Coding is the process of splitting an invoice’s amount across one or more accounting rows, each row specifying an account and other dimensions (cost centre, project, and so on) that determine how the invoice is booked in your ERP. This article covers the day-to-day coding actions on an invoice: entering a single coding row, splitting across multiple rows, reusing a previous invoice’s coding, and pasting coding from Excel.
Before you start
- To edit a coding row you need the permission Add and remove accounting lines (full) or Add and remove accounting lines. With the second one you also need the matching per-field permission, such as Change amount while approving or Change account while approving.
- While an invoice is out for approval you can edit your own rows if you hold the matching Change … while approving permission. Users with Edit regardless of status, and invoice administrators, can also edit rows that belong to someone else.
- To use Apply under Previous accounting you need Apply previous accountingline/lines, and to open the Excel dialog you need Apply calculation from Excel. Neither appears on an invoice that is read-only or already being exported.
- Permissions reach you through the user groups your organisation assigns. Invoice admin and Approvers are example groups, not fixed roles. See User roles and permissions.
- The dimensions available on a coding row (Account, Cost Centre, Project, Property, and so on) depend on which dimensions your organisation has enabled, and so do the columns in the Excel template. See Configure the invoice page.
Enter a single coding row
Most invoices open with one coding row that already holds the full invoice amount. An invoice that arrives with invoice lines opens with one coding row per invoice line, and an invoice that matches an auto template opens with that template’s rows. To code the invoice against a single account and dimensions:
- Click into the Account field and enter the account code, or type part of the name to search.
- Fill in any other required dimension fields on the row (Cost Centre, Project, etc.).
- Optionally add a Text note to the row.
- Click OK at the bottom right to save and send the invoice forward.
Tip: For fields that are list-based, like accounts, dimensions, approvers etc. you can press Space to bring up a searchable droplist of the available options.
Split an invoice across multiple rows
Use multiple rows when the invoice covers costs that belong to different accounts, cost centres, projects, or approvers.
On the first row, change the Amount to the portion this row should cover.
Add a new row in one of two ways:
- Press Enter in the row’s Text field.
- Click the + button above the coding rows.
Either way, Rillion adds the row at the top of the list, fills in the amount still left to code, and copies the values from the row that was at the top. When the rows already cover the full invoice amount, Enter moves to the OK button instead of adding a row.
Fill in the new row’s account and dimensions.
Repeat until every row covers a portion of the invoice and the sum of the row amounts equals the invoice total.
Click OK to save and send forward.
Tip: Place the cursor in the Amount field and press the space bar to open a mini-calculator. Use it to compute the amount for the row (for example, dividing a total across several projects). See Working tips for other keyboard shortcuts.
Split with different approvers per row
Each coding row has its own Current approver field. When an invoice needs approval from several people — for example, when different departments share a cost — assign each row to the correct approver. Every approver sees the whole coding, with their own rows sorted to the top. You can edit and approve only the rows assigned to you.
Apply a previous posting
When Rillion One has processed invoices from a supplier before, it remembers how those invoices were coded. On a new invoice from the same supplier, you can copy the coding from a previous invoice instead of entering it from scratch.
Previous accounting only appears if your organisation has Show previous account entries (per supplier) turned on, and it leaves out any posting with more coding rows than your organisation’s limit for previous-accounting suggestions. See Configure the invoice page.
- On the invoice, expand the Previous accounting section in the invoice header.
- Rillion shows a tab for each of the three most recent postings for this supplier, plus a Favorite tab.
- To reuse a posting, click Apply and confirm. Rillion warns you first — Are you sure you want to apply previous accounting? Existing lines will be removed. — then replaces every coding row on the invoice with the copied posting, scaling the amounts to the current invoice’s total.
- To review the source invoice before copying, click Show invoice. The referenced invoice opens in a new browser tab.
Favorite is the posting that has been applied most often for this supplier in your organisation. Rillion counts each time anyone applies a posting and offers the leader, so no one saves it by hand. The tab appears only once someone has applied a posting for the supplier. The three most recent tabs move on as you code new invoices from the supplier.
Paste coding from Excel
For invoices with many coding rows — credit-card invoices with dozens of transactions, for example — coding directly in Excel and pasting the result into Rillion One is often faster than filling in each row by hand.
- On the invoice, click the Excel icon above the coding rows, or press Ctrl+E. The Excel dialog opens with the paste area under Excel account distribution.
- Click Download excel template to get a file with the correct columns for your organisation. Which columns appear depends on your settings, so build your file from the template rather than from a fixed list. Amount and Account always come first, your active dimensions follow, and Current approver, your custom text fields and Text come after them. Rillion reads the pasted columns by position, so keep every column in the template’s order, including any you leave empty.
- Enter each coding row as a line in Excel. Use exact usernames in the approver column.
- Select the coding cells in Excel (do not include the column headings) and copy them.
- Back in Rillion One, paste the copied cells into the dialog’s text area.
- Select Override to replace the coding rows already on the invoice, or Add to append the pasted rows to them, then click OK.
Rillion remembers your choice and preselects it next time.
The same dialog has a second section, Excel export with accounting rows, collapsed by default. Expand it and click Export to send the invoice header and its coding rows to Excel — useful when you want to rework a large coding in Excel and paste it back in.