Internal and external freight invoicing
In the Freight Invoicing module, freight invoices can be created for both internal and external business partners.
External business partners are the customers or suppliers on whose behalf the transportation costs are incurred. Business partners are maintained in Common. Suppliers and customers are maintained as buy-from business partners and sold-to business partners. Invoices are sent to the invoice-to business partners of the sold-to and buy-from business partners.
Internal business partners are departments in larger organizations that can be invoiced internally. In large organizations, the shipping office arranges transportation on behalf of internal business partners such as:
- sales offices
- purchase offices
- service departments
- warehouses
The shipping office receives the invoice from the carrier. In turn, the shipping office invoices the sales office, the warehouse, the service department, or the purchase office internally to be compensated for the carrier charges incurred.
In Common, shipping offices, service departments, sales offices, and purchase offices are maintained as departments. To enable invoices to be created for the internal business partners related to the departments, relations must be defined between the departments. Relationships are defined in the Intercompany Trade module of Common.
To create an internal invoicing relationship between two departments, two relationships must be defined.
The first relationship indicates whether the from-entity (department) or the to-entity is responsible for paying the transportation costs. This relationship is defined in the Internal Freight Responsibilities (tcitr2130m000) session.
The second relationship is between the shipping office and the responsible entity of the first relationship. The shipping office in this relation is the shipping office linked to the responsible entity of the first relationship. This relationship is defined in the Intercompany Trade Relationship (tcitr2600m000) session.
In Freight, shipping offices are linked to warehouses and - through the originating order types - to other entities.
If the responsible entity of the first relationship is also responsible in the second relationship, an internal invoice must be created.
Example
| Relationship 1 Internal Freight Responsibilities (tcitr2130m000) | ||
|---|---|---|
| From-entity | To-entity | Responsible entity |
| Warehouse | Sales office | Sales office |
| Relationship 2 Intercompany Trade Relationship (tcitr2600m000) | ||
|---|---|---|
| From-entity | To-entity | Responsible entity |
| Shipping office | Sales office | Sales office |
The responsible entity in relationships 1 and 2 is the entity that pays for the freight costs, which is the entity to which the internal invoice is sent.