The e-Bills screen is divided into 3 areas: a header that never changes; a menu on the left; and a main section.
The contents of the e-Bills menu depend upon your class of user. If you are a 'Super-User' you will see all menu options, otherwise you will see a reduced set of options relevant to your privilege.
The main is divided into blocks. Clicking on any of the blocks will expand it. Selecting any of the lower menu blocks will select that menu option. When an option is selected the appropriate group block is coloured yellow.
All of the main activity occurs in the main section of the screen.
The menu groupings cover: customers; contracts; charges; products; bills; users; help and logout. In general each of these groups includes options to view, add, change or remove items from the database.
Four easy steps to create a bill
The contents of search boxes operates as follows:
Anything to do with customers or contracts will show a 'Last' button if a customer or contract has already been accessed within the session.
Hence if you view a customer details, then go into view contracts. You can view contracts against the last customer by pressing Last. You can now click view details to see the details of a contract. If you then go into charges a select view charges. You will see Last buttons against the customer and against the contract boxes. If you click on the Last button alongside contracts you will immediately be able to add charges to the last contract you viewed.
This approach is consistent across all functions using customers and contracts. It will hopefully save you many key-clicks.
Context sensitive help is available within all functions. When selected a new window is opened providing the user with help relating to the current function they are using. See the help menu below for other details.
Purpose: manage the customer database
| Menu item | Function |
| View customer details | View the details of any selected customer |
| Add new customer | Add a new customer to the database |
| Change details | Change the details of an existing customer |
| Remove customer | Remove a customer from the
database.
This is only possible if there are no remaining contracts associated with this customer |
| Export database | Export the entire customer database as a spreadsheet. Two options are available: export of full details per customer; or export of all contracts, notes and workitems against each customer. |
Note: You will need to understand what scheme your business applies to customer references before adding customers into the database.
Purpose: manage the contracts database
| Menu item | Function |
| View contract | View contracts by customer or contract reference and then view the details of any selected contract |
| Create contract | Create a new contract record for an existing customer |
| Extend contract | Extend the length of an existing contract |
| Activate contract | Make a service contract active for billing |
| Close contract | Close a contract to prevent further use and creation of bills |
| Terminate contract | Terminate a contract and mark it as such, but leave its record in the database |
Purpose: manage the charges database
| Menu item | Function |
| View charges | View charges against a selected customer contract |
| Add charge | Add a charge to a customer contract.
This adds a charge from the product database Only one-off charges can be added to a contract once it has been activated (i.e. after billing has commenced) |
| Add special charge | Add a charge to a customer
contract
The charge details are entered directly Only one-off charges can be added to a contract once it has been activated (i.e. after billing has commenced) |
| Make refund | Add a refund against a customer
contract
Refunds can be made at any time during the life of a contract |
| Remove charge | Remove a charge from a customer
contract
Charges may only be removed from a contract once it has been activated (i.e. after billing has commenced) |
Purpose: manage work items
| Menu item | Function |
| Add work item | Create a new work item and assign it to a user |
| Change work item | View all work items for the name of the logged in user |
| My work items | View the details of a work item, optionally change it, assign to someone else and end emails to customer and/or assignee |
| Workflow report | Produce a report of work items outstanding in each category |
Purpose: manage the products database
| Menu item | Function |
| View products | View products in the product database by name or any sequence of characters within the product's description |
| Add new product | Add a new product to the database |
| Change product | Change product details |
| Change price | Change the price |
| Delete product | Remove a product from the database |
| Export database | Export the entire product database as a spreadsheet |
Purpose: manage the creation and viewing of bills
| Menu item | Function |
| View next bill | View details of the next bill for a customer contract |
| View issued bill | View a list of bills issued against a customer contract and optionally view the issued bill as a PDF file |
| Print bill | Print a bill for the selected customer
contract
The bill is created as a PDF file and optionally printed |
| Start billing run | Start a background billing run, creating one bill for each customer contract that needs a bill to be printed. |
| Export bills issued | Export all bills issued showing customer and contract reference and value of invoice. |
| List bills due | Produce a list of all bills due against customer contracts, giving the user the opportunity to print bills directly |
| Payments received | Enables users to record a full or partial payment against an invoice or to view invoices where payments are outstanding. |
Purpose: manage the user database
| Menu item | Function |
| Change password | Change your own password |
| Add user | Add a new user to the system |
| Reset user password | Reset a user's password to a specified value |
| Change user status | Change the status of any user (e.g. to LIVE, LEFT or TEST) |
| Remove user | Remove a user from the database |
| List users | List users using a wildcard search |
Purpose: provide help or problem reporting.
| Menu item | Function |
| Pop-up help | Provide a pop-up window providing context sensitive help for the current function |
| Report a fault | Report a fault to the system administrator. Results in an email being sent with the infilled fault details and details about the user |
| Version | Display version and login name (Welcome screen) |
| Licence | See the licence |
Purpose: allows you to logout.
| Menu item | Function |
| Click here to logout | Selecting this option will log you out of e-Bills. You will be presented with a simple screen allowing you to close the window or login again. The latter is useful if you're only taking a short break and security is important. |
Purpose: allows various aspects of the system to be configured.
| Menu item | Function |
| Change organisation details | Allows a super-user to change the details about your own organisation (address, company no, etc etc) |
| Select bill template | Allows a super-user to select different billing templates and optionally create a sample bill as a PDF |
Configuration is described in section 4 of this HOWTO.