Ticket Billing - Process Description

Ticket Billing is implemented in the following manner under STREAM II.  A Ticket Billing flag and an Invoice Cycle field are maintained for each customer in the Company Master File.  Generic Code Tables can be set up for each of these fields in order to define the valid data that can be entered in each field and to force the fields to be loaded for each customer.  The valid codes for the Ticket Billing flag are "blank" to indicate that the customer does not use ticket billing; "Y" to indicate that the customer get billed on the recurring basis set in the Invoice Cycle field, or "P" to indicate that the customer gets invoiced each time a purchase order is fulfilled.

The value in the Ticket Billing field is automatically defaulted into the sales orders for each customer, and carried through the invoicing program to the invoices/shipper being created. The ticket billing type defaulted from the Company Master can be changed as required during order entry.  The Ticket Billing field determines if a specific order is to be processed as a normal order or if it is to be processed using the Ticket Billing system.   

The Invoice Cycle field is used when invoicing ticket billed orders.  If the ticket billing type is set to "Y" the Invoice Cycle field allows the operator to select the set of pending records to be invoiced.  For example, some customers may be billed on the 10th and others on the 15th.  The Invoice Cycle field can be set as appropriate for each customer and then used to select the customers to be processed when you are invoicing the records in the pending file.

Operation prior to Billing

Orders shipped to the customer are flagged as ticket billing orders by either setting the flag in the order header, or accepting the default from the customer record.  The time that the customer receives shipments is referred to as the billing period.   This is either a calendar period or the time it takes to complete shipment of all the goods required to fulfill a customer PO.

During this time shipments made against sales orders that have been flagged as “ticket billing” are sent to the customer as “shippers”.  The conversion from normal sales orders flagged for ticket billing is done automatically at invoicing.  The shipment of the goods as a “shipper” updates inventory, records the shipment of the goods in the “pending” file and closes the sales order lines as appropriate.  Sales statistics are not updated when the goods are transferred to Pending as no invoice has been created.  The goods in the pending file are marked as being “ticket billing” items to allow sales and aging reports to be run.

Operation at the end of the Billing Period

On a nightly basis (using the job processor) the “Invoice Ticket Billings” programs (FV712P04 & FV712P05) are run.  The Invoice Ticket Billings programs read through the pending file and create invoices for the appropriate shipments.

The program FV712P04 (Periodic Billing) processes customers who are bill on a periodic basis for all shipments made during the billing period.  The program reads through the pending file in customer sequence, and based on how the customer is flagged, creates an invoice for each customer for all the pending records that are flagged as being “ticket billing” transactions (these Pending records are assigned a type of “T” when they are created).   As the Invoicing program is run, the records in the pending file are closed and new invoice header and line item records are created in the appropriate files.  The invoice type assigned by the system is “IN”, the invoice source is set to “TB” (ticket billing) and the invoice subtype is set to default based on a user definable system parameter (F248: DEFSUBTB)

The program FV712P05 (PO Based Billing) processes shipments made against specific customer POs.  The program scans the pending file, building up a SortFile (temporary file) of the shipments made against POs (sales orders) that have been closed (fulfilled).  Once the SortFile has been built, the system then reads through this file and produces invoices for the shipments against the closed sales orders. ).   As the sales orders are invoiced, the records in the pending file are closed, and a new invoice header and line item records are created in the appropriate files.  The invoice type assigned by the system is “IN”, the invoice source is set to “TB” (ticket billing) and the invoice subtype is set to default based on a user definable system parameter (F248: DEFSUBTB)

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Ticket Billing - Sales Reporting Notes