Error: "Valid bill number could not be generated" when posting a bill
This support note applies to:
- AE Practice Manager (NZ)
- AE Practice Manager (AU)
In MYOB Accountants Enterprise Practice Manager (AE PM) you may receive the error "Valid bill number could not be generated" or "Unable to generate a valid invoice number" when posting a bill.
To resolve this error message you need to determine the following:
- Whether you are using Bill Sequencing.
- If Bill Sequencing is used, check whether the clients you are billing have the correct setup for Bill Sequencing eg., where you have Bill Sequencing set to Company and you have 2 companies in your database, if Company B is issuing the bill, the client should have Company B under the Responsibility tab in order for the invoice to post.
- If Bill Sequencing isn't used, check the configuration to see if Unique Bill Numbers has been flagged in error as this may trigger the error when the software tried to reallocate the same number twice.
For more information on Bill Sequencing, see Help Topic Bill Sequencing
AE Bill Sequencing can be used where you have multiple billing companies and want separate invoice numbers issued per company. It isn't necessary to set up Bill Sequencing where you have only 1 company set up in your database. You can use another method for your invoice numbers. See KB 33630: Changing my bill numbers to a new range > For AO sites and AE sites that don't use Bill sequencing
- Select Maintenance > User Defined > Configuration. The Maintenance - Configuration screen appears.
- Check the Key Name BillSequenceType has a Key Value field, for example Company.
Check the Key Name Subscriber has a Key Value of 1
When you make a change to the configuration for Bill Sequencing such as adding a Keyname and/or KeyValue if either are missing, you must close and re-open AE for the changes to take affect.
The following instructions will use the example of the Bill Sequence Type of Company.
Select Maintenance > Miscellaneous > Bill Sequencing. The Bill Sequencing screen appears.
Check that each Company has been selected and a valid Range Start and Range End has been entered for each and click OK.
- In AE PM, open the client and go to the Responsibility tab. The Responsibility tab window appears.
- Place the cursor in the Company field and click the ellipsis [...] button. The Find Companies screen appears.
- Click Search. The list of all companies displays.
- Select the company that corresponds to a valid company that appeared in the Bill Sequencing screen and also is the Company that has issued the bill and click OK. The Responsibility tab appears with the company name displayed.
- Click OK. You should now be able to post the bill.
- Select Maintenance > User Defined > Configuration. The Maintenance - Configuration screen appears.
- Check the KeyName UniqueBillNo and it's KeyValue. When the KeyValue is set to 1, this means that you can't have duplicate invoice/bill numbers.
There are 2 options at this point
- Change UniqueBillNo to allow duplicate invoice numbers or
- Change your invoice numbering sequence; leaving the UniqueBillNo value as is
- Select Billing > Billing History > All and click Search. A full list of your posted and converted invoice numbers display.
Click the Inv No column header to sort your invoice numbers into sequential order and review to find out the highest number used and make a note of this number.
To make it easier to view the invoice numbers, from the Tasks bar, you could either print the list or export the list to Excel and review.
Open the draft bill and change the invoice number by using the highest number + 1 eg., if the highest number used was 18415, enter 18416 into the Invoice No field and then post the bill.