as a vendor record on the Vendors (AP303000) form, you select this vendor in the Joint Payee (Vendor) column.
If there is no vendor record that corresponds to a joint payee, you type the name to be specified on the joint payment in the Joint Payee column.
If the bill is paid by line (that is, if the Pay by Line check box is selected in the Summary area of the form), you select the bill line for which the joint payee is going to receive the payment in the Bill Line Nbr. column.
In the Joint Amount Owed column, you enter the amount to be received by the joint payee. The sum of the joint amounts specified for all joint payees cannot be greater than the total amount of the bill. If the Pay by Line check box is selected in the Summary area of the form, the joint amount owed cannot be greater than the amount of the corresponding bill line. The system shows the amount that has already been paid to joint payee in the Joint Amount Paid column and the amount that has to be paid in the Joint Balance column. Initially, the joint balance for each line is the same as the Joint Amount Owed value you have specified.

Preparation of Payments to Joint Payees

While you are viewing an AP bill for joint payees on the Bills and Adjustments (AP301000) form, you create a payment for the joint bill by clicking Pay on the form toolbar. The system opens the Prepare Payments (AP503000) form. On the Documents to Pay tab of the Prepare Payments form, the joint payee bill is shown as a set of lines for payment, with a separate line for each joint payee and for the main vendor. For each line, the system automatically specifies the value in the Amount Paid column, which is the maximum available balance of the line at the moment of payment. The system distributes the maximum available payment amount among all joint payee lines; the remaining payment amount is then distributed among the main vendor lines. If needed, you adjust the amounts to be paid both for main vendor lines and for joint payee lines. Then you select the unlabeled check box for the lines to be processed and click Process on the form toolbar. The system creates separate payment documents for main vendor and for each joint payee vendor. You print the checks on the Process Payments / Print Checks (AP505000) form if the printing of checks is required. To complete the processing of joint payments, you release the payment and the payment application to the bill on the Release Payments (AP505200) form. If you create a partial joint payment, the joint balance decreases in the payment amount until it is completely paid and thus reduced to 0. Aer the full payment amount is applied to the bill, each payment is assigned the Closed status. For more details on processing payments, see AP Bill Payments: General Information. If the joint bill is paid by lines (that is, if the Pay by Line check box is selected in the Summary area of the Bills and Adjustments form), on the Details tab of this form, the balance of the corresponding line is reduced by the payment amount when the payment is released. If the bill is not paid by lines, the joint payment amount decreases the balance of the entire bill.

Grouping of Joint Payments

When a user mass-prepares and mass-processes joint payments, the system aggregates joint payment lines to a single payment document if the same internal vendor is specified in these lines. An internal vendor is one that is defined in the system on the Vendors (AP303000) form. If a joint payee is an external vendor (that is, external to the system, with no corresponding record on the Vendors form), lines with this vendor cannot be aggregated to a single joint check. Instead, separate joint checks will be created for each payment line with this vendor.

Workflow of Joint Payments

The following diagram illustrates the workflow of preparing payments for joint bills. Part 4: Payments | 108

Joint Payments: Process Activity

This activity will walk you through the process of paying joint payees.

Story

Suppose that a storm broke windows in the hotel that the ToadGreen company is building for its customer, Equity
Group Investor. The ToadGreen project manager has decided to hire the Acme Doors & Glass vendor to handle the
replacement of the broken windows, the disposal of waste, and the cleaning of the area. In turn, Acme Doors &
Glass has hired the Standard Hardware Company and Conwaste subcontractors to dispose of the waste and clean
the area. On 1/30/2025, the subcontractors have performed part of the work and requested a first payment. Acting
as the ToadGreen project manager, you need to process all of the documents involved in paying the companies for
this part of the work, including joint payment.

Process Overview

To make a joint payment, you will first create an AP bill for the provided work on the Bills and Adjustments
(AP301000) form; you will add joint payees to it and specify the joint payment amounts. Then you will create and
process a payment for this bill on the Checks and Payments (AP302000) form.

Configuration Overview

In the U100 dataset, the following tasks have been performed to support this activity:

The following features have been enabled on the Enable/Disable Features (CS100000) form:
Construction
Payment Application by Line
Cost Codes
On the Vendors (AP303000) form, the ACMEDO vendor has been created. On the Payment Settings, the Pay by Line check box is selected for the vendor. In the Cash Account box, the 10200TG cash account is specified for the vendor.
On the Projects (PM301000) form, the HOTEL project has been created with multiple project tasks, including the 02 - SITEWORK project task.
On the Non-Stock Items (IN202000) form, the WDISMANT, WDISPOS, and WCLEAN items have been added.

System Preparation

To prepare to perform the instructions of this activity, do the following:

Sign in to the system as a project manager by using the ewatson username and the 123 password.
In the info area, in the upper-right corner of the top pane of the Acumatica ERP screen, make sure that the business date in your system is set to 1/30/2025. If a diﬀerent date is displayed, click the Business Date menu button and select 1/30/2025 on the calendar. For simplicity, in this activity, you will create and process all documents in the system on this business date.

Step 1: Processing a Joint Bill To create a bill for joint payees, do the following:

On the Bills and Adjustments (AP301000) form, create a new document, and specify the following settings in the Summary area:

Type: Bill
Vendor: ACMEDO (Acme Doors & Glass)
Apply Retainage: Cleared
Pay by Line: Selected With this setting, you can prepare separate payment documents for individual bill lines.
Joint Payees: Selected
Description: Replacing broken windows after the storm

On the Details tab, add lines with the following settings.

    Inventory ID       Quantity          Unit Cost          Project          Project Task        Cost Code

    WDISMANT           8                 500.00             HOTEL            02                  02-000

    WDISPOS            4                 200.00             HOTEL            02                  02-000

    WCLEAN             4                 100.00             HOTEL            02                  02-000

On the Joint Payees tab, add lines with the settings specified in the table below.

    Joint Payee (Vendor)        Joint Payee                 Bill Line Nbr.              Joint Amount Owed

    Empty                       Conwaste                    2                           450.00

    HARDCO                      Empty                       3                           210.00

On the form toolbar, click Remove Hold, and then click Release.

Step 2: Processing a Joint Payment To create and process a joint payment, do the following:

While you are still on the Bills and Adjustments (AP301000) form with the bill that you have entered, on the form toolbar, click Pay. The system opens the Prepare Payments (AP503000) form and shows the lines of the bill that you have prepared in the table on the Documents to Pay tab. Three lines are for the main vendor of the bill, and two lines are for joint payees.
In the table, do the following:

In the line with the WDISMANT item and a line number of 1, change the value in the Amount Paid column to 390, and select the unlabeled check box for the line. This is the amount to be paid to main vendor of the bill.
In the line with the WDISPOS item, a line number of 2, and the Conwaste vendor specified in the Joint Payee Name column, change the value in the Amount Paid column to 190 , and select the unlabeled check box for the line. This is the amount to be paid to first joint payee.
In the line with the WCLEAN item, a line number of 3, and the Standard Hardware Company vendor specified in the Joint Payee Name column, change the value in the Amount Paid column to 120, and select the unlabeled check box for the line. This is the amount to be paid to second joint payee.

In the Selection area of the form, make sure that the Selection Total amount is 700 and that the Available Balance amount is greater than the total amount to be paid.
Click Process on the form toolbar.

On the Process Payments / Print Checks (AP505000) form, which opens, click Process to print the checks for the three selected lines, which correspond to the prepared payments. The system opens a printable version of the checks.

           For the purposes of this activity, you do not need to actually print the document. In a
           production setting, you would click Print on the form toolbar to print the check before closing
           the browser tab.

Close the printable checks and return to the Release Payments (AP505200) form, which the system has opened.
On the Release Payments form, make sure that the unlabeled check boxes are selected for all three payments, and on the form toolbar, click Process to release the payments.
On the Bills and Adjustments form, open the bill to ACMEDO for which you have processed the payment, and review the Joint Amount Application tab, as shown in the following screenshot.
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Figure: Joint payments prepared for the bill
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You have prepared joint payments and partially paid the bill. Part 5: Project Budgets | 111