This is the second of two parts covering intercompany transactions. We are moving on from intercompany setup to engaging in transactions between the two companies. If you missed part one, make sure to read that before you move onto this one. To recap, we completed the setup of our customer and vendor records, intercompany partner records, company information and spoke a little bit on item referencing. We will cover your available options in the Intercompany Inbox and Outbox Transactions pages, cross referencing item numbers and finally, posting the transactions.
Transacting
To start transacting, I am going to create a sales order to our associated company. It may be you instead start from a purchase order. This works in an almost identical way.
The customer the sales order is for is Stuart’s – Netherlands. As the set up is done, all we have to do is specify the customer and item as you would usually. Note, on the Sales Order line you should be able to see the IC Partner Ref. Type and IC Partner Code. The former specifies the item or account, and should be populated based on the Outbound Sales Item No. Type field value. You don’t need to fill in the latter, it will recognise the intercompany partner based on the setup you have done. It might be that you have to personalise the page to display these fields.
When you’re happy, instead of posting the sales order, which under normal circumstances we would do when the goods have been received, we send the document to the other company. To do this, click ‘Actions’, ‘Functions’ and ‘Send Intercompany Sales Order’.
Intercompany Outbox Transactions
If you haven’t enabled Auto. Send Transactions, you will next need to go to the Intercompany Outbox Transactions page, and on the record line click ‘Send to IC Partner’.
If you have Auto. Send Transactions enabled, you’ll bypass the outbox step. The order record will instead, from the moment you click ‘Send Intercompany Sales Order’, go straight to the other company’s inbox. When the order passes to the other company, the record in the outbox will disappear. You will now have a record in Handled Intercompany Outbox Transactions instead, showing the process has worked as intended.
Intercompany Inbox Transactions
Now, after switching to the company I sent the order to, I can see a record in my Intercompany Inbox Transactions page. Note, I have two here. To check which record it is you’re looking for, click onto one one of the lines and then click ‘Inbox Transaction’ and ‘Details’ to open the order.
Outbound Sales Item No. Type field.
Before delving into what you can do with these inbox records, I firstly wanted to demonstrate how amending the Outbound Sales Item No. Type field on the Intercompany Partner page affects values on the intercompany record lines. The reason I had two orders created before is to display the difference when choosing different values.
This is something we touched on in part one.
Common Item No.
Below I use the Common Item No. as the value. When I click into a record in the intercompany inbox, it looks like this:
If you are using a Common Item No., make sure it’s set against the related items in both companies. Otherwise, when it comes to accepting the inbox transaction, you will get this message:
Cross Reference
In another intercompany sales order, I am using the Cross Reference option in the Outbound Sales Item No. Type field. This time the purchase record in the inbox doesn’t include the Common Item No. field value as you might expect.
Available intercompany inbox transaction options
Now back to the Intercompany Inbox Transactions page… After checking the order has the details you expect, with the line still highlighted, click ‘Actions’. You can choose one of four options: ‘No Action’, ‘Accept’, ‘Return to IC Partner’ and ‘Cancel’.
The ‘Accept’ action brings the transaction into the company, creating a corresponding record. In my example, in the Netherlands’ company, this will create a purchase order. I will run through the utility of the other functions further down, I just wanted to explain the standard flow first.
Accepting the intercompany inbox transaction in different ways
We’ve now looked at what the various actions do, so let’s look at the different ways you can apply those actions. You can action multiple lines at a time, sending them over multiple orders in a batch. To do this, select multiple lines and click ‘Accept’. There’s multiple ways to select multiple lines. For me, the easiest way to select all lines is to click on a line whilst holding the ‘ctrl’ key. Next, click the ‘select all rows’ circle.
Another way to action multiple records at once is by changing the Line Action field value on the lines to ‘Accept’. Next, click ‘Functions’ and ‘Carry out Line Actions’:
After sending the transaction, the record should disappear. After sending across my intercompany transaction, the record becomes ‘handled’. Before switching companies, if you go to the Handled Intercompany Outbox Transactions page, you should see the record. When the record appears here, it means it’s passed across as an intercompany transaction.
Posting
After the record has gone from the Intercompany Inbox Transactions page, the orders will need posting. This part is the same as a normal order. There’s no intercompany bits to contend with here. Users simply post in either company when they ship or receive goods. Below are my two posted orders in both companies:
Other available actions for intercompany inbox transactions
This section is returning back to the Intercompany Inbox Transactions page to discuss other options you have as a user, other than accepting intercompany transactions.
If you decide not to accept the intercompany transaction, you can perform a different action. ‘No Action’ leaves the inbox record as it is. All the lines in the inbox, by default, are set to ‘No Action’. Click ‘Cancel’ if the order was sent in error. This deletes the record out of the inbox without moving the record or notifying the other company. For both ‘Cancel’ and ‘Return to IC Partner’, it doesn’t affect the status of the order originally sent. It still says released.
The ‘Return to IC Partner’ action moves the intercompany record from the inbox to the outbox.
At this point, you can find the record in the outbox and click ‘Send to IC Partner’ and return it to the company who sent it initially. If you have Auto. Send Transactions enabled, it will still go to the outbox and require action, to send back to the intercompany partner.
Now, back in the company which created the order, the Transaction Source field has a value of ‘Returned by Partner’.
If you click ‘Accept’ or ‘Return to IC Partner’ at this stage, you will get this message:
To get around this, after reopening and amending the order to accommodate any changes the other company wants, you can click Send IC Sales Order again. It will say this is a duplicate, however this isn’t an issue.
Closing remarks
Thanks for reading! If you have any comments, questions or general feedback, please get in contact with us. We are open to suggestions on topics you’d like us to cover! To never miss when we post, why not follow us on LinkedIn.