Rhythm's transaction search helps you find a specific invoice or review receivables for a business unit. It searches invoices together with every other financial transaction type.
When to Use This
Use transaction search when you need one invoice number, or when you want to search invoices, payments, and other transactions by date, amount, customer, or batch. If you want to review a customer's invoices, credits, payments, and balance together, see Review a Customer's Account instead. If you need a report you can run again, such as a weekly aging summary, see Design and Run a Query.
Prerequisites
- Permission to access transactions in Finance & Billing.
Search for an Invoice
- Go to Finance & Billing › Transactions.
- Enter one or more criteria. Common invoice criteria include:
- Number: to find an invoice by its invoice number.
- Purchase Order Number: to find an invoice by the customer's PO reference.
- Balance Due or Total: to search by amount, using one number, a range like
600-700, or an open-ended range like900-or-1000. Do not use a decimal range under 1, such as0.5-; it can fail with a generic "Unable to run search" error instead of returning results. - Date: for a date range.
- Business Unit: and Batch: to limit the search to a specific business unit or one or more batches.
- Select Search.
Result
Matching results appear in a shared list with any other transaction types your criteria could match. Select the result's Transaction link to open the invoice page.
Warning
You must enter at least one criterion besides Business Unit:. If you search with only a business unit selected, Rhythm refuses the search and asks you to add another criterion. Adding a Transaction Type of Invoice does not count by itself because Business Unit and Transaction Type together are still too broad. Add one more criterion, such as a date range, before you search again. A Balance Due, Purchase Order Number:, or Reference Number: value also limits the whole search to one transaction type: invoices for balance due or purchase order number, and payments for reference number. If you search for an invoice by amount, the same search does not look for other transaction types, such as payments and credits. If a search fails and asks for more criteria, add a narrower filter, such as a date, before trying again.
Open One Invoice Directly
If you already know the invoice number, enter it under Number: and search. The invoice page, also called its 360 page, shows the billed customer, line items, payments, amount still owed, and batch. Depending on your Rhythm account setup, it also shows subledger entries and any deferred revenue. Each line item can show its own contact, so an invoice with lines for different attendees or members can display the right name on each line instead of only the bill-to contact.
If an order generated the invoice, you may not be able to open it by editing the invoice number in another invoice's URL the way you can with some other invoices. Use transaction search, or open it from the order's related-invoice link instead.
If an invoice page does not show its payment under Related Transactions, open Invoice Options › Database Relationships to find the payment number. Then search Transactions, filter to Payment, and use that number to open the payment and see who made it.
List Every Invoice from One Order or One Customer
You do not need a separate search for these lists because they are already available from the record you are viewing:
- From an order. Open the order in the application that sold it, or open it from a related-transaction link on one of its invoices, to see every invoice the order produced. If you think invoice reports are missing invoices for a date range, you can also run an order query for that range and open each related invoice as a manual cross-check. This takes longer than a report, but it can catch invoices a report misses.
- From a customer. Open the customer's own record page and use the Open Invoices tab. See Review a Customer's Account. This list includes invoices addressed to an organization the contact is named on, even when the invoice is billed to the organization instead of directly to the contact.
- From a batch. Open the batch to see every invoice it holds.
Reporting on How Overdue an Invoice Is
Transaction search does not show how old an unpaid invoice is or which aging bucket it falls into. To see that information, build a report with Rhythm's reporting tools and include the invoice's age and aging bucket as columns. A report measures age against the day you run it, so a report saved last month and reopened today shows today's age, not last month's.
You can also build an Invoices query and filter invoice status to Void to report on every voided invoice in a business unit.
If you use the Historical Invoice Snapshots query type to track invoices over time, its Date column is the invoice's own date, and Snapshot Date is the date Rhythm took that snapshot. An invoice that stays open across several months can appear once per monthly snapshot, with the same Date on each row but a different Snapshot Date.
Connect Invoice, Payment, and Order Records Across Queries
No single query or report combines invoice and payment information, so you need two queries and a shared value to report on both together.
- To see the payments behind a set of invoices, build an Invoices query, add the Invoice Order ID output field, run and export it, then build a Payments query with Payment Order ID set to is in list using those order IDs. This only works for invoices linked to an order; an invoice created manually without an order has no order ID and will not appear this way.
- To see the orders and amounts paid behind a set of invoices instead, build an Invoices query with the Order ID output field, export it, then build an Orders query filtered by Order ID is in list and include Amount Paid.
- To find invoice details starting from a payment query, navigate from the payment to its related order and then to the invoice, or use a payment line item query and select the invoice-related field there. Invoice number does not appear directly on every payment query.
An order's ID and an invoice's own number are different identifiers, so do not use one where the other is expected. When you need to match invoice-related records across queries or reports, use the invoice ID rather than the invoice number. Invoice numbers are not always unique, but invoice IDs are.
To find event-related invoices that were created without an order, build an Invoice Line Items with Products query, filter by Invoice Line Item Product for the event, and output Invoice Line Item Order ID. A blank order ID means the invoice was created manually and should not have an associated registration record. A populated order ID means it was processed as part of an order.
To report on Default Change Fee transactions, filter by the fee product's record ID rather than its name. Find that ID in the event registration's change-fee setup, using the control that copies the record ID.
What Can Limit a Search
- Only the first page of results is shown for each kind of transaction included in the search. If a business unit has more matching invoices than fit on one page, the page does not tell you there are more. Narrow your criteria if you think you are not seeing everything. Gaps in a sequence of invoice numbers do not prove that invoices were never issued. Some apparently missing numbers can still be found by searching for them individually, so verify a suspected gap before assuming nothing was created.
- Some criteria are sent to only one kind of transaction. A payment-specific criterion, such as payment type, does not filter invoices out of the results. Rhythm simply does not use that criterion for invoices, so you may see every invoice in the business unit alongside the payments that actually matched. An order-level Payment Method criterion works the same way: it reflects the method chosen when the order was placed, not a payment made afterward. If a check payment was added to the order later, search Payment Type equals Check on the payment itself to find that record.
- A business unit is required for an invoice search, even though the search form does not mark Business Unit: as required. If you leave it blank and search only for invoices, expect the search to fail. Choosing a transaction type, such as Invoice, does not remove this requirement. Transaction search needs a business unit and at least one more criterion beyond the type itself before it returns every record of that type.
- Bulk update and bulk delete need one transaction type. If your search results mix invoices with other kinds of transactions, bulk actions are unavailable until you narrow the results so every row is the same type. You can also make bulk changes from the results of a saved query.
Troubleshooting Missing or Unexpected Invoices
If an invoice does not appear where you expect it, check these causes:
- A missing invoice date. An invoice with no invoice date may not appear in invoice queries, A/R aging, or other invoice reports until you edit the invoice to add a date. In some cases, this has been linked to invoices created from orders placed through the Console and to invoices created in a daily batch. Adding the date resolves the visibility.
- Zero-dollar invoices. Zero-dollar order invoice transactions have been reported missing from invoice queries and A/R aging, even after unposting and reposting the batch. If you see this, contact support with the batch and invoice details.
- An invoice missing from invoice queries but visible in transaction search. Some invoices have been reported as absent from queries such as an open-invoices or all-invoices query while still appearing in a direct Transactions search. Later updates addressed this, so if it recurs, use transaction search as your fallback and let support know.
- An invoice that disappears after adding an Order or Event ID filter. Filtering an invoice query by the related order's Event ID has, in some cases, made an otherwise normal invoice temporarily drop out of the results. Reports differ on whether this is a processing delay that clears once related records finish updating, or a separate issue that has since stopped occurring. If it happens to you, try the query again after a short wait, and contact support if the invoice still does not appear.
- Suspected duplicate invoices from a defect. There is no built-in way to flag duplicates created by a defect. Export an Invoices query and look for repeated bill-to contacts with matching amounts. Those are the likely candidates to review before voiding or deleting either one.
- A registration that should exist but the invoice does not show up. If an invoice query seems incomplete for an event, check the attendee's event registration record directly. A registration can exist even when its invoice is missing from the query.
- The wrong organization on a billing record. Compare the contact's audit log, which shows when its organization changed, with the invoice's own audit log, which shows the billed-to organization ID recorded at creation. Search for that ID to confirm which organization the invoice actually billed.
- An order that stayed open after its invoice was paid. This has been linked to a known issue where an order did not change to closed status even though its related invoice was paid and posted. Query for orders that are still open while their related invoice or payment status is Paid to find affected records.
- A payment that does not match its invoice. Open the invoice and review Related Transactions, open the payment to confirm it is complete with no balance due, check the linked order's status, and review the invoice's audit log for changes. An audit log can show whether an invoice's status was reverted after the fact.
- A deleted order you need for reconciliation. A deleted order cannot be recovered. If you need the financial record back, create a new invoice, process it as an offline credit card transaction, and add a memo describing the situation.
Related Reading
To act on an invoice after you find it, such as adjusting, voiding, or editing its details, see Correct an Invoice. For a customer's full financial picture instead of a single invoice, see Review a Customer's Account. For a saved, repeatable search you can schedule and export, see Design and Run a Query.