Trial Billing

Certain routes may request a statement of activity in between billing periods. For example, a large single copy outlet might be billed on a monthly basis, but require preliminary invoices each week. Trial Billing will produce these invoices, based on activity in a date range, without updating any information in Circulation.

Although trial billing invoices will give an accurate report of activity within the date range, it is important to note that:

• The trial billing will have no effect on the carrier/dealer’s account. The invoices are the only thing produced—no charges or any other records are created. Therefore, this process cannot replace account billing.

• The invoices will not be an exact reflection of the carrier/dealer’s account. Some items, such as payments and advance charges/credits, will not be included. There will be no balance forward on the invoices, only a total of charges/credits for the date range.

The trial invoices will contain the:

• Draw charges and credits

• Returns and draw adjustments

• Miscellaneous charges and credits, including bonus and TM delivery credits

• Recurring charges and credits. When defining the recurring charge codes, be sure to set Print Bal On Bill to “n” (trial billing does not update recurring charge balances).

• Substitute charges

• Levy charges

• Back credits

The invoices will not contain payments, coupons, tips, or messages.

You can run Trial Billing as often as you like. Both the processing and invoice creation are completed by this one option.

To run trial billing:

• Select Trial Billing from the Account Billing menu to display the Trial Account Billing window.

• Click Add and complete the following fields.

Field	Type	What to enter
COMPANY, BILL SOURCE	setup	Enter the company for which to run a trial account billing.
ALL ACCOUNTS	yes/no	Enter “n” if you want to run trial billing for a single account.
ACCOUNT	setup	If you entered “n” above, enter the account number for which you want to run trial billing.
BILL SOURCE	setup	Enter the billing source for which to run trial account billing.
USE PENDING DRAW	yes/no	Indicate if you want to include pending draw in the trial billing. If you select this checkbox, you will be able to enter a future date range beyond where final transaction processing has been run for the publication delivered by the route.
START DATE, END DATE	date	Enter the date range for the trial account billing. Only draw charges, returns, miscellaneous charges, etc. for this date range will be included. Unless Use Pending Draw is selected, all days within the range must be unbilled and published (final transaction processing must be run through the end date).
BILL PERIOD	setup	Enter the billing period to use for recurring charges. Because normal billing periods will have recurring charge amounts for the whole period, we recommend defining a special billing period and recurring charge codes for trial account billings. The recurring charge amounts should reflect the trial billing period (e.g., 1 week rather than 1 month). All recurring charges and credits, including advance charges, will reflect the current period only.
SORT ORDER	predefined	The standard invoice sort orders are available for trial invoices: account, depot, distribution code, district, name, publication/area, publication/district, publication/region, publication/zone, route or truck.
TRUCK SEQUENCE, TRUCK DEPARTURE	setup	Enter the truck sequence and truck departure sequence in which the invoices should print when the sort order is “Truck”. If the sort order is not “Truck”, these sequences enable the system to print the correct truck on the invoice.

• Click OK and the Continue to create the invoices. A processing report will be displayed first (similar to the Account Billing Processing report, but without balance forward or aging totals), and the invoices next. The processing report file name is entered in the View & Print Options window. The invoice file name will be the first five characters of this name, plus “INV”, plus the extension. For example, if the processing report is saved as TRIALPROC.15, the invoices will be saved as TRIALINV.15.

Example—Trial Account Invoice