Receivables management - FAQ
Which workflow must be used for invoicing is determined in each individual case by the Accounting department. The information is communicated to the project managers after the opening of the PSP. If the "Enter customer invoices" workflow is incorrectly used for a research project, a corresponding warning message appears when the PSP element is entered stating that the workflow is incorrect.
For research projects with invoice dispatch:
After a certain time, a reminder e-mail is sent to the person responsible for the project. The tranche must be approved by Budget Officer, Budget Manager, Budget Assistant or Supporter. In principle, no invoice is sent by the accounting department without the approval of the responsible project manager.
At SNF and Innosuisse (without invoice dispatch):
If the responsible project manager does not approve in ETHIS although the call has been made in "mySNF", this triggers receipt of payment. After a certain period has elapsed, the receivable is therefore subsequently posted in the amount of the actual incoming payment. It is, however, very desirable for the process to be handled if the SNF and Innosuisse tranches are approved in ETHIS in good time.
Basically: According to Art. 119 of the Financial Regulations, the person responsible for the budget is responsible for the timely retrieval of payments, in particular for third-party funded projects. He may also delegate invoicing to budget managers (Art.34) and budget assistants (Art.35).
The workflow "Receivables management" supports this task and offers the BV/BM/BA the available data. The following four points must be checked:
- Is the proposed information on the invoice recipient correct?
- Is the due date for the invoice correct or is it still too early?
- Is the amount invoiced or the amount to be called up correct?
- Are the texts (header text, item text) that are to appear on the invoice correct?
If so, the "release" must confirm that an invoice can be sent accordingly or that the revenue posting can be made in this way.
If no, the corresponding changes can be made directly in ETHIS and only then can the "release" be confirmed.
In the event of an incorrectly deposited donor or to adjust the contract amount (increase or reduction), the Finance Desk must be informed and documented via e-mail.
Here you will find instructions for approving project tranches.
Because no invoices are sent for SNF and Innosuisse, certain fields in the ETHIS approval mask are not displayed:
- There are no input fields for invoice address, header, sender, etc.
- There is no column "Invoice date" in the section "Payment schedule dates".
Important:
- The retrieval of tranches in "mySNF" still has to be carried out autonomosly by the Budget Officer. There is no interaction between the ETHIS release and the retrieval in "mySNF".
- The access to Innosuisse is carried out independently by Innosuisse in accordance with the payment schedule (it is no longer necessary to trigger the access using a form).
Detailed view of the approval mask for SNF and Innosuisse projects.
Without delegation, the budget officer receives the e-mail message. If a budget manager has been delegated, only this person receives the e-mail message. If it has been delegated to a budget assistant, only the budget assistant receives the e-mail message. Users with the "Supporter" role do not receive an e-mail message, but can release the tranches in ETHIS.
This means that only the person with the lowest level in the delegation receives an e-mail message. This relieves the BOs and BM's of e-mail messages.
In the "Inbox", however, everyone (BO, BM and BA) sees the due tranches. All tranches can also be released.