ArticlesAccounts Payable: How to Generate AP Email Remittances for a Single Account Payment

Certinia Accounts Payable provides for the automated email of payment remittances within the Payments Plus/Vendor Payment application. This automation improves the manual printing/stuffing/mailing of remittances process. The facility makes use of the Conga Composer tool to format the remittance and the Conga Batch tool to process the outbound email (see Help: Vendor Remittances for more information).

If the remittance failed to be sent or was sent to the wrong customer contact, and the operator needs to resend that remittance. In certain situations it is possible to do this within Payments Plus (after updating the finance contact on the account), but depending on the context may not be possible to achieve. After completing the procedures in this article, a remittance for an individual payment summary can be generated.

All versions

Setup

The nomenclature used within Certinia payments dates to the earliest days of the package and has undergone a long history of evolution. Several objects with similar names can make it difficult to determine which is in use. Further, the document label (what is shown to the operator) is often not similar to the API name (the technical name). The few objects this article addresses are as follows:

Primary Objects Used for Vendor Payments

Relevant to this article, a remittance sent to an account is based on the Payment Summary record (showing the details from the Payment Detail object for all PINs included in the payment). However, the user interface does not include display of the Payment Summary record. The display of the Vendor Payment includes a related list for the Payment Summary, but no way to display its detail page. There is not a related list off of the account for payments made, nor is there a tab available in the product for this object. All fields and code for this solution are part of the Certinia Conga Integration package. This solution does not require new code, simply changes to Tab and Page layouts (including exposing an existing button).

Procedure

Step 1: Create a Tab For Payment Summary

1. Navigate to Setup > Tabs
2. Click New
   
   
   
3. Find the Payment Summary object 
   
   
   
4. Add access for all Profiles (permissions control who sees data)
5. Include in App used for Accounts Payable
6. Deselect the default which adds it to all Apps)
   
   
   
7. Click Save - it now shows in App
   

Step 2: Open the Tab and then a Payment Summary and Edit Layout Buttons

1. Open App, Make sure view includes 
   • Payment Account Line Item (the summary we want to send)
   • Payment (the Lightning Payment ID)
   • Account (just to make sure we have the right one
     
     
     
2. Select a sample Payment Summary (it does not matter which) 
   
   
   
3. From Setup Menu, click Edit Page to access Lightning App Builder 
   
   
   
4. In Lightning App Builder, select the top component (Highlights Panel) and click Upgrade Now
   • This provides the ability to add buttons independent of the Salesforce classic page layout editor
   • A big advantage of these buttons is conditional visibility. An example of this is adding an Edit button and an Amend button on an invoice and they appear based on status (however this is not necessary to complete this guide)
     
     
     
5. Select the default layout and it will show the buttons that are on the SF page layout
6. At the bottom, click Add Action
7. Select Email Remittance
8. Click Done > Save
   
   
   
9. Move the Email Remittance up to near the top of the list to show on the page layout
   • A prompt appears to activate the page, do so and make it the organization default 
     

• • There is a back arrow ← in the upper right corner; click this to return to the page

Step 3: Send Remittance

1. Before sending the remittance, validate the vendor account “Finance Contact” is the correct one (also recommended to validate their email address as well) 
   • To send a single remittance to another person, do not change the Finance contact on the account. The value of that contact is hard coded on the Payment Summary. Instead, go into that contact and temporarily change the email address of the contact.
2. Navigate to the Payment Summary tab
3. Search via the Payment number (e.g. PAY000036). This lists all of the accounts being paid within this batch of payments.
4. Select the desired Account line (header line reals Payment Account Line Item ID)
   • Do not select the PAY00036 as that redirects back to the Vendor Payment page
5. This displays the Payment Summary page; click Email Remittance
   
   
   
6. To test this, edit the Contact email to yourself and click the button
7. You should receive the remittance, now change the email back
   • Note that sandboxes and MDO/CBO orgs have more difficulty sending emails due to protections built into the system to eliminate spam. Therefore, it is easier to do this in production.

Alternative Navigation

An alternative to using the Payment Summary tab is to add the Payment Summary as a related list in the Account page layout. While this related list might be relevant to some companies, given the many many demands within organizations on the account page and difficulty getting changes made to it, the above approach is considered an easier path. However, there are a few items to note: 

• The steps outlined above to add the Email Remittance button to the page are still required.
• The related list would look like the following: 
  

This does not require any modification to core product but rather exposes tabs and buttons to enable navigation.