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Create EDI Files

Use the Create EDI Files screen to create the EDI files for transmission to your customers.

The bills must have already been generated using either the Calculate Standard Bills, Calculate Progress Payment Bills, or the Calculate Retroactive Bills screens. You cannot create EDI billing files for any of the manually entered bills, such as the Customer Product Bills, Project Product Bills, Manual Bills, or the Milestone/Percent Complete Bills. In addition, a bill must be in a Select status before you can create an EDI file for it. You can create EDI billing files only for bills that have not been posted.

To create EDI files:

  1. In the Customers and Projects group boxes, select the range of customers and projects for which you want to create files.
  2. In the Select Invoices to Transmit group box, select the invoice type (Commercial, Form 1034, Progress Payments) that the range uses to format the EDI files.

    Costpoint creates a separate file, representing a transmission envelope, for each customer for the project range selected. A given envelope can contain multiple invoices for the same customer, but all the invoices must be of the same type. For projects that are shared, an invoice is included in the file of each customer that has a share of the project. If you want to create a file for a specific customer of a shared project, you must select only that customer. If your company has multiple invoice types to transmit, you must execute a separate creation process for each invoice type. Only EDI files for Actual bills are created; backup, or supporting bills, are not created.

  3. In the Indicate Data Type group box, select the data indicator, Production Data or Test Data, which appears in the file header to indicate to your customers whether the file is a test transmission or an actual invoice submitted for payment.

    In a typical EDI arrangement, your customer may want an initial period in which invoices are submitted using both electronic transmissions and hard copies. Note that all files generated for a given create process contain the same data indicator. Execute different create processes as needed to ensure the files contain the correct data indicator.

  4. Using the Output Path group box, select a path to which the files are exported.

    Note that the output path does not contain the file name. Because Costpoint does not know how many files you plan to create, you cannot designate the file name. As noted previously, the program creates a separate file for each customer in the selected range; therefore, the file name consists of the first eight characters of the customer ID with an *.EDI extension. For example, if the customer ID is "SUPERTECH," the file name is SUPERTEC.EDI. If the program finds a file with this same path and name, it displays a warning. You can overwrite the file or cancel the process.

If no EDI files can be created during a given process, the process stops and Costpoint displays a message to this effect. If at least one file can be created, the process executes as usual, but only the one file is created. Here are some of the reasons why a file cannot be created:

  • The Configure Billing EDI Settings screen is not completed.
  • The project has not been entered on the Manage Project EDI Information screen.
  • The invoice has not been calculated in either the Calculate Standard Bills, Calculate Progress Payment Bills, or the Calculate Retroactive Bills screens.
  • The invoice is not in a SELECTED status.
  • The invoice has already been posted.
  • The user executing the Create EDI Files screen is not a member of the project's user group.
  • The project's invoice transmission type designated on the Manage Project EDI Information screen does not match the type in the create process.