WISL Billing System

Overview

Waterloo Information Systems Limited

33 Dupont Street East

Waterloo, Ontario

N2J 2G8

c Waterloo Information Systems Limited 1994

The information contained herein is proprietary and considered a trade secret of Waterloo Information Systems Limited and shall not be reproduced in whole or in part without the written authorization of Waterloo Information Systems Limited.

Introduction

The WISL Billing System is a collection of modules which handles both the record-keeping aspects of the billing process and the interfaces between billing and other functions including order entry, customer shipping systems and the corporate financial system. The WISL Billing system consists of three major components: the customer bill of lading processor, the pro-bill preparation routine and the batch auto biller and invoice generator.

Bill of Lading Processor

The Bill of Lading Processor provides for the collection and maintenance of customer bill of lading records via EDI(204 documents) or directly through comprehensive interactive facilities.

Reporting is available to identify bills that have not been matched to pro-bills and processed.

Pro-bill Preparation Routine

This interactive facility provides for the preparation of the pro-bill record to be used as the basis for generating customer invoices for shipments. Functions include:

- compares data recorded on the pro-bill record with that recorded on the customer bill of lading and identifies discrepancies

- provides for the specification of accessorial charges

- provides for linking of several pro-bills representing the legs of a milk run to allow rating and billing as a single shipment

- allows review and override of the automatic rating

- provides for specification, review and override of interline rating

- calculates taxes and generates extensions for review

- provides for the recording of additional analytical data and text comments

Batch Auto-Biller and Invoice Generator

Accessing the pro-bill file, this batch facility follows record indicators or programmed rules to generate customer invoices(hardcopy or EDI 210 records) along with corresponding financial transactions.

Parameters are prompted to provide for generation in convenient batches and the printed documents are sorted in an order appropriate for subsequent handling.

WISL Billing Interfaces

WISL Billing is a generalized facility for the billing of freight services. There are four major areas of interface accommodated by the design of WISL Billing: customer data base, pro-bill data importation, auto-rating and accounts receivable.

    Customer Data Base

The default customer data base for WISL Billing is the facility provided within the framework of WISL's Freight Analysis Information System. Another customer data base that supports the client's related information systems developed in the UniVerse DBMS may also be utilized. A customer data base resident on a different data base may also be interfaced if the data base provides access via SQL inquiries. With the appropriate middleware available, the customer data base may be resident on a different computing platform.

    Pro-bill Data Importation

There is a complete interactive capability within WISL Billing to add and maintain pro-bill records. To reduce clerical effort and improve data integrity it is often desirable to import pro-bill data from the data bases of systems that generate shipment records. Carriers that employ the WISL Dispatch System have an automatic pro-bill importation facility built into the dockside module. Shippers utilizing the Distribution Control System can also depend on the automatic generation of pro-bill data upon release of a shipment. Likewise, brokers and forwarders who use the Shipment Analysis module to audit carrier freight bills may also have the SA module automatically generate pro-bill records as a function of the audit process.

Non-WISL information systems that generate shipment records may also provide pro-bill data to WISL Billing through batch transfer or an interactive UNIX pipe based mechanism.

WISL Billing can be operated without auto-rating. High volume billing applications are greatly facilitated by employing auto-rating. The auto-rating facilities of FAIS are fully integrated with WISL Billing. A third party auto-rating facility could also be interfaced via an interactive UNIX pipe based mechanism.

Interface to financial accounting systems is batch in nature. WISL Billing will generate transactions to be sent to an accounts receivable system in any format required