How buyers should address EXPECTED credits

unknown

We have an issue where our buyers expect credits for various things (shortages, mispicks, etc) and so they reach out to the vendor, get the info about the credit and they key the info about the credit (credit #, amount, reason, etc).  They used to send the info to AP, but our AP team felt like they were being bombarded with information that they didn't need immediately, so they asked the buyers to stop sending the info.  Eventually, the invoice arrives and it ends up either in the buyer's Invoice Messages or their INR report.  The buyers are frustrated that the AP staff allows the invoice to go into a hold status because the buyers have indicated in the notes that there should be a credit.

I'm trying to see if there is any way, other than notes, that the buyers could somehow flag the PO that a credit is forthcoming.  Many times they have the credit number and the amount but don't' have the actual credit memo yet.  Should they be putting an add-on charge on the PO?  Is there anything programmatically that they can do that flags this as being credit?

One thought I had was, if it was in the Invoice Messages, they could just do a chargeback and enter the credit info there.  It seems like most of these end up in INR however, because of the timing of the re-shipment, which ends up allowing the first invoice to clear before the second invoice and credit ever make it to us.  There's no way for them to clear that without sending an email to AP and causing frustration that AP didn't see their comments on the PO in the first place.

Its a bit of a mess and maybe its an internal issue, but I just wanted to see what other organizations are doing to combat this.

Thanks!

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unknown

Doing a chargeback in invoice messages can create a problem down the road. Chargebacks basically are short paying the invoice by the amount on the PO line; this works great when the vendor is aware and can process that in their system. We've actually stopped doing chargebacks for the most part because we were then later getting the actual credit memo and effectively taking the credit twice. The vendor then wants to be paid back for one of the credit amounts and it is a snarled mess. We also had vendors who approved the short payment coming back in a year wanting to know why the invoice wasn't paid because their automated system couldn't handle it when the check arrived. With our biggest offender, we try to not pay reshipment invoices until there is the credit, nor do we take the credit until we have the second invoice. We've been burned too many times with having to backtrack something.

We too have found that AP doesn't look at the comments while processing (which I do understand since we don't easily see requisition comments either and much of what they do is automated). We do make sure to put a comment on any PO with a shortage/reship so that whoever gets the invoice question can check the PO and know immediately there should be a 2nd invoice and credit for a particular line. My pet peeve is that often the reship invoice gets matched to the PO before the full invoice does which then puts the larger invoice into INR. On occasion, that reship invoice matches automatically and gets paid first so the original invoice has to be split into two to have one matched and the rest direct paid, along with the credit memo.

So yes, a mess all around. Sorry - no solution here.