Managing Bill Batches

A bill batch is a collection of related bills. Batches allow data entry personnel to organize their work by keeping related bills together in order to better manage bill entry work flow. Using bill batches also helps the supervisor during the verification and approval process.

A batch can only be created if the Enter bills in batches option is enabled in the Work Flow Wizard. If the option is not enabled, it is impossible to enter batch bills (see Work Flow Wizard Batch Window). EnergyCAP permits only one open batch at a time per user.

If the Close Batch option is displayed on the Bill menu selections in place of the Create Batch option, this indicates that the current user already has a batch open and cannot open another batch until the open batch is closed.

1. Select Accounting > Work Flow Manager. The Work Flow Manager appears.

2. From the Bill menu, select Create Batch. The Batch Setup window appears.

3. In the Batch number field, enter the unique, user-defined identifier for the collection of related bills.

4. The Batch Setup Grid displays any fields available to automatically populate into the specified bill entry field. This may or may not include the following fields:

   • Statement Date: The calendar day signifying when the account record was generated.
   • Due Date: The calendar day signifying when payment is expected.
   • Next Reading: The calendar day signifying the subsequent scheduled meter/counter examination.
   • Control Code: Can be used for anything; is often used as a file or document scan identifier distinguishing the storage location of the physical bill or its scanned image.
   • Invoice Number: The unique vendor defined identifier for the bill.
   • Account Period: The user defined chronological division used to group bill data for financial accounting and/or budgeting purposes.
   • Account Year: The specific twelve-month period with regards to your organization's financial accounting system.

5. Enter any comments in the Note field.

   Any related comments specific to this bill batch up to 255 characters.

6. After making your selections, click OK.

NOTE: Only users who have created the batch, or administrators with Modify permissions for Other Settings - Workflow management, may close an open batch.

To close a bill batch:

1. Select Accounting > Work Flow Manager. The Work Flow Manager appears.
2. Click to open the Batches folder.
3. View and select the batch to close.
4. From the Bill menu, select Close Batch.
   
   
   (Administrators may right-click the batch from the batch folder and select Close Batch).
   
   
   
   For users closing their own batches, the Confirm window appears.
5. Select Yes to close the batch. (Click No to cancel the operation.) The Close Batch window appears, displaying various batch options and inputs depending on Work Flow, including the following:
   EnergyCAP Batch #: (for internal use only)
   Statement Date: (from Batch bills)
   Due Date: (from Batch bills)
   Vendor Remit Address: (from Batch bills)
   Page Count: Optional input (click the Batch Value text box and enter desired number).
   Bar Code Count: Optional input (click the Batch Value text box and enter desired number).
   Report Pages: Optional input (click the Batch Value text box and enter desired number).
   
6. Edit and/or enter any specific batch-related comments in the Note field, up to a total of 255 characters.
7. Click Close Batch.

1. Select Accounting > Work Flow Manager. The Work Flow Manager appears.
2. Click  to navigate the Batches folders.
3. Select the appropriate bill batch.
4. Right-click and select Properties. The Batch Properties window appears displaying the following:
   Total cost: A running total of the monetary value of the bills entered for this batch.
   User ID: The user ID of the individual who created the batch.
   Number of bills: A running total of the number of bills entered for this batch.
   Note: Any batch-related comments.
5. Exit the Bill Properties window by clicking Close.

The setup process below enables automatic incrementing of batch numbers for bill entry purposes. A similar approach can be used for Batch Values in the Batch Setup window (Bill/Open Batch), such as StatementDate and DueDate. The advantage to auto-incrementing is that Data Entry operators do not have to manually select and input this information during bill entry. A restriction of the auto-incrementing option using the procedure below is that the batch number cannot contain any alpha characters--it must be comprised solely of numbers.

Batch Number Auto-Incrementing Setup

1. From the Tools menu, select the Work Flow Wizard… option.
2. Click on the Next button to start the Work Flow Wizard.
3. On the second page of the Wizard, click in the box to select to Enter bills in batches. We also recommend that you select the Confirm Edit/Delete of bills in closed batches option.
4. Click on the Next button twice to get to the Work Flow Wizard – Header window.
5. Click in the box to Enable bill headers.
6. One of the Bill Header choices in the list is for Batch Number. Select Use Field to have the Batch Number appear on the Bill Entry screen. You may also want to select Require so that the Batch Number must be present on the Bill Entry screen in order for the bill to be saved.
7. In the Generate Default column, enter the following:
    =lastbatchnumber + 1 
   This equation will instruct EnergyCAP to generate the Batch Number by auto-incrementing the latest Batch Number in the system by one.
8. Select any of the remaining Bill Headers if it is necessary for them to appear on the Bill Entry screen.
9. Click the Next button until any additional the Work Flow Wizard changes have been made.
10. Click the Finish button to save the changes.
11. Have all users exit the EnergyCAP software and then log back into EnergyCAP in order for the Work Flow changes to take effect.
12. Operation the Software with Auto-Incrementing Enabled
13. The first time that someone enters a bill into EnergyCAP, they will need to create a new Batch. When  the first Batch is created, EnergyCAP will generate an error, indicating that the software is not able to automatically generate the Batch Number, because no Batch Numbers exist.
14. Click the OK button to proceed with creating the Batch.
15. Enter a Batch Number in the field provided. This can be a predetermined number, such as 1 or 1000, or it can be your favorite number. ! Remember: The Batch number must not contain alpha characters.! 
16. Click the OK button to finish creating the Batch. Once the initial Batch has been created with a Batch Number, subsequent Batches will have their Batch Number calculated, based on the Generate Default equation entered into the Work Flow Wizard.
17. Enter any bills that need to be entered into the Batch, then Close the Batch.
18. Create a new Batch. The Batch number will be populated with the value calculated using the Generate Default equation established in the Work Flow Wizard.
19. Enter any Batch Values, or enter a Note. Then, click on the OK button to finish creating the Batch.
20. Close the Batch when all of the bills have been entered.

NOTES: If you need to change the sequential Batch Numbering in the future, you may enter a new Batch Number when Creating a Batch, rather than using the default value shown. This new Batch Number must be greater than the default value shown to avoid any Batch Number conflicts within EnergyCAP, as each Batch Number must be unique. For example, if the default Batch Number value shown is 123, and it is necessary to change the sequential Batch Number, simply replace the 123 value with a larger number. Note that EnergyCAP will not create any Batches with Batch Numbers between 123 and the new number.

The Auto-Increment capability of the Workflow Wizard has not yet been fully documented. Users familiar with script language may derive additional ideas from the examples below:

EXAMPLE 1:

=(cstr(year(date())&"-"&month(date())&"-"&day(date())&"_"&CSTR(AutoInc+1)))

Output: YEAR-MONTH-DAY_AUTOINCREMENTNUMBER 

EXAMPLE 2: (Batch Setup Window)

StatementDate Batch Value: =date - 4

DueDate Batch Value: =date + 14