INVOICE X-RAY^® System

A processing system that uses color coding, ticketing, email notifications to employees and vendors to highlight and track discrepancies until they are resolved. Exclusively Available in ManageRight.

Entry:

As invoices are entered into the system, they undergo a series of tests:

• Billing date must be current date or earlier, but not more than one year old.
• Duplicate invoices are not allowed (same billing number with same billing date).
• Billing number must be a legitimate billing number entered in the application vendor account/sub-account control table.
• Vendor number must be valid.
• Service item must be present in active inventory.
• Monthly recurring charges must match the inventory and contract modules if covered under a contract.
• Service must be active.

Validation:

A variance analysis is made to determine if there is a significant discrepancy between the current invoice and last month’s invoice. We offer a programmatic variance threshold that can activate an action set.

Individual line items of the invoice summary are compared to services inventory, contracted rates, and previous month’s charges as they are entered into the system. Workflow rules determine how anomalies are processed providing the ability to adapt to a constantly changing environment.

ManageRight accepts notification of service deactivation dates from service deactivation orders and will limit the number of invoices accepted thereafter. Vendors typically have a period of time to deactivate a service. ManageRight®’s Contracts module has this information and will be referenced by our Orders module to indicate the time period within which to accept “final” invoices. After that time window, all future invoices will be rejected to the vendor.

INVOICE X-RAY validates each line item of an invoice’s summary. When a discrepancy is found, it applies highlight colors to distinguish the anomaly and its type. The system prompts the analyst, before saving the entry, to ensure that the analyst is aware of the anomalies. The analyst has the options either to correct any clerical errors, to save without modification, and to open a dispute ticket. The system automates the creation of the dispute ticket by capturing the user, vendor, account number, invoice number, and the specific description of each anomaly. For the undisputed invoices, the analyst may add any additional comments that may be relevant for the upstream manager or Approver. The invoice is then submitted for approval.

Approvals:

When invoices are entered into the system they must be approved before payment is rendered. Invoices are organized into:

Two approval levels are permitted. The system generates an email notification to the Approving Users designated to approve invoices. When the Approver opens the invoice they have access to all of the information that is available to the invoice entry analyst. Approvers may re-examine an invoice, look at a scanned imagine of a paper invoice, open or review any associated dispute ticket, or correct any mistakes. Once satisfied, they may approve the invoice for full or partial payment. The system requires a digital signature (an additional, unique user id and password) for payment approval.

Disputes:

The Approver decides how to handle the invoice discrepancy, i.e., whether to short pay, request service credit, or file a dispute with the vendor. Again, workflow rules determine how the invoices get routed for approvals for payment. When anomalies are detected and the type of anomaly found, the system can:

• Short pay the invoice by the disputed amount and accrue that amount until credit is received from the provider.
• Send billing adjustment reports to the provider and customer.
• Apply for service credit with the provider.

Results and Analysis:

The INVOICE X-RAY process is the mechanism that enables businesses and analysts to run reports to understand irregularities in vendor billing. Reports help identify exceptions in inventory, vendor billing, and fluctuations in expenses that a business needs to understand to reduce costs associated with their telecom infrastructure. INVOICE X-RAY enables additional analysis such as a few examples listed below that may determine:

• Which vendor has the highest rate of billing disputes versus percent of spend?
• How many exceptions are there between invoice data and inventory data?
• What events cause billing errors to increase?
• Which vendors are the least problematic to work with?
• What is the cost distribution of services, vendors and locations?
• The amount over or under billed on a monthly basis.

In addition, programmable dashboards and trends analyze invoice data, and displays the results as a graphic format for at-a-glance cost analysis. The Dashboard can be configured with all services. Invoice line items can be selected and ranked over a period of time creating charts and graphics. Some examples: top talkers, highest roaming and overage charges, highest T1 access and line charges.

Analysis can now be performed with information from ManageRight’s other modules to provide financial and operational trending reports. Trend reports are drawn from the vendor and spend data in the orders, tickets, invoice and budget modules used in the daily management activities provided in the ManageRight application. Like the Dashboard, trending reports are displayed in tables and charts. Trending allows analysis beyond the numbers in identifying patterns along with their magnitude and direction. Trend reports summarize an infrastructure-wide collection of telecom activities data. Typically shown over a three-month period, trends reflect business issues or opportunities that will impact the infrastructure.