Shipwell supports an out-of-the-box integration with most cloud versions of QuickBooks and NetSuite Financial Management Systems (FMS). This article will cover:
How you can generate an invoice to seek payment from your customer for a shipment via a connected FMS
How you can generate a bill to pay your carrier for a shipment via a connected FMS
How you initiate and setup the out-of-the-box integration to QuickBooks or NetSuite
Note FMS systems connected via the Shipwell Marketplace do not currently leverage Invoice First Pass Match or the Settlement Cards / Dashboard.
Generate Invoice / Bill via Shipwell Connected to FMS
Once you have connected QuickBooks or NetSuite via the Shipwell Integration marketplace and have proper user permissions, you can create customer invoices and carrier bills.
Customer Invoice: An invoice is a request for payment by one party to another party (i.e. carrier invoicing their customer). You can generate a Customer Invoice in the Shipment Details page within the ‘Financials’ tab and selecting the action drop-down in the Customer Card and select ‘Create Invoice’.
Once you select ‘Create Invoice’ you will get the following ‘Create Invoice’ modal. It will be pre-populated with the Customer name along with a default message with origin, destination, BOL #, and PRO #. Further, all financial line items will be pre-selected. There will be a display of the different shipment documents viewable and you can select which documents to attach to invoice. Once you select ‘Create Invoice’ then an invoice will be created and sent to your QuickBooks Online account that is connected to Shipwell.
The Invoice that was generated will then be displayed in the Customer card including the Invoice #, Amount, Balance, and Invoice Status. There is also the ability to ‘Email’ the invoice.
If you choose ‘Email’ invoice, then you can select the recipient parties (your email will be prepopulated as a recipient).
You will send an email with an attached invoice PDF along with all supporting documents attached to the invoice.
You cannot edit or delete invoices initiated within Shipwell triggering their creation in a financial management system. However, you can create multiple invoices.
Carrier Bill: A bill is a promise to pay by one party to another party (i.e. customer billing their carrier). Once you have connected your financial management system to Shipwell and have appropriate user permissions, you can generate a Carrier bill in the Shipment Details page within the ‘Financials’ tab and selecting the action drop-down in the Carrier Card and select ‘Create Bill’.
Remember in this case we added a new ‘Layover’ line item. Further, this line item while added by the Shipper had not been able to have been transferred into the Carrier’s financials since they do not have permission to do this transfer generally. This does not matter though as when creating a bill it is based off the financials in the area of the organization producing the bill or invoice.
A couple differences in the ‘Create Bill’ modal is that it displays the Carrier name and a Bill Number and allows you to select a Due Date and an Approved Date. Again, you are able to choose which line items you want included. The other item of note is that since we are connected to TriumphPay there is an additional payment party authorization that has been made here.
The Bill that was generated will then be displayed in the Carrier card including the Bill #, Amount, Balance, and Bill Status. There is not the ability to email the bill. Further, you are not able to cancel or edit the bill as they have been sent to your financial management system and should be managed there.
Connecting to Shipwell Marketplace FMS (NetSuite, QuickBooks, TriumphPay)
Shipwell currently supports being able to integrate with both NetSuite and QuickBooks Online financial management systems and can connect to TriumphPay directly for a payment system. In order to add, view, or edit the integrations for your organization, a user must have the permissions to view and manage integrations. These integrations can either be setup by your Shipwell Customer Service Representative or Implementation Consultant.
Once you have these permissions if you go to ‘Manage’ > ‘Company’ > ‘Integrations’ you will see a list of available integrations along with a status of which integrations you have connected to Shipwell. Three of these potential integrations are QuickBooks, TriumphPay, and NetSuite. In the screenshot below we are already connected to QuickBooks and TriumphPay due to the green checkbox in the right-hand corner.
Let’s say you are a new Shipwell administrator for a Shipper. You go to the QuickBooks card and click on it and the following below will display.
This is a mapping guide for your different financial line items, and you can select the ‘Expense Account’ and ‘Expense Class’ that have been pulled from your QuickBooks integration. You can do this for both the Billing and Invoicing segments.
This allows you to match your General Liability codes to shipment line items. Doing this will mean that when a new invoice or a new bill are generated that they will be coded with the right GL data for accuracy within your financial management system. These configuration options are similar for NetSuite however there are some additional choices that can be made to code these by shipment mode for example.
Per Shipwell tenant you can only connect to one financial management system at a time. However, if you have multiple Shipwell tenants you can connect all or some of them into one QuickBooks Online or NetSuite account.
Now that we talked about the financial management systems and configuring them we can move on to the payment system integration we have with TriumphPay. Going back to the ‘Integrations’ page if you select Triumph Pay then you will get the following options to select both the ‘Carrier Invoice Approved Date’ and the ‘Factor Invoice Approved Date’. These both can be either ‘BILL_CREATED_DATE’ OR ‘SHIPMENT_DELIVERY_DATE’.
