ALIS Billing helps you generate invoices and manage payments for your accounts receivable. This allows billing to run at the community level and integrate with your general ledger.
In this article you will find a list of tasks to be done on a monthly basis surrounding your invoice date. The goal is to help you maintain accurate billing and provide the best service possible!
Before Invoices Run
You can use the ALIS Billing Center, reports, and resident details pages to review the following details:
Verify Recurring Billing
The Billing Center can be configured to generate a task reminding you to prepare for auto-invoice generation. 
Notice how the task generates a few days before the invoices generate, giving you time to review important details first!
Click Process. This task displays residents who will not be receiving an invoice for the month, prompting you to verify if their recurring billing items are set up accurately. Most likely no one should be on this list! Go to their resident profiles to add the appropriate charges to their recurring billing.
The next section of this page gives you totals and links to reports for reviewing key details.
Uninvoiced Incidentals refers to incidental charges that will be billed on invoices run this month. The View Uninvoiced Incidentals button takes you to the Incidental Charges (Uninvoiced) report where you can audit each individual charge with your receipts.
Unapplied Credits gives the total of credits issued but not yet applied to invoices. These are likely to be applied to invoices this month. The View Unapplied Credits button takes you to the Credits report where you can audit any lingering credit balances.
Unapplied Payments shows the total overpayments and unused payments. Click the View Unapplied Payments button to go to the Payments Summary report. Here you can see all payments and filter for any unused payment balances.
Recurring Charges shows the all recurring charges to be billed this month. Click View Recurring Charges to go to the Recurring Charges report, where you can verify that all recurring charges are correct for the month.
Discounts shows how many discounts are scheduled to apply for this month. Click View Discounts to see the details of these discounts on the Discounts report.
Adjustments before invoices run
Use the reports above to help you make adjustments before the invoice run date. Making adjustments before the invoices run will save lots of time later! After invoicing, offsets and adjustments create extra work for you and your accounting department.
If you find an error in any charges, go to the resident profile to the appropriate section: Incidental Charges or Recurring Charges. Find the charge you need to change, and click Options > Edit.
If you click 'Edit Charge' for an existing recurring charge, this will historically impact reports that detail recurring charges within the charge dates. Editing charges will not impact historically-generated invoices.
Often for recurring charges, you may need to Add Rate Change instead. Read this article for more information about Rate Changes: Recurring Charges and Rate Changes.
Auto-Generated Invoices
Invoices typically run in the early morning on your "Generate on" date. These can also be manually run by your ALIS onboarding team if needed!
Verify Invoices
Look at your Invoices report (found on the Reports page) to show the total each person has been charged, and any credits, payments, or discounts that may have also applied. The summary at the bottom of the report provides you with the following totals:
- Total Charges: Total billed before credits, payments, and discounts were applied.
- Total Credits: Total credited during the period.*
- Total Discounts: Total discounts during the period.
- Invoice Total: The sum of the above numbers.
- Balance: Total owed, including any payments already applied.
- 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 not be the same as the amount of a credit applied during the period. There may also be credits applied during this period that were created in previous periods.
Print and Email Invoices
After you have verified everything looks good, it's time to print or email the invoices!
Go to the Invoices page, found in the Billing menu from the top of your page in ALIS. This is separate from the Invoices report described above.
Set filters at the top of the page to print or email the intended documents. It is recommended to verify the filters listed below:
- Update the Invoice Date to show you invoices dated for next month. This defaults to the current month's invoices, which you likely distributed at the end of last month!
- Payment Status: Mostly likely you want to filter for unpaid invoices.
- Invoice Preference: Filter for the Email options before emailing, and the Hand Deliver and Mail options before printing.
- Email on File: This allows you to filter for only those invoices with payers who have email addresses on file.
- Emailed: You can use this to avoid emailing the same payer more than once! Filter for only people who have not already been emailed.
When you're ready to print the list, select all using the checkbox at the top left, or select multiple in the list. Click the Print button to generate a single PDF you can print and mail or hand deliver.
When you're ready to email the list, select all using the checkbox at the top left, or select multiple in the list. Click the Email button to review all the invoices and payers and email addresses, as well as any CC or BCC recipients. Once you have email addresses added for each selected invoice, click Email Invoices at the bottom right.
Bulk Payments
After you have distributed invoices, you should prioritize entering payments into ALIS. These should be entered immediately after you receive them, but only after the invoices have been run.
Enter your payments in batches when possible to reduce errors. Go to the Payment Center and work on the batches based on payment method.
It is also advised to enter a payment batch as Deposit so that you can check the accuracy of your deposit total, even if you have not yet made the deposit at the bank.
For detailed information about submitting payments in the Payment Center, read this article: Payment Center Guide
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