ALIS Monthly Invoicing

Generate invoices automatically or manually, and manage payments for your accounts receivable. This guide outlines recommended monthly invoicing tasks needed to help your community maintain accurate billing.

Configure Invoice Preferences

Manage community-level invoice preferences in Billing Settings. 

Configuration options include:

• Enable automatic invoice generation by payer type.
• Set the Billing Day of the Month.
• Set the Invoice Due Date.
• Configure default invoice comments and other invoice settings,

For more information, refer to the Billing Settings guide.

Step 1 - Prepare for Invoice Generation

Whether invoices are generated manually or automatically, review charges and make adjustments before invoices run. Use the Billing Center (if enabled), billing reports, and resident billing details pages to verify accuracy.

Verify Recurring Charges and Billing for Move Outs

The Billing Center helps verify recurring charges before invoice generation. It can also generate a reminder task five days before auto-invoice generation. For more information, refer to this The ALIS Billing Center guide.

If you do not have access to the Billing Center, it may not be enabled for your company or your security role may not allow access. Company administrators can contact their Account Manager for assistance.

• Click Process on the Prepare for Auto Invoice Generation task. This page displays residents who will not receive an invoice for the month and prompts you to verify recurring charges and reconcile move-out billing. 

• If residents appear on this page, click View to open their resident profile and update recurring billing as needed.

Review Details

The bottom section of this page includes totals and report links to help review billing details.

• Uninvoiced Incidentals: Total incidental charges scheduled to bill this month. Click View Uninvoiced Incidentals to audit charges in the Incidental Charges (Uninvoiced) report. 
• Unapplied Credits: Credits issued but not yet applied to invoices. Click View Unapplied Credits to review lingering balances in the Credits report. 
• Unapplied Payments: Overpayments or unused payments. Click View Unapplied Payments to review balances in the Payments Summary report. 
• Recurring Charges: All recurring charges scheduled to bill this month. Click View Recurring Charges to verify accuracy.
• Discounts: Discounts scheduled for this month. Click View Discounts to review details.

Make Adjustments before Invoices Generate

Use the reports above to make billing corrections before invoices generate. Adjustments made after invoicing often create additional accounting work.

If you find an issue with a resident charge:

1. Navigate to the resident profile.
2. Open the appropriate Incidental Charges or Recurring Charges section.
3. Locate the charge and click Options.

Rate Changes

To adjust a rate effective on a future date, click Add Rate Change. This is most commonly used for recurring charges. Refer to the Recurring Charges and Rate Changes article for more information.

Editing Charges

Selecting Edit Charge on an existing recurring charge impacts historical recurring charge reports within the charge dates. However, it does not impact previously generated invoices.

Editing Existing Invoices

If an invoice has already generated, you can remove recurring charges using either Unapply or Delete:

• Unapply removes the recurring charge from the invoice and returns it to the resident’s billing profile as a Future Invoice Charge. Use this when correcting invoices or planning to rebill the charge later.
• Delete permanently removes the recurring charge from both the invoice and the resident’s billing profile. Use this only when the charge should no longer exist.

💡Best Practice: Use Unapply when correcting invoices to preserve recurring billing setup, prorations, and discounts for future invoicing.

Invoice Due Dates

If your community uses a default Invoice Due Date in Billing Settings, review and adjust due dates as needed before invoices generate.

2 - Invoices Auto-Generation (or Manual) 

If auto-generation is enabled, invoices generate automatically early in the morning on the configured Billing Day of the Month.

To manually generate invoices:

1. Navigate to the Invoices page.
2. Open the Invoice Preview tab.
3. Go to the Not Invoiced section.
4. Select invoices and click Generate Invoices.

You can also use the Preview Invoice PDFs tab to review watermarked invoice PDFs before generation.

For additional assistance, contact your Account Manager or the ALIS Customer Success Team.

Final Verification of Invoices Accuracy

Navigate to the Invoices report under the Billing section of the ALIS Reports page. 

Scroll to the bottom of the report to view the following Summary values:

• Total Charges: Charges billed before credits, payments, and discounts.
• Total Credits: Credits applied during the period.*
• Total Discounts: Discounts applied during the period.
• Invoice Total: Total Charges, Credits, and Discounts combined. 
• Balance: Remaining amount owed after payments. 
• Total Credits Issued: Total credits created during the period.*
• Total Payments Received: Total payments received during the period.
• Invoice Count: Total invoices generated during the period.

*Credits created during the period may differ from credits applied during the period. There may also be credits applied during this period that were created in previous periods.

Print and Email Invoices

After verifying invoice accuracy, print or email invoices from the Billing > Invoices page. (This is different from the Invoices report described in the above section.)

Recommended filters include:

• Invoice Date: Update this filter to display invoices dated for the upcoming month. By default, this field typically displays the current month’s invoices, which were likely distributed at the end of the previous month.
• Payment Status: Most communities filter for Unpaid invoices before distributing invoices.

• Invoice Preference: Use this filter to separate invoices by delivery method.

  • Before emailing, filter for:
    • Email
    • Email & Mail
    • Email & Hand Deliver
  • Before printing, filter for:
    • Mail
    • Hand Deliver

  You may also want to review invoices with the Unspecified preference separately to determine whether they should be emailed, printed, or both. Maintaining invoice preferences for each payer is considered best practice, so this filter can also help identify payer records that need updating.

• Email on File: Filters for invoices with payer email addresses on file.
• Emailed: Helps prevent duplicate emails. Set this filter to No to show only invoices that have not already been emailed.

Print Invoices

To print invoices:

1. Select one or more invoice checkboxes.
2. Click Print.

ALIS generates a single PDF containing all selected invoices, which can then be printed, mailed, or hand delivered.

Email Invoices

To email invoices:

1. Select one or more invoice checkboxes.
2. Click Email.
3. Review the associated payers, email addresses, and any CC or BCC recipients.
4. Add or update email addresses as needed.
5. Click Email Invoices in the bottom right corner to send the invoices.

Invoices PDF Example

The Invoice PDFs include itemized charges, discounts, and fees, with columns for Unit Price, Quantity (Qty), and Amount. 

• The Amount column contains a clear financial summary, including Invoice Total, payments, credits, discounts, fees, or declined/NSF/voided transactions details. It also shows the Previous Balance and the Total Balance Due.

• If configured in Billing Settings, Comments and/or Payment Notes appear at the bottom left of the invoice.

For assistance, contact your Account Manager or the ALIS Customer Success Team.

3 - After Invoicing 

After invoices are distributed, prioritize entering payments into ALIS. Payments should be entered as soon as they are received, but only after invoices have generated.

Whenever possible:

• Enter payments in batches to reduce errors.
• Organize batches by payment method.
• Enter payment batches as Deposit to verify deposit totals before banking.

For more information about entering payments, refer to the Payment Center Guide.

Related Articles:

• Billing Settings
• The ALIS Billing Center
• Recurring Charges and Rate Changes
• Payment Center Guide
• ALIS Pay: Payment Gateway Reference Guide
• ALIS Pay: Monthly ACH Pulls

For more assistance: 888.404.ALIS (2547)  |  support@go-alis.com