A/R BILLING TEAM  - MINUTES FROM 12/16/02

 

Attending:  Katy Hutton, Cecilia Kerlin, Ellen Lepine, Vanessa Peoples, Suzanne Sembiante, Bill Spear, Andrew Viehman (consultant).

 

We started by reviewing with Andrew, the  “Core Billing Tables”.  The first option listed was “Bill Types”.   Bill Type is determined by our defaults, such as: Cycle ID, Payment Terms and whether there are different Billing Specialists.  These determine how many Bill Types we will have.  We do not need to sort bills according to type and Bill Types are not determined by Department or Type of Activity.

 

A “Bill Authority” is the final approver.  A “Billing Specialist” can be any individual or department (usually an individual, using his/her initials).

 

Bill Types are not restricted and can be accessed by any UD Department, using drop-down access.   Departments and final approvers must pay special attention to use the correct “Bill Type”.  They could easily choose the wrong type, which might result in a monthly bill being printed on an annual bill type, etc.

 

Under “Description Part 1”, Andrew said the “Invoice #ID” can be masked (ID according to department, for example).

 

In reviewing “Structuring Your Bill” (See 7 of 32 in back section), Andrew said some page services can be eliminated, depending on the “Bill Type”.  For example:  Miscellaneous Bills may only require using 3 of these 15 screens.

 

“Bill Template” contains Bill Specialist/Contact entry info space.  (Right now, contact and control is in a central location.  We may need to change from using this central location in order to be more department oriented and depending on “Bill Type”.)

 

“Revenue Recognition Basis” requires that we typically enter “Invoice Date”.   The “Default Deferred Code” is the Account Code (or Acct. Number).

 

“Bill Source” = Information flowing to G/L

 

“Bill Cycle” offers us a list of options/examples.  This drives processing!  “Month-End-of Month Cycle” is how we are currently set-up per Raja and Vanessa’s question. 

Under the “Recurring” option, bills will recur according to what information we enter here.

 

Andrew said the A/R Module should be set-up before the Billing Module per question asked by Cecilia.

 

The “Bill by Identifier” section contains fields we populate, in order to determine billing status.

 

Under “Invoice Formats”, we looked at the “Standard Default Format” bill type.  Here, we found “Layout Options” (portrait or landscape), Sort by ID option, Print Form option, and “Repeat Heading Each Page option.  Also, “Summary Page” options and “Primary Line Notes” are located here.  “Primary Line Notes” can be changed from month-to-month (for special announcements, etc.).  Katy suggested these be customized to accommodate each department’s needs and feels this is good from a Public Relations standpoint.  Vanessa interjected that the goal is to give flexibility to departments without A/R losing control.  At “Layout Identifiers”, Andrew said SQR Identifies bill program/language.  At “Sort by Options” enables us to tell system how we want our bills to print and be sorted.

 

Under “Standard Billing”, we looked at an actual bill in the PeopleSoft System.  Here, Katy asked if there could be multiple-page bills and Andrew said, “Yes.”  He said, “Type” drives most of the default Billing info.

 

 With regard to Billing, the unit/entry level will require much more education in order that steps will not be omitted and persons understand repercussions of their actions.

 

These questions arose: What is Billing approval process and Webforms approval process?  Where is Workflow needed in order for approvers to get emails/ticklers?

Can output from Workflow be used to feed PeopleSoft?  (Raja is going to look into this.)

Will a front-end feed PeopleSoft set-ups?  Ellen stated, with regard to using front-end feed, this is still being discussed and no final decision has been made to-date.

 

The concessus is that we don’t want to use Webforms which are not completely automated.  Correct fields must be populated in PeopleSoft in order to replace FFAR forms with Webforms.

 

Raja asked Andrew if bills could calculate taxes and surcharges and Andrew’s answer was, “Yes!”

 

Suzanne compiled a list of questions, taken from all the previous meeting minutes.  Andrew attempted to answer as many as he could at the end of  today’s meeting.  He promised to email the answers to any unanswered questions at a later date.  Those answers will be posted in the next meeting’s minutes.

 

Our next meeting will be on January 8, 2003 in 003 Hullihen.  We will start from the beginning at “Getting Started With PeopleSoft Billing”, following the steps in order to create a simple bill (Andrew and Rick will not be present at that time).