Database Streamlines Billing Process
(You can download this file in PDF)
A Central Valley K-12 school district tapped into the power of a custom MS
Access database designed by I Get It® Development to help them better manage a
complex internal telephone billing process. With one of the largest student
enrollments in the area, the K-12 institution has a network of nearly 50
separate organizations including elementary, middle schools, high schools, and
community day schools. The system is supported by a substantial administrative
organization that includes such departments as human resources, risk management,
special education, facilities, and IT.
Every month the district received a telephone bill for the local, local toll,
long distance, and 411 calls made throughout the district. And every month a
bill with thousands of individual call records needed to be broken down by
department so that each group within the district could be charged for its
portion of the phone bill. Also this process included identifying internal
customers (Head Start, High School Year Book, etc) charge-back(s) for their
telephone use.
For years, the process was entirely manual; the phone bill was delivered in
hard copy and was painstakingly hand-tabulated by carefully matching phone
numbers to departments. This labor-intensive process involved cutting and
reassembling the telephone invoice by departmental assignments, which took days
to accomplish. The situation was further complicated by frequent moves, adds,
and changes to the district phone system. So, while HR might have all the phone
numbers in 55X-XXXX, they also might have a few phone numbers in the 66X-XXXX
block and a few in the 77X-XXXX block. This complexity made the manual lookup
process even more challenging. As the district grew, the manual process became
more and more involved. From the initial receipt of the phone bill, it was
typically several days if not weeks before the district could provide an account
of each group's telephone usage.
Eventually, the telephone companies moved their invoices to CD-ROM and the
district saw an opportunity to streamline an unwieldy process. They turned to I
Get It! Development to build a custom MS Access database to help them sort and
split the monthly bill more efficiently. The database application allows an
individual to upload the monthly bill by stepping through an easy-to-follow
menu. Once the monthly phone bill data is in the database, diagnostic routines
find unmatched phone numbers (and unbilled telephone usage!) resulting from
recent moves, adds or changes to telephone service. Next, a summary report can
be created to compare the original phone bill to the departmentalized report.
Finally, the district can run reports for each facet of the organization
resulting in individual phone bills. The final bill also included back-charging
externally funded customers by assigning an account funding code to each
telephone number. The final printout of all the phone usage charges can be as
many as 1000 pages long.
A process that once took weeks was reduced to minutes to complete. By working
with I Get It! Development to automate and streamline a cumbersome manual
process, the district was able to provide accurate telephone billing to its
network of departments in almost no time at all.
If your company receives data from an outside source (or even an internal
source that may be difficult to work with ;-{) ),
contact I Get It! Development
to build a custom application to transform the data you have into the reports
you need.