Items about our current billing system

Theresa Fulton

 General note: As we discussed, there’s no tie-in to our Redmine tracking system, so I have to have both open at the same time to see who needs to be billed etc, and then I need to upload the invoice into Redmine and note that the client has been invoiced.

Pros

• Shipping and billing addresses automatically filled out when I pull up a customer
• Generating invoices is easy and they automatically turn into a pdf
• Available to Emily and Brianne (our finance people) so they can easily follow up on invoicing and receiving funds
  
  

Things that would be nice to change

• There is no way to put in a discount. We offer discounts on big projects but I have to precalculate and put the new price in. So the customer doesn’t see that they got a discount.
  • You can use a negative line item to show a discount.  We can code automatic line item generation if the logic that produces them can be mapped to an algorithm. -jiv
• I need to create a PO# whether anyone wants it or not
  • Not sure what you mean here.  Every customer who is paying with a a check shoudl be sending a purchase order and the number of that purchase order needs to be registered in our system.  If you don't receive a purchase order, you should not do any work. Otherwise you may never get paid. -jiv
• Creating a PO is cumbersome, need to fill out shipping and billing addresses (which requires either printing out for the customer page or lining up windows and copying every individual line). Should be able to create automatically from the customer info (or just not require a PO – I am not sure if this is a CU requirement)
  • You are inviting pain if you do not require a PO.  It's standard business practice.  We may be able to streamline the process but it is an item that is fairly low on our development tasks at this point. -jiv
• The internal/external part of the line item is confusing – if it is internal, I only fill out internal but if it is external I need to fill out both.
  • This is required because of the back-end accounting.  the difference between internal and external pricing goes to a discretionary account (shared by all of CLC). You must specify both for the accounting to work. -jiv
• There’s no ability to search for a customer’s name or institute or anything except the email address. So I have to go back and find someone’s email address to look them up, or ask them what email address they used to register.
  • This can be enhanced, but not likely soon.  We may be able to develop some integration with minilims to generate an invoice at the time the order is placed.  this would mean that an invoice already exists (possibly even with line items - see above) 
• I have to paste in the Cornell wire transfer info into comments every time, this should be in the template
  • I'm not sure this is a general issue with CLC (or it is and I'm not aware).  If it is not, what is unique about the way you do business?  Maybe you could ask Brianne to get in touch with us help me understand the issue.
• Apparently when Cornell customers set up an account there’s no place for them to put in an account number. Even if they are in the system I have to email them and ask for an account number.
  • If they place an order through CLC LIMS account number is required.  minilims integration should be able to make sure this happens. in the meantime, I wouldn't do any work until I had a calid account number.  you might consider creating an invoice as soon as the project is initiated.
• External people I have to ask how they are paying, card, bank transfer or check, which are all handled differently. Perhaps they could check a box “expected method of paying”
  • should be taken care of with CLC LIMS/minilims integration
• Some kind of notification system would be awesome – eg when a new customer registers, and also if Emily or Brianne receive money and mark an invoice as paid. Currently I have to keep checking the list of invoices.
  • when you say "list of invoices", which list? you mean searching to see if they are marked as paid? noting problems and overdue invoices comes from the front office, you shouldn't have to worry about it.  maybe I don't understand why you do?