In Dynamics 365 out-of-box, an Invoice may be generated when Work Order is Closed-Posted. An Invoice contains all the Products and Services that have been “Used” as part of a Work Order.

Ideally, once a Work Order is Closed-Posted in Dynamics 365, the billable details (Products & Services, T&M, etc.) would be integrated with an ERP where an actual invoice would be generated. However, some businesses will not be using an integrated ERP and may require preliminary invoicing from D365. Based on the use case, it totally depends how the Business wants to leverage D365 Field Service to perform invoicing in their ERP system. If the Business uses D365 F&O as their ERP system, invoice setup is straightforward by using the CDS integration tool; however, if the Business has an external ERP system, then appropriate integrations with APIs need to be setup. We’ll be discussing that in today’s post.

There are three common scenarios we typically encounter:

1. Dedicated ERP System already in place for Invoicing

Many Companies have an ERP system that takes care of all the inbound and outbound revenues. ERP is accounting software with additional management benefits like tax/discounts layered on top.

Ideally, ERP contains a Master table of all the Products and Services, as well as their appropriate pricing structure. Therefore, pricing, price list, and taxes in CRM are setup in accordance with the Customer’s ERP system. This information is stored in the form of the General Ledger in ERP. These general ledger lines are the basis for Invoice generation in any ERP system.

2. Proforma/Preliminary Invoice from Dynamics 365 CRM

Sometimes, a company may prefer to send a proforma invoice before generating an invoice to bill. Proforma provides a baseline for the sale, a breakdown of all the products and services provided but without being a legally binding document:

(Source: Microsoft)

The proforma invoices are required by end consumers for Field Technicians on the road to provide the customer with a breakdown of labor performed, Products, and Services immediately from their Field Service mobile application. This proforma invoice can include additional information needed, such as Warranty, Notes, Signature of Customer, etc.

On a side note, D365 F&O is also capable of generating Proforma invoices.

3. Invoicing inside Dynamics 365 CRM

When a Work Order is closed-posted, Work Order Products and Services may be sent over to the Invoice entity with Invoice Line Items. This is the same Invoice entity used by the Sales professionals wanting to create an invoice from a Quote or an Order from the Sales module.

However, in a scenario where both Sales and Field Service users are using the invoice entity for their unique purpose, there is a possibility of overlapping of information. To avoid this, the Best Practice is to have separate model driven apps for these users and have their unique forms/views.

Conclusion

If you are using Dynamics 365 for Finance & Operations, by using CDS Data integrator template or any other integration tool, we can synchronize Field Service Work Orders to F&O Sales Orders:

However, if we have an external ERP system to integrate with, then we can use Power Automate or Logic apps with appropriate API connectors. The integration allows us to set mappings between two systems to generate an Invoice at the desired synchronization time.

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