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Working with escalations

d.velop smart invoice provides various escalation mechanisms to help users meet deadlines.

Escalation with fixed deadline 

If a task remains in the same step, e.g. verification, for more than x calendar days, an escalation is triggered.

Escalation with dynamic deadline 

Enter a deadline based on the payment terms in the document. Example: For example, if the payment terms specify a net period of 30 days and a discount period of 10 days, you can set an escalation to occur three days before the discount period expires and five days before the net period expires.

If an escalation is triggered, a person determined by a user finder will receive a notification.

Note

Weekdays or work days 

You can configure whether the escalation deadlines should be evaluated in weekdays or work days. Work days include the weekend (Saturday, Sunday) as non-work days. (Regional) holidays or other non-work days cannot be taken into account.

There are three different types of escalations:

  1. The global first-stage escalation.

  2. The step-specific first-stage escalation. If this escalation is configured, the global first-level escalation is no longer taken into account.

  3. The global second-stage escalation. This escalation is always taken into account and can only be configured globally.

Configuring a global escalation with dynamic deadline

An escalation with a dynamic deadline is always based on payment terms. In order to use the deadline, the document must contain a payment term. Based on the payment terms and the invoice date, the software calculates the time points at which the net and cash discount periods expire for the document. You can specify how many days before these time points an escalation will be triggered.

Note

Note on calculating escalation times 

When calculating the escalation times, the values for the discount period and net period of the selected payment term are used. Both the discount period and the net period can have the value 0 (days) or no value (NULL) in the master data. Both values are interpreted identically as follows:

  • Documents with a payment term where the discount period is 0 days or not specified (NULL) do not escalate if dynamic escalation periods are defined before the expiry of the discount period, otherwise they would escalate immediately.

  • Documents with a payment term where the net deadline is 0 days or not specified (NULL) do not escalate if dynamic escalation periods are defined before the net deadline expires, otherwise they would escalate immediately.

Suppose you want to trigger an escalation four days before the net deadline is reached and two days before the cash discount deadline is reached, regardless of which step the workflow is currently in. You want the escalation notifications to be delivered to the Accounting group.

This is how it works 

  1. Navigate to the Workflow sequence administration.

  2. Click the desired workflow definition.

  3. Navigate to the workflow settings.

  4. Switch to Escalation.

  5. Create a new deadline using the button next to the Deadline field in the Escalation 1 section.

  6. Enter a name for the deadline in the Title field.

  7. Enter the value 2 in the Days before cash deadline field.

  8. Enter the value 4 in the Days before net deadline field.

  9. Optional: Activate the option Count escalation days in work days (Mon-Fri).

  10. Click Add.

  11. Click the button next to the User finder field in the Escalation 1 section.

  12. Enter the value Accounting in the User finder field.

  13. Enter the value user.name = "Accounting" in the Condition field.

  14. Click Add.

Configuring an escalation with fixed deadline for a step

An escalation with a fixed deadline is based on the time the current step was delivered to the assignee. You can specify how many days after delivery the escalation will be triggered.

Suppose you want to configure an escalation after three days for the Release step. You want the escalation notifications to be delivered to the Accounting group.

This is how it works 

  1. Navigate to the Workflow sequence administration.

  2. Click the corresponding workflow definition.

  3. Click on the Steps perspective and select the Release step.

  4. Switch to Escalation.

  5. Create a new deadline using the button next to the Deadline field.

  6. Enter a name for the deadline in the Title field.

  7. Enter the value 3 in the Fixed days after receiving task field.

  8. Optional: Activate the option Count escalation days in work days (Mon-Fri).

  9. Click Add.

  10. Click the button next to the User finder field.

  11. Enter the value Accounting in the User finder field.

  12. Enter the value user.name = "Accounting" in the Condition field.

  13. Click Add.