Processing
A key option on the Account Billing menu is Processing. When you select this option, Circulation gathers and then processes the information required to create account bills, and creates control totals for this billing run.
Business Rules determine whether unapplied payments should be automatically applied (to the new charges) during account bill processing.
Note: Never enter account payments when a billing run is in process.
You can process the account bills only for a single bill source and a single billing date. You can also run a selected-accounts billing of a selected group of accounts at any time.
To process a billing run:
Select Processing from the Account Billing menu to display the Account Billing Processing window. All of the active billing runs that are ready for processing will be displayed.
Select the billing runs that should be processed (click the appropriate checkbox in the Process column).
Click Continue to process the billing run.
After processing is completed, a processing report appears. This report lists error messages and control totals.
What Happens During Processing
For every account in the billing run, billing processing determines the draw and returns for each route for which the account is to be billed, and rates these draws and returns using account rating to determine the draw charges and credits the account receives. Piece and weight bonuses are also calculated based on the draw. If you have Business Rules set to apply unapplied payments, any unapplied payments will be applied to the new charges.
Recurring charges and credits that are in the specified bill periods are also selected, along with levies (if any are defined). This information, combined with the miscellaneous charges and credits entered since the last billing run, are used in printing the Billing Journal, invoices, and general ledger entries.
If an account is advance bill (defined in Account Setup), bill processing will estimate the charges and credits for the next period, and reverse out charges and credits for the last period. For example, say you are running billing on the last day of June, and an advance bill account was billed 50.00 for June (in May). Circulation calculates the actual charges and credits for that account in June and finds that they total to 40.00. A 10.00 credit would then show up on the account’s invoice, along with the estimated charges for July.
At the end of account bill processing, Circulation has combined control totals of all of the transactions processed in the billing. These control totals print on the Account Billing Processing Report, and also at the end of invoices, the Billing Journal, and the Close Account Billing Report. See the following table.
* The Invoice Count, Statement Count and Total Count control totals appear on Account Invoices, the Account Billing Journal, the and the Close Account Billing report.
What to Do When Processing is Complete
During billing processing, all account charges and credits are calculated and general ledger account numbers assigned. If any errors are encountered, messages are displayed so you can correct them: Undo the current billing run, make the necessary corrections, and begin the billing process again by selecting Selection.
The next step in processing account bills is to print the Billing Journal so you can verify the billing information (i.e., all accounts look correct) before printing invoices.
Example—Account Billing Processing
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