Selection

Use this option to select companies or bill sources (or individual accounts) for a billing run. There are two types of billing runs:

1. A standard billing run to bill all accounts for a company/bill source combination and billing date. This cannot be started until final transaction processing is completed for the last date to be billed and all batches of miscellaneous charges/credits, draw adjustments, returns, and payments have been entered and accepted (no batches suspended). All accounts in the bill source will be billed.

2. Selected accounts billing (also known as “dummy” billing). You can select individual accounts to bill by entering “n” in All Accounts. Circulation will not check to make sure the billing date is valid, and only check for suspended batches that apply to the selected accounts. After you have printed invoices, you should Undo the selected accounts billing.

This method is useful when carriers quit in the middle of the month, and you want to send a bill to them. Circulation calculates the charges (allowing you to print a bill) and then “undoes” them. When the real billing run is processed, the charges will appear again. By this time, the carrier may have made a payment to offset the charges.

If you are doing a selected accounts run, the windows will be slightly different when you process the billing journal, invoices, deposit slips, and other Account menu items.

You may have more than one standard billing run open at the same time, as long as they do not select the same accounts.

Note:

You may or may not be able to start a billing run if there are suspended payment, miscellaneous charge, return or draw adjustment batches, as governed by Business Rules.

To select accounts for billing:

• Choose Selection from the Account Billing menu to display the Account Billing Selection window.

  
• Click Add and complete the following fields.

  Field	Type	What to enter
  COMPANY	setup	Enter the company ID for the group of accounts being billed.
  ALL ACCTS	yes/no	All Accounts is always set to “y” in the graphical version of this menu option—all accounts will be selected for the billing run. In the character version of this menu option, you can enter “n” if you are billing selected accounts, testing new rates, etc.
  BILL SOURCE	setup	Enter the bill source for the group of accounts being billed. This field will default to “*” and skipped when billing selected accounts.
  BILL DATE	date	Enter the billing date for the group of accounts being billed. This date must be specified as a billing date in the statement calendar (see Statement Calendar in the Setup Manual).
  NEXT BILL DATE	date	The next billing date, based on the billing calendar for the bill source entered, is displayed. This field will be left blank for selected accounts billing.
  BILL PRD (period)	setup	Enter the billing period to include in this billing. The bill period determines what charges are included in the billing. See about bill periods. Note: In the character version of this menu option, bill periods can be multi-selected. In the graphical version, they cannot.
  ADV PRD (advanced bill period)	setup	Enter the advance billing period(s) if some of these carriers are set up to be billed in advance.
  DESCRIPTION	open (30)	Enter a description of the group of accounts being billed.
  STATUS	display	This field displays the status of all active billing runs. See Billing Run Status for an explanation of the various statuses.

• Click Accept and then Continue to select the accounts for billing. In the example shown, a billing run has just been selected for the bill source “Dealer”. Notice that there are two other billing runs active—the billing run for bill source “Rack” has just been processed, and the Billing Journal has been produced for a selected accounts billing run for an account (Meadows).

• If you are billing selected accounts (i.e., you entered “no” in All Accts), another window will appear. Click Add and enter the accounts that should be included in this selected accounts run.

About Bill Periods

Recurring charges and credits are set up and assigned a billing period in which they should be included on the account’s bill. For example, insurance might be added every third week, bond premiums every week, and mileage the first week. Charges are assigned to bill periods for each account in Distribution | Account Setup | Account | Specifics | Recurring Charges. An example of billing periods might be:

If you do weekly billing and are selecting for the third week of the month, you would enter an asterisk (*) in Bill Period and select “3” and “Every”, so that insurance and bond charges will appear on the account bills. You would not select “1” because mileage credits should not be included in this billing run.

To include recurring charges for accounts being billed in advance, you would enter the advance billing periods to include. For example, if you are selecting bills for the third week of the month, the advance billing period would be the fourth week. Only those charges set up to allow advance billing are added to the account’s bill.