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Post by MikeMusic on Jul 4, 2014 13:25:25 GMT
I reckon there is an app or shareware for this. What might it be called though ?
We have some large corporate customers that pay us - without saying what invoice numbers. Not easy getting info out of them.
This is easy when only 2,3 or 4 outstanding even up to as many as 10 I can work out.
When there are 50+ and they pay at random it is impossible to work out which ones are paid.
They mix months as well ...
This must be a common enough issue for there to be something out there..... do you think ...
The total is, say £2150.60
The amounts are from, say
1218.60
57.24
64.92
64.92
64.92
762.84
61.20
1216.80
1210.44
108.12
69.36
362.64
50.76
209.28
64.92
63.24
158.40
360.00
249.50
Would be so good to find an answer to this - then I can listen to more music !
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Post by MartinT on Jul 4, 2014 14:16:26 GMT
I think the app is called . . .yes, let me see . . . CALCULATOR!
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Post by Deleted on Jul 4, 2014 14:48:23 GMT
there may be more than one answer to this problem....if I'm understanding the question correctly.
If I am, and there are, then you will still have to wade through manually to check what's in and what's out. I know the chances of there being more than one way to get to your total are slim, the consequences might be serious.
just saying!
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Post by MikeMusic on Jul 4, 2014 14:50:08 GMT
Nah
It's *random* and needs to look at all possibilities
I just did one with 10
By 'paying' all the certainties before and after the one I was after, guessing which ones were paid and then the one I had left made the total. A very pleasant surprise
It is a PITA having to do this
And then there are the companies that
1. Underpay or overpay by an amount you can work out
2. Underpay or overpay by an amount you can't work out
3. The ones that leave off the Vat
4. The ones that add in Vat that isn't there.
5. Don't allow for currency deductions, so we're £3, £6, £10, £12 or I think recently £28 out of pocket
6. The idiots that assume the £ sign is really a $ or a Euro sign and reduce accordingly.
7. 5 and 6
Probably others too......
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Post by MikeMusic on Jul 4, 2014 14:52:59 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Jul 4, 2014 14:58:24 GMT
maybe I'm not understanding the question.....e.g
if you're looking for £5716
and invoices 5, 17, 92 and 153 add up to 5716
and invoices 6, 7, 8, 92 and 153 add up to 5716
then which invoices have been paid?
have I misunderstood the question......
nevertheless, the algorithm is trivial
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Post by MikeMusic on Jul 4, 2014 15:04:06 GMT
That's virtually it
We have been paid, say £5716
Certain invoices make that total - *Hopefully* only the right ones make the total
I can usually judge where some or most of the come from so I have a starting point
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Post by Deleted on Jul 4, 2014 16:21:16 GMT
That's virtually it We have been paid, say £5716 Certain invoices make that total - *Hopefully* only the right ones make the total I can usually judge where some or most of the come from so I have a starting point It's your "hopefully" that bothers me, in fact it troubles me greatly, or would do if you had asked me to write a program etc. The other show stopper is that you must be absolutely sure there are no duplicates in your list of outstanding invoices, otherwise you can guarantee there will be more than 1 answer to the question. edit: To make it slightly more achievable is it possible that the list of invoices can be subdivided into smaller lists relating to just one customer, i.e do the invoice entries have a customer number against them? |
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Post by MartinT on Jul 4, 2014 16:41:22 GMT
That's virtually it We have been paid, say £5716 Certain invoices make that total - *Hopefully* only the right ones make the total NOW I understand. Can't you just get a bank statement with the breakdown of each payment? Online, possibly? |
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Post by pinkie on Jul 4, 2014 17:26:06 GMT
It is a pita. The accountants solution is to employ a ferocious and formidable lady as credit controller, complete with horn-rimmed glasses, and get her to shriek at the customer "which f***ing invoices is this supposed to be paying" When they don't answer, she immediately puts the account on stop That's why the other name for the accounts department is "sales prevention"  Seriously - an algorithm is only going to work if there are no duplicate invoice amounts (rare) and no payment errors (rare) customer part payments due to dispute (rare) and arbitrary cock-ups and transpositions of figures (unheard of) There is no substitute for a good shrieking credit controller. And if you are any good at what you do, and they have good reason to want to buy your service, insist on an itemised reconciled remittance advice. (Off to the pub to lush up the missus - just bought a pair of 63's - this is going to cost a few drinks!)  |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 4, 2014 17:27:46 GMT
I've just pondered this a bit more.....
please scratch my comment whereby I said the algorithm was trivial...its not...and I just ran it past my middle son who is a bit of a maths dude and he's confirmed it's not trivial...complexity O(n!) minimum...order of n factorial...that's fairly complex.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 4, 2014 17:30:15 GMT
(Off to the pub to lush up the missus - just bought a pair of 63's - this is going to cost a few drinks!) not the £500 pair from Fulham........I pondered that long and hard and then realised I'd have to part with my eraudio ESL3s. There are only a certain amount of stats a chap can get away with without being noticed. |
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Post by The Brookmeister on Jul 4, 2014 17:50:53 GMT
Send them a statement and ask politely to pay to it, sorted!
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Post by MartinT on Jul 4, 2014 17:57:20 GMT
It's mathematical combinations.
n = no. of invoices k = no. of invoices a payment covers
So, for 20 invoices (n=20), 5 invoices paid (k=5)
Combinations = (205) = 20! / (5! x 15!) = 15,504 (someone please check my maths)
So it's a non-trivial exercise. |
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Post by pinkie on Jul 4, 2014 18:41:54 GMT
Guilty as charged. A surprise quick sale of the Systemdek mission courtesy of this illustrious forum tipped the balance  |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 4, 2014 18:49:27 GMT
Guilty as charged. A surprise quick sale of the Systemdek mission courtesy of this illustrious forum tipped the balance well wadyaknow.... I was thinking I'd go to £750 but sense came upon me and I didn't bid.... so in the ideal world I saved you £250 cos I know you'd have gone there so how about we split the difference and you send me £125 for being a good egg |
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Post by pinkie on Jul 4, 2014 19:16:27 GMT
Yup £750 would have been fair. If they are in the condition described. They'd better bloody perform. Mind, the new kitchen has earned me serious brownie points |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 4, 2014 19:53:23 GMT
Yup £750 would have been fair. If they are in the condition described. They'd better bloody perform. Mind, the new kitchen has earned me serious brownie points At least £750 has two of the right numbers in it  |
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Post by MikeMusic on Jul 5, 2014 12:20:07 GMT
For clarity, just in case
This is one customer paying multiple invoices in one hit
I have the 'answer', EG £5716 on our statement
I need to know the 'question'
The people we deal with are in one place and the accounts people in another, can be another country.
I keep asking and often get very little back.
If we put the account on hold we just lose the business - or come too close for my nerves.
The problem may now only lie in the past (but I need it for reconciliation) as our 2 of our biggest customer have swapped to one invoice with multiple listings
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Post by Deleted on Jul 5, 2014 16:14:06 GMT
ok Mike I've given it some thought, and it does need some rules i.e no dupe invoice values and be prepared for more than 1 answer...but: my first guess, i.e that it is trivial is half correct and it doesn't involve any order of complexity like factorial n... if the number of unpaid invoices is n then the number of checks to do is (2^n) -1 and - another 1 because we are not dealing with 0 in our count of unpaid invoices.....e.g if there are 5 unpaid invoices then you will have 30 checks to make, i.e combinations of invoices to add. It came to me while I was in the toilet so it must be correct... if you treat the list of unpaid invoices as binary digits then going through the list of unpaid invoices from n = 1 to total number of invoices then the binary value of n(the digits) is the items in the list to add...it gives all possible combinations of invoices in the list to add up and check against the payment you have... it is trivial here is the explanation for 5 unpaid invoices as an example: www.vitalstates.org/diy/misc/bin.jpgI'm not sure how you are holding your unpaid invoice details but you obviously have to get them into any program in order for them to be checked..... what platform are you working on? edit: you could further fine tune the algorithm by discounting all those unpaid invoices that are larger than the payment you are looking for, but the complexity is so minimal that it's hardly even worth doing. edit1: how many unpaid invoices are we considering here? |
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