Billing update

What it does

As you might expect from the name, the billing update creates bills for "bill-me" orders. It scans the database searching for orders that have never been billed or whose last bill was sent sufficiently long ago that a follow-up bill is needed.

The billing update does not actually print the bills, rather it creates one or more files which can be printed at your convenience. By default it creates standard QuickFill bill files which are directly printable from within QuickFill by going to the Reports menu and selecting the Print command. The format of the printed bills can be customized using the Form Designer application. Alternatively you can instruct QuickFill to create files which can be printed using the "mail merge" feature of Microsoft Word or any other word processor. You choose the type of bill file to be produced on the definition screen for your billing packages.

When and how the first bill is sent by QuickFill is controlled by policies that you set when you define your offers and/or your publications. There is a great deal of flexibility. You can choose to send the first bill immediately; with the first issue of a new subscription; or you can choose to delay the first bill until a few days after the first issue has been sent (to ensure that the subscriber gets the issue before he gets the bill).

Once the first bill has been sent, the timing of the remaining bills is controlled by the billing series definition screen. On this screen you specify how many bills should be sent and how many days should elapse between bills. You can also specify when the subscription should be suspended—that is say, no more issues will be sent until payment is received. When all the bills specified on the billing series have been sent and a suitable number of days has elapsed after the last bill the subscription will be canceled for nonpayment and the amount due will be written off.

As you might also expect from the name, the billing update makes changes to the orders that it bills. For each bill that it sends it stores the effort number that was sent and the date it was sent in the order record. This information is used in future runs of the billing update to decide when it is time to send the next bill, and if so, which effort in the series should be sent.

Combination bills

Normally QuickFill bills each item ordered on a separate bill. A customer that sends you a bill-me order for a magazine subscription and a book will receive two bills—one for the subscription and one for the book. Sometimes this is an advantage, since you can have different billing series for each order, so that you avoid shipping the book before payment is received, while allowing the serving of the first few issues of the subscription to begin immediately. Other times this just confuses the customer, and you would like to send just one bill for both of the items ordered.

To produce "combination bills", that is bills with more than one item on them, you should check the box labeled "unpaid orders using this series...may be automatically linked together and billed as a combination order" on the billing series definition screen. Checking this box causes the billing update to make a preliminary pass through the database looking for orders that meet these conditions:

§ Have the same bill-to customer
§ Have the same order date
§ Have the same billing series, which is eligible for combination billing
§ Have the same purchase order number, if present
§ Have never been billed
§ Are not agency orders

Matching orders that meet these conditions are linked together into a combination order. The combination order is assigned a number which can be used to display a list of the orders on the lookup screen. Alternatively, If you look up any one of the orders by its order number you will see a 'Combo' button on the lookup screen which you can use to see the other orders in the combination.

Once orders are linked into a combination they will be billed together, on a single bill.

Suspension

In your billing series definition you designate one of the efforts as the "suspend" effort. When the billing update sends that effort in the billing series it will change the status of the subscription to "suspended for nonpayment". From this point on no more issues will be shipped until payment is received. When you enter the payment the subscription will be reinstated and serving of issues will continue, although some issues may be missed (you control how many issues are missed by setting the "Maximum number of issues to backstart reinstated orders" field on the publication definition screen.

Cancellation and write off

When an order reaches the end of the billing series, and you've still received no response, the billing update cancels the order for nonpayment and writes off the amount due. If you are using the accrual accounting system this amount will be shifted from the 'Accounts Receivable' account to the 'Write off' account in the general ledger. If you are using the cash accounting system then there is no 'Accounts Receivable' account and there will be no write off.

In addition to writing off the full price of the order when the billing series ends, the billing update may also automatically write off small amounts that are not worth billing. The minimum amount that you consider to be worth billing is specified by setting the "Smallest amount to be billed" field on the 'Billing' tab of the publication's definition screen. These small write offs occur immediately as soon as they are detected by the billing update, without sending any bills.

Payment transfers

Sometimes, as a result of misunderstandings, the billing update may encounter subscriptions with an unpaid order that is followed by a fully paid renewal. Typically this happens when a payment for the unpaid order is erroneously entered as if it were a renewal. In this situation the billing update will bill the unpaid order until the billing series reaches its end. Then, instead of cancelling the subscription it will transfer the payment from the paid renewal order to the original unpaid order, then continue by sending a bill for the renewal order, which is now unpaid.

Advance renewals

Sometimes a subscriber may send you a bill-me renewal well in advance of the expiration of his existing subscription. In this situation QuickFill will send bills for the renewal order, although you can choose to delay billing of the renewal order until its first issue is served (see the 'Billing' tab of the publication definition screen for this option). If the end of the billing series is reached and no payment is received QuickFill is faced with a quandary. It can't cancel the subscription because the current order was paid for and has not expired. The billing update solves this problem by removing the unpaid renewal order and restarting the renewal series of the prior order, in the hopes that the subscriber will send in a paid renewal.

Cancel bills

After the billing series has completed and you have still not received payment there is available one last ditch effort which might bring in some revenue—this is called the "cancel bill". This bill is sent after all of the regular bills have been sent, after the subscription has been canceled. The amount of the bill is prorated based on the number of issues that were sent to the subscriber. So if the subscriber received three issues out of a twelve issue subscription, then the cancel bill would be for 25 percent of the original subscription price. Typically you add a message to the bill such as "this bill is for the issues you have already received". Quite often you will find that the subscriber will respond to this bill and send you the prorated payment. The cancel bill feature is optional—you enable it by filling in the cancel bill fields on the 'Billing' tab of the publication definition screen.

When to run it

You can run the billing update once a month or you can run it more or less frequently. Each strategy has its pluses and minuses.

If you run the billing update monthly, you'll produce a larger number of bills with each run. Doing so may be more convenient for you than producing smaller groups of bills more frequently, especially if you use a mailing house to mail the bills. The disadvantage of monthly billing is that QuickFill may not generate a first bill for new orders until several weeks after you've served the first issue. If you decide to run bills monthly, set the days between efforts in your billing series to a relatively low number, such as 21. This will ensure that each unpaid order gets billed each month, even if you change the day of the month on which you run the update.

If you decide to run the billing update more frequently (weekly is probably a good schedule), you'll produce fewer bills on each run. Getting fewer bills is more convenient if you have a relatively low volume of orders and don't use a mailing house. Moreover, you can then send a first bill for new orders shortly after serving the first issue. If you decide to run the billing update more frequently than once a month, set the days between efforts in your billing series to the actual number of days you want between efforts. In this way, QuickFill will generate a bill on the next run after the correct number of days have elapsed.

Another advantage of running this update more frequently is that you have greater control over the time that elapses between successive bills. For example, you could allow six weeks to elapse between the first and second bills and four weeks to elapse between the next bills in your series.

How to run it

Follow these steps when you run the billing update.

Step 1—Make a backup.

Make a backup of your database. If the billing update fails to run to completion, you cannot restart it. You must restore your database and start the update again. If the type of output produced is not what you expected you cannot rerun the update—QuickFill will think that all bills have been sent and that there is nothing to do. So it's extremely important that you make a backup before running the update. To backup your database choose the 'Backup' command on the 'Other' menu.

Step 2—Check the billing series

Verify that you've set up the billing series and messages just the way you want them. The most important items to check are that the days between efforts are correct and that the messages are the ones you want to use.

Step 3—Check the issue table.

Before running the billing update for the first time, check that the issue table has enough entries to include the expiration issue of the longest order you expect to bill. In practice, this just means selecting 'Issues' on the 'Definitions' menu and making sure that you defined issues for the next few years. If you do not have enough issues defined for an order, QuickFill won't produce a bill for that order, and you'll see an error message to that effect in the billing update report.

Step 4—Check that your disk is not full

Check that you have enough disk space available to produce all the bills. Select 'About QuickFill' under 'Other' to see how much space you have available on your disk. You'll probably need about 2k for each bill. If you run out of disk space in the middle of the update run, QuickFill aborts the run, and you'll have to restore your database from your backup. Then you can free up some disk space and rerun the update. However, we strongly recommend that you make sure you have enough disk space before you begin.

Step 5—Specify which publications are to be billed

Select 'Bills' on the 'Updates' menu and check the following fields:

Company name

QuickFill uses the name you enter in this field on the "header" sheet that identifies the bills for your mail house and on the billing update report. This name will not be printed on the bills themselves. QuickFill prints on the bills the name of the company you entered on the publication definition screen (click here for details).

Phone number

QuickFill uses the phone number you enter in this field on the header sheet that identifies the bills for your mail house and on the billing update report. This number will not be printed on the bills themselves. QuickFill prints on the bills the phone number of the company you entered on the publication definition screen.

Date the bills ____ days after current date

QuickFill calculates the date to be printed on the bills based on the entry in this field. For example, if you are going to run the update on July 15, but would like July 17 to be printed on your bills, enter "2" in this field. You can also specify past dates by entering negative numbers. For example, if you are going to run the update on July 15, but would like July 12 to be printed on your bills, enter "-3" in this field.

If you leave this field blank, QuickFill automatically prints the system date on your bills. This field is used for no other purpose. That is, this field has no effect on the date that QuickFill uses to calculate when it should generate a bill for an order. Nor does it affect the date that appears in the customer's order record. QuickFill always uses the system date for these purposes.

Publications to be processed

Choose the publications for which you want to run the billing update by double clicking on the publication name or clicking in the checkbox for the publication(s) you want to include. If you want to run bills for all your publications, click the "Select All" button.

 

When you're done, click the OK button and a message box will appear with the following options:

Run it now exclusively, only lookup allowed
Run it now shared, all transactions allowed, much slower
Run it with tonight's jobs
Save to an existing job list
Create a new job list

Click here for details on options for running updates.

Step 6—Run the update

Before the update begins to run, you'll see a warning message. This message lets you know that you must restore your database from a backup if the update fails to run to completion. It asks you if you have an up-to-date backup of your database. Choose "No," and QuickFill returns to the prior screen without doing anything. Choose "Yes," and the update will begin to run. Clearly, we want to emphasize that it's extremely important to make backups of your database regularly. Please take the time to make them.

You can follow the update's progress with the box that pops up on the screen while the update is running. QuickFill executes the billing update in three steps:

  1. QuickFill examines all the subscriptions to the publication(s) you've selected to see which orders should be billed;

  2. it sorts the orders to be billed into the proper sequence (we tell you what that sequence is below); and

  3. it creates files from which you print the actual bills and reports.

Once the update is through running, you can select 'Print…' under 'Reports' on the main menu to print (or view on the screen) the bills and reports.

If you're using mail-merge bills, the file(s) containing your bills will be located in the mail-merge directory (click here for details on where mail-merge bills are stored ).

You should print the bills on the form you specified when you defined your billing package. (QuickFill groups together all bills requiring a specific form.) Also, QuickFill produces a new file for each form you're using for mail-merge bills (click here for details on setting up mail-merge billing packages ).

What it produces

The billing update can produce the following:

Bills

The following describes the data the bills contain and tells you how you can control what actually appears on the bills. (Click here for a complete bill layout. )

For agency orders, the bill is always addressed to the agency.

For single-party subscriptions, the bills are addressed to the subscriber.

For two-party subscriptions, the bills can go either to the ship-to customer or the bill-to customer.

If you do not select the 'Send to ship-to' field for a billing effort, the bill goes to the bill-to customer. If you do select the 'Send to ship-to' field (by clicking on it once so that a check mark appears), it goes to the ship-to customer. If this is a "cancel bill," it always goes to the bill-to customer (click here for details on specifying to whom a bill should go ).

For group subscriptions, the bills are addressed to the bill-to customer, regardless of the 'Send to ship-to' field.

Customized bills

As described above QuickFill gives you quite a lot of control over the content of the bill, but if you want to customize the layout of the bill then you have two choices.

  1. Modify the layout of the standard bill by using the QuickFill Form Designer.

  2. Produce mail-merge files instead of standard bills. These files can be processed by the mail-merge feature of Microsoft Word or any other word processor. There are four different mail-merge file layouts available known as MMERG1 through MMERG4, all of which can be produced in either dBASE or delimited format. We supply sample mail-merge document templates for Microsoft Word. By copying and editing one of these templates you can change the layout of the bill as you desire.

    Please note that the mail-merge option is not available for gift bills and group subscriptions that require a complete list of the recipients. Nor is it available for combination bills. The reason for this restriction is that bills with a variable number of ship-to addresses (for gift bills) or a variable number of order items (for combination bills) cannot be represented in any file format that a word processor can handle.

    Click here for more information on mail-merge bills    .

Sort sequence

QuickFill sorts the bills in the following order:

  1. publication,

  2. form set code (from the form set code field on the billing package definition),

  3. billing package code,

  4. number of pages (for detailed bills and combination bills only),

  5. country,

  6. zip code.

If the bill goes to an agency, QuickFill uses a dummy country code (ZZZZ) and the agency code instead of the zip code. As a result, QuickFill prints agency bills after all the other bills, then groups them together by agency.

Batch report

Whenever the billing update writes off an amount due or transfers money from one order to another, it generates journal entries for its accounting records.

Billing update report

The billing update report contains these sections:

 

See Also