The one month the consolidation run can see, and the months it cannot — transcript

Play this as a presentation — one slide per step, with the same narration. Every word of every step is on this page.

This presentation is for whoever has found Batch Pool rows from two or three months ago and wants to know whether they are late, lost, or simply not their turn yet. In about twelve minutes you will know which of those it is, and what to do about it today.

Step 1 — Learn the window, and the date it arrived

After this step you will know a rule that is younger than most of your rows. On the eighteenth of September BigLedger changed what the automatic consolidation run selects. It used to take every unprocessed Batch Pool row, whatever its date. It now takes one month of them: the previous calendar month, and nothing else. A row dated in the current month is not selected, because its month is not over. A row dated before last month is not selected either, and that is the half that surprises people — it is not queued, not delayed and not next in line. It is outside what the run asks for, and no number of runs will change that.

Reference: My E-Invoice Admin Applet — 3. Pools — what the buttons do

Step 2 — Understand why the change was right

After this step you will not want it reversed. Under the old behaviour, every row older than the current month was gathered into one consolidated e-invoice dated the last day of last month. That is fine while a receipt is a few weeks old. It is wrong when it is a June receipt, because June’s takings then arrive at LHDN inside a document that says August, and the figures for both months are wrong from that moment on. The window exists to stop that, and the same change made each batch take its date from the receipts inside it rather than from the calendar. Your old rows are now left alone precisely so they cannot be reported under the wrong period.

Reference: E-Invoice Pools & Submission Routing — Backdated documents

Step 3 — Sort your pool into the three buckets

After this step your screen will have three regions rather than one. Sort the Batch Pool by transaction date. Rows dated this month are the largest group by far and they are simply waiting; they will be collected in the first days of next month. Rows dated last month are the ones in play right now, and if the run is scheduled on your tenant they will disappear on their own within days. Rows dated before last month are the only ones that need a decision. Across BigLedger’s customers the first bucket is enormous, the second is usually small because the run has already cleared it, and the third is a handful on most companies.

Reference: My E-Invoice Admin Applet — 3. Pools — what the buttons do

Step 4 — Clear an old month yourself

After this step you will stop waiting and stop raising a ticket. Select the old rows and press Consolidate. That button does not apply the month window at all: it takes whatever you have selected, keeps the rows that are still unprocessed, and builds consolidated e-invoices from them. Each one is dated the last day of the month the receipts actually belong to, so a June batch is dated the thirtieth of June. It then goes into the consolidated submission queue, and the submission run sends anything dated before the current month — so nothing else has to be arranged. One selection, one button, and the month is on its way.

Reference: My E-Invoice Admin Applet — 3. Pools — what the buttons do

Step 5 — Select generously, because the button is careful

After this step you will not spend ten minutes tick-boxing. Consolidate re-reads whatever you selected and keeps only the rows whose process status is still unprocessed. A row that has already been consolidated is dropped silently rather than consolidated a second time, and the only way to get an error out of it is to select nothing but processed rows, which answers that it cannot consolidate processed batch pools. So Select All From This Page on a page of old rows is safe, and it is the fastest way to work through a long backlog. This is the one place in the Batch Pool where the software protects you from a careless selection.

Reference: My E-Invoice Admin Applet — 3. Pools — what the buttons do

Step 6 — Say out loud what it costs

After this step nobody will be surprised later. A consolidated e-invoice for a past month has a deadline, and that deadline was the seventh of the month after it. Consolidating June in September means submitting a June document in September, and it will be accepted and validated, and it will be late. That is still very much better than never reporting those takings at all, but it is a decision with a consequence rather than a tidy-up, so make it deliberately. Tell whoever signs off the tax position what you are about to file, and write down which months you cleared and when. Then fix the habit: sort by date every cycle, and this list never grows again.

Reference: The Month-End E-Invoice Cycle (1st to 7th) — Step 3: Let the consolidation run — or trigger it yourself

How the steps fit together

    flowchart TD
  s1["Step 1 — Learn the window, and the date it arrived"]
  s2["Step 2 — Understand why the change was right"]
  s3["Step 3 — Sort your pool into the three buckets"]
  s4["Step 4 — Clear an old month yourself"]
  s5["Step 5 — Select generously, because the button is careful"]
  s6["Step 6 — Say out loud what it costs"]
  s1 --> s2
  s2 --> s3
  s3 --> s4
  s4 --> s5
  s5 --> s6
  

Check yourself

Three to five questions on what you just heard. Every correct answer links to the page that makes it correct, so you can check the source, not just the mark.

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