In transit
In the Invoice Processing / In Transit menu, you will find all the invoices that are in circulation within Spend Cloud. The purpose of the In Transit section is to provide visibility into the expected costs over a specific period. These costs can be included in the monthly reports. The invoice lines are recorded as temporary expenses in a journal entry and posted to an interim account to ensure that they are balanced again.
The In Transit menu item is an optional setting that may not be enabled in every Spend Cloud environment. If your organization wishes to use the In Transit menu, please contact our support department for assistance.
How does In Transit work?
The invoices in this menu have not been exported yet but represent expected costs. The overview is based on the invoice line level. You have the option to make a selection of invoice lines up to a specific period and export them to a file or via a webservice. This file can be exported in CSV or XML format, depending on your financial software, and can be imported manually or automatically into the financial package. The exported overviews can be found under the 'Export Files' button. Spend Cloud generates a contra-booking file immediately at the time of export. You can download this document by clicking 'Download contra-booking file' on the right side of a line. The export file and contra-booking file can then be uploaded to the financial package for further processing.
In Transit displays only the invoices with the following status:
- To be sent (for review)
- In progress with an employee (for review, not for external coding)
- Rejected, awaiting administrative review
- On hold (for review and rejected)
- Approved, ready for export (separate exports: in transit/approved
How do you use it?
During the month-end closing process, you perform the following steps for exporting invoices in Spend Cloud:
- First, you export all the approved invoices (normal export).
- Then, during the month-end closing, you proceed to export all the invoice lines that are still In Progress within Spend Cloud and actually belong to the month you want to close in the accounting system (In Transit export). For example, if it is April, and you want to close March, you would enter "period until month 04-20xx" in the field, and all invoices up to and including March will be included in the In Transit export.
- Next, you close the month in the accounting system.
- After that, you import the contra-booking file (automatically done through a webservice) in the month following the closed month, which reverses all the In Progress bookings.
By following these steps, all the In Progress invoices are properly accounted for, and the month-end closing is completed smoothly.
For the setup, you will need a general journal and an intermediary account. You can configure this in the administration.
Exclude ledgers and dimensions for in transit export
You may want to exclude certain costs or dimensions from your in transit export—or perhaps your financial software simply doesn't allow them, which leads to error messages. You can manage this easily within the settings of these dimensions
For General Ledger Accounts, go to the settings by editing the specific account. Set "Controllable costs" to 'No' and then set "Exclude from In Transit" to 'Yes'.
For other dimensions (Cost Centers, Cost Units, or Extra Dimensions), set the option "Use as empty value" to 'Yes'. Once enabled, this dimension will be excluded from both the regular export and the "In Transit" export to your financial software.
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