Assigned - Invoicing a Branch

Assigned is the process we use to invoice customers for any courses that they assign to their employees. While we only send invoices once a month, the assigned process should be completed every day to keep track of all the newly assigned users in Talent and QuickBooks.

Getting Started

To get started, open up the home page in Talent. From here, click on "Custom" under the "Reports" tab at the bottom left of the menu. This will bring you to a new window. 

Safety Provisions has a series of reports listed here used for various purposes. Most of these reports help management track data across Talent. After bringing up the reports page, look for Assigned Report near the top of the list. When you find it, hover your cursor over the three dots in the Options column and click on the Pencil icon that appears.

On the new page, you will need to update the dates or time frame. The dates should be set for the last day the report was pulled. Don't forget to include the weekend when setting the dates. Both the "From" and "To" boxes should have the same date, except when you need to account for courses assigned over the weekend. After inputting the correct dates, click on the green button labeled Update Report to populate the newly assigned courses.

You should see a list of information for users that were recently assigned courses. You can export this data to an excel file by clicking on Export in Excel at the top of the screen. Save the file to your desktop, then open it once it has finished downloading.

Excelling in Excel

When you first open up the Excel file, you might notice that there is a lot of extra information that you don't need for billing each branch. Before moving on, you should delete the following columns from the spreadsheet.

• E — Enrolled on
• F — Status
• G — Time

The next thing you need to do is combine the first and last names in Columns A and B to make billing easier in QuickBooks. So to insert a new column, select "column C" at the top of the page to highlight all of the column. After the column is highlighted, right-click the column and select the option "Insert" from the drop-down menu. Name the new column Full Name.

 To start combining columns A and B. Insert the following equation in the box below Full Name:

• =CONCATENATE(A5," ",B5)

You will then need to add this equation to the entire column. Highlight the cell with the equation in it, and left-click the bottom-right corner of the cell twice. This will automatically generate the full name for each assignee throughout the entire column.

Next, highlight all the newly created names. After all, the full names are highlighted, press "Ctrl C" on your keyboard to copy them. Right-click to open the pasting options. Select "Values" or the pasting option with the "123" icon to save over the equation you made. This will ensure that when we delete Columns A and B it will leave us the full names of the employees, instead of empty boxes.

Next, you will need to put a filter on the titles of each column so we can exclude the courses that were assigned by Hard Hat Training. Any course that you assign should be promptly added to an invoice afterward. You also need to exclude courses from the hardhatcanada branch. To add a filter, highlight the row with the titles of each column. Next, press "Ctrl Shift L." Delete columns G, H, and I to remove some extra filters that may be created during this process.

Click the down arrow on the "Branches" cell to view the filters currently applied to that cell. Deselect the check box next to "Select All," and then check both the box marked with a hyphen (-) and the one labeled hardhattrainingcanada. Click "OK" at the bottom of the drop-down menu. This will hide all of the rows for every assignee outside the filters you set. 

Highlight the rows for each of these assignees and delete them by right-clicking and selecting "delete rows." These individuals should already have been billed as soon as they were assigned, and you don't want to bill them twice for the same course. To bring back the rest of the list, select the drop-down menu on Branches and check the "Select All," then click OK at the bottom of the window.

Finally, you will need to sort the remaining users into branches and order the assigned courses alphabetically. Right-click on any of the title boxes, hover your cursor over Sort, and select Custom Sort from the menu that appears. This will open a new window where you can specify how you want to sort the remaining information.

You will need to sort the cells on two levels. First by Branches, and then by Course. Both levels should have the same order and sort on values. When you have finished adding these criteria, click OK in the bottom right of the window. Now, all the remaining users will be properly ordered, making it easier for you to create invoices in QuickBooks.

Note: Here is a quick video to walk you through the steps from both the Talent and Excel portions of this article.

QuickBooks

To quickly find a branch in quick books, copy and paste the branch name or tag into the search bar on the QuickBooks Customers page. This should narrow the results down to just one company.

Note: If the correct branch doesn't appear, you may need to paste that customer's branch tag into the notes section of their profile. You can look up a customer's company name on their Branch info page on Talent.

When you locate the customer's profile in QuickBooks, select New Transaction in the upper right corner to create a new invoice. Generally, customers should only be billed once a month, unless they are buying courses for the first time. 

Important: Before adding courses to an invoice, check for credits in the Notes section below the business's name. Deduct the appropriate number of credits. Do not create a new invoice if they have credits.

To add courses to the invoice, click on the space below Product/Service. Here, you can search for the training that was assigned to the user. Be sure to select courses with the prefix OL, which stands for Online Learning. If multiple people are taking the same course, you will need to adjust the quantity in the invoice. 

Type the names of the students and courses taken in the message box to create a record of which assignees are taking the courses. Branch managers can use these messages to compare the invoice with their training records.

When all the courses have been added to the invoice, click Save and close. Remember, you should only send out invoices at the end of each month. You can also come back at later dates to add any additional assigned courses to a branch's invoice so they track all assigned users within a month. In some cases, branch managers add courses daily, so be careful and thorough when adding additional courses to an invoice.

With the excel file you edited, you can work your way through each branch, editing or creating invoices for newly assigned students. When you finish updating the entire list, you can delete the excel file.

This process can seem very long, but once you understand all the steps, it will become much easier to complete. As always, your coworkers and managers are more than happy to help you. We want you to succeed, so feel free to raise questions if you need any clarification at any point.