Customer profile for e-Bills
Who is e-Bills suitable for?
e-Bills is relevant to businesses that issue regular bills to customers.
Thus could be utilities, ISPs, telecommunications, other service-based industries,
consultancies or manufacturers.
e-Bills is especially useful to businesses involved in open source and also to
contractors and developers operating on their own.
These businesses tend to issue bills or invoices on a regular basis to their customers,
e.g. a medium or long-term contract with bills throughout the period. Some items
on the contract are billed at the same rate each month, some only occur once,
whilst others may include setup or final balloon charges.
Add-hoc items can be added to bills at any time and will be included on the
next bill.
Typical customer scenarios could include:
|
Scenario
|
Example
|
|
Utility monthly bill
|
- Customer contract exists, spanning a 12 month period.
- Bills are issued 20 days after the contact start date
- The first bill contains a setup charge and a rental charge
- Bills for months 2 to 11 contain the rental only and occasional add-hoc customer purchases
- The final bill in month 12 contains the final payment which is lower
than the previous rental
- The contract may be extended at the end of the year, but if not
billing ceases
- The utility company has many such contracts starting and finishing
at different times
Once the customer and contracts are configured into e-Bills, the system does the rest.
Bills are automatically created and printed on the correct days ready for posting.
Apart from entering ad-hoc purchases no user intervention is required during the period
(the Utility company would run regular reports though).
Ad-hoc purchases are automatically included in the next bill.
|
|
Fixed price contract with stage payments
|
- A supplier bids for and wins a piece of work at a fixed price.
- Bills need to be sent out when project milestones complete
- The bill at each stage covers a pre-agreed payment plus ad-hoc items
during the work-period (e.g. traveling & expenses) which are added
when employee expense forms are paid
- A final bill is sent 3 months after delivery, again triggered by the
project manager
- The supplier only has a few such contracts, but they are complicated
in nature and many items are added to the bill each month
- Staff throughout the business (where authorised) are able to add
charges
- Bills are vigourously checked before production and printed
when ready.
e-Bills facilitates management of this contract through its simple user interface
which requires little training allowing several project team members to access
the system.
|
|
Ad hoc deliveries against an open contract
|
- A supplier provides equipment rental to their customer plus a varied
amount of goods on a regular basis and always invoices monthly
- A contract is agreed and billing is set for the last day of each
month
- During the month products and services provided are charged against
the contract
- These items then appear on the bill issued at the end of the month
along with the fixed rental cost
- At some stage the customer upgrades the equipment and instead rents
an enhanced product
- A discount is also given on the product which is included on the
next bill
- The customer also takes delivery of new products (which have been
added onto e-Bills by the supplier's Product Manager)
- The supplier has several such contracts, which often generate
queries. Finance staff are able to refer quickly to customer records
and issued bills
e-Bills supports this contract through ease of data entry and the ability
to review charges as and when required.
The product database ensures that the correct products and charges are added
and that the profitability of the business is controlled by a Product Management
function rather than a sales team.
|
e-Bills delivers a very high level of standard functionality.
We recognise that most customers some special needs,
e.g. for integration, reporting or special features.
Asplen Management Ltd is always happy to quote for extra development
on a very competitive basis.
Alternatively you can do the development yourselves (see the licence for more information).
|
|