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Proposing / Brainstorming Solutions
(white board notes; pdf attached to this page)
Filemaker DB features that we like -- creates finished JV files to email Finance automatically; Common customer list from DataWarehouse, with cost objects; automates much of known process workflows; emailable PDF output
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LIST OF SERVICE OBJECTIVES WE'D LIKE TO ACHIEVE
IDEAS FOR Specific Ways We Can Get To It – reflect and expand on the list already in the powerpoint deck.
Hot Topics from opening Round-Table Sharing
(white board notes; pdf attached to this page)
Mark: Training plans to move off its old and painful process of IP Preqs and JVs after the fact to JV pre-billing. Looking for a replacement for TEM (implementing this October) to have a field for bill-to: cost object.
Anna: wanting to get off of paper in every way to a more efficient process. Can we take credit cards? I get a lot of questions about that.
Chuck: database-driven billing driving process steps to which billing is almost a side-effect; weekly cycle of submit-what-we-have; huge volume of individual files that quentin accomodates as he receives them.
Jeff: his billing generation is very time-consuming; 80 lines of JVs per quarter, built from detailed time estimates filtered through Quickbooks.
Cynthia -- "smart" spreadsheet builds JV upload files from RT-to-Excel exports. It was all Sharon Grant doing it, and she's gone; it will be someone else doing it as soon as they're on board.
Anna -- why can't I do my own JV uploads?
Everyone else -- why would I want to??
All: need a one-to-one correspondence between billable event and the payment for it.
Rashard: hasn't done a billing cycle yet, but the annual contracts are billed quarterly, while the one-off charges are accumulated and done monthly.
Issue Areas for CSS Billing
(white board notes; pdf attached to this page)
Rob's list -- do we have the right issue areas?
- What the DTR Statements Say
- Receipts and Invoice "Backup" for DLC financiers
- Channeling work to quentin -- what and how
- Who makes the JV files, and from what?
- More direct/instant billing, rather than accumulated JV uploads?
- What systems hold the billing records? (vs the work-order-related transactional systems)
- Converting a workorder to a bill, process of
- Reporting out on receivables to date
- Scheduling of billing events -- communal agreement on a schedule
- Can we have a common system that knows about the billing interactions of all of us, and who they are with, in one big database join table of client / cost object / service delivered / etc.
Team-specific
- how to get cost object numbers "on file" before attempting billing
- handling returns and refunds -- via JV (no one else does this except trainng (and perhaps PC Service)
- individual invoices deriving from contracts
- handling of tools, when they are idiosyncratic (like QBooks), leads to single points of failure
- Reconciling payment againts the billable entity (putting the JV number into the generating transactional system)
- How often to convert transactions to bills (weekly, why not?)
- expired cost object exceptions (quentin catching them (minimize) vs having it right before you start (maximize))
- what to kow about out customers and how to hold it all in common
- splitting charges across several accounts remains an issue
- reporting billables by line of business after money has flowed
- DLC financial contact asking for backup (i.e., not the customer but their FA or AO)
- IP reqs are too much work for the client to do.