Tuesday, December 20, 2016

Creating Invoices in Bill & Pay that Sync into QuickBooks

Create one-time and recurring invoices directly in Bill & Pay and Bill & Pay will add them to your QuickBooks automatically. The screenshot below illustrates how invoices are created within Bill & Pay.


You can enable this in your Bill & Pay account by going to Advanced Options / Additional Features. There is an additional $10/month fee for this feature.

Features

  • Invoices created in Bill & Pay have an invoice number of 'New', which will show in Bill & Pay as "Invoice #New".  When the invoice is synchronized into QuickBooks, it is assigned an invoice number by QuickBooks.
  • You must use line item types that are created in QuickBooks. New line item types cannot be added within Bill & Pay. Therefore, you must sync with QuickBooks after enabling this feature and before you start creating invoices in Bill & Pay.
  • After creating an invoice within Bill & Pay, you have the option to immediately accept payment on that invoice without syncing to QuickBooks first. The invoice is listed as "Invoice #New" until the sync happens.   
  • When you save the invoice in Bill & Pay, you can choose to either send the invoice to the customer or not send it.  Click either the "Save Invoice & Send" button or the "Save Invoice Without Sending" button when creating the invoice. Whichever one you choose, the invoice will not display in the Bill & Pay Desktop Manager's "Unsent Invoices" window because the system already knows what you want to do with the invoice.  If you choose to send the invoice, it won't be sent until you synchronize and the invoice is added to QuickBooks. This is necessary to get QuickBooks to set multiple fields on the invoice including invoice number, template, etc.
  • To setup recurring invoices go to the customer’s screen and click the “Create Recurring Invoice” tab.  Instructions are provided on the page.
  • For no additional fee you can enable "Add Customers". The new customer syncs with the prefix ZZZ so you can easily find them within QuickBooks and rename the customer. This allows you to create a new customer, create an invoice, and accept a payment on that invoice all before synchronizing; or, you can create the invoice and send to the customer for payment.
  • Invoices cannot be edited in Bill & Pay once they have been created. This must be done within QuickBooks.
  • This feature does not currently support invoice templates from QuickBooks. As a result all invoices created in Bill & Pay will use the default QuickBooks invoice template when synchronized.

Limitations

  • This feature does not currently work with XERO, but can be added.  Contact sales@billandpay.com for a quote.
  • If using our API to add the invoice, you must sync first to QuickBooks before accepting a payment.




Thursday, November 10, 2016

Payer Site Embedding with JavaScript Plugin

Bill & Pay provides a JavaScript file you can include in your web page that will embed your custom payer site. You will need to have experience working with HTML to get this to work. If you do not have this experience we recommend you hire a web developer to perform this task for you.

The first step is to add the following JavaScript reference to the <head> section of your webpage:

<script src="https://www.billandpay.com/web/billandpayembed.min.js"></script>

Then you must choose a place within the body of your web page where you want the embedded site to appear and place this code:

<div id="embed"></div><script>BillAndPayEmbed('XXXX', 'embed', 'login');</script>

The <div> with an id of "embed" will be the container inside which the payer site will be embedded. You can size and style this <div> however best suites your site's design.

The <script> call to the BillAndPayEmbed function has to be modified for your installation.

First, replace the 'XXXX' parameter with your account's biller number. When you log in to Bill & Pay the top of the page will say "Logged in to biller XXXX". That is your biller number you will put in this function call.

Second, you can optionally change the 'login' parameter to be one of the following three values:

  • 'login' - Shows the login page by default
  • 'enroll' - Shows the payer enrollment page, which is the create user account page, by default
  • 'lookup' - Shows the invoice lookup page by default
That third parameter defines what page will be displayed by default when a customer goes directly to the page on your site that embeds the payer site. If one your customers clicks a Make Payment link in an email Bill & Pay sends them they will be taken directly to the Make Payment page embedded within your web page instead of seeing the default page.

Read our "Payer Site Embedding with Server Side Programming" article for a more technical description of how payer site embedding works.