MANAGE GENERIC BILLING FORMATS

Use this screen to customize the format of your transactions-based billings. You can customize header and footer information, subtotaling options, line and group titles, and various other formatting options. Each billing format is broken down into several areas. The header determines what prints on the heading of the bill. The main screen defines a group of lines, the "type" (for example, cost, hours, units, travel) of each of those lines, and how those lines roll together to be subtotaled on the bill. In the main screen, you can also identify which lines require supporting schedules. After you have set up the lines for a specific billing format, you can then link those lines to the appropriate accounts, pools, or fee items that generate that line on the bill. This gives you the ability to show any level of detail you require on a billing. In addition to being able to link specific accounts to lines, you can determine what is printed for the different types of lines on the Hours or Display Options tabs.

Unless you plan to use only the Form 1035 for your standard billings (that is, non-1443 and non-manual bills), you must set up at least one generic billing format to be assigned to projects for standard billing calculations. You can set up as many different formats as your different projects require; you can use a single format for many different projects. You are not required to set up a billing format for any projects you plan to bill manually (see Note). If you do not set up a billing format for these bills, they are assigned the default format of Form 1035 on the Manage Project Billing Information screen, and you must specify an account rollup level in that screen. Form 1035 is a system-defined format. Do not edit the 1035 record in any way.  

The term "manual bills" refers to bills entered on the Manage Customer Product Bills, Manage Project Product Bills, Manage Milestone/Percent Complete Bills, and Manage Manual Bills screens.

Set up this screen before calculating billings. After setting up this screen, enter the appropriate billing format code on the Manage Project Billing Information screen for each project for which you want to calculate and print standard billings. The Calculate Standard Bills screen uses the billing format extensively to determine how to order the billing transactions and summarize the data for printing. Make any necessary modifications to this screen before calculating billings. Otherwise, you need to recalculate the billings for the modifications to take effect.

This screen has four tabs:

• Header — Use this tab to determine what is printed in the heading of the bill. The Header tab is the only tab that affects the information printed on the 1035 billings. Although you can enter information in the other tabs for 1035 billings, the information is not used for calculating and printing the 1035 billings.

• Hours — Use this tab to determine how much detail is printed on the hours-based portion of a bill, and how that information is sorted, summarized, and subtotaled.

• Display Options — Use this tab to determine the column information you want to print on the unit billings.

• Footer — Use this tab to determine what is printed on the bottom of the bill. You can include a block of standard text, or "boilerplate," on the bottom of the billing.

Location

Billing Format Code

Enter an alphanumeric code for the billing format to be defined.

Description

Enter a description for this billing format code.

Table Window

Line Type

Enter, or click to select, a valid line type. Valid options are:

• Hours — Use this line type for time and materials labor hour lines. This line type can cause many lines to be printed on the bill even though there is only one line on the billing format. Use the Hours tab to determine what prints on a line type of Hours.

• Units — Use this line type for unit-based transaction lines. Units come from quantities posted in the Post Unit Usage screen. This line type can cause many lines to be printed on the bill even though there is only one line on the billing format. Use the Unit subtask to determine what prints on a line type of Units.

• Cost — This is the most commonly used line type. Use this line type when billing costs incurred. Only one line prints on the billing for each cost line; therefore, this line type does not work the same way as an Hours or Units line type. You can include additional amounts such as burden and fee in this line type by using the Accounts subtask.

• Travel — Use this line type when travel needs to be broken out separately on a supporting schedule. By selecting Travel when printing the supporting schedule, you can print out information such as trip start and end date, destination, and purpose. The Travel lines assume that you are billing costs incurred. There is a one-to-one relationship between the Travel lines and the number of lines printed on a billing.

Group Subtotal Heading

Enter a group heading that you want to print on the billing. All consecutive lines in this table that have the same group subtotal heading are subtotaled on the bill. For example, a group heading of "Direct Labor" can have lines under it for "Engineering Labor" and "Manufacturing Labor." Costpoint prints the detail for each line, and the group subtotal for the detail lines, on the bill.

Line Heading

Enter the line heading that you want to print out on the billings, such as Materials. Note that, for Hours and Units line types, the line heading does not apply; instead, the line heading comes from the description of the unit or the name of the labor category or employee. In the example in the documentation for the Group Subtotal Heading field, line headings would be Engineering Labor and Manufacturing Labor.

Supporting Schedule Req?

Select this check box to print a supporting schedule for this line. You can set up supporting schedule formats on the Manage Supporting Schedule Formats screen.

CPFF Example:

Time & Materials Example:

Subtasks

• Table Information

  Changes to this screen update the BILL_FRMT table.