Discovery Period

Over time, Not Scanned balances may accumulate and languish on customer accounts if they are not manually addressed on the AWS by client or TrackAbout Support intervention or after an audit. Now, we have a tool to do it automatically. Discovery Period allows clients to give their customers the benefit of the doubt when returning cylinders, but doesn't allow their balances to go down if the cylinder isn't later identified as one of theirs.

Clients can use this to prevent scenarios where a customer will take a cylinder from another customer, scrape off the barcode and return it.

How Discovery Period Works

The discovery period is set per client. Daily, TrackAbout will look back at records that were saved with RNS assets on them for the proscribed discovery period. We will consider two scenarios for modify customer assets:

  1. Removing Unaccounted for RNS — If the RNS asset has not been accounted for either by a DNS being on their balance or an asset on their balance being discovered in-house, then the RNS will be removed at the discovery period expiration.

  2. Canceling DNS/RNS Pairs — At the same time, any RNS that has a matching DNS will be canceled out, so customers' DNS & RNS balances will not continue to grow over time. The process of canceling out RNS / DNS pairs will help drive customer NS quantities to zero.

Formula for determining RNS Removal

To determine the number of RNS and DNS to remove during Discovery Period processing, we look at a few numbers, described below.

RNS:

  • The number of RNS on the record being processed minus the number of RNS consumed on subsequent records since then .

  • The number of RNS at the time discovery period is running (current time).

We take the minimum of those two numbers.

DNS:

  • The RNS number from above.

  • The number of DNS just before the record being processed was created (Prior to the Discovery period - usually 30 days ago).

  • The number of DNS at the time discovery period is running (current time).

We take the minimum of the above 3 numbers to remove.

Discovery Period Integration Messages

Discovery Period records will only send integration messages if there is a net change in a customer's balance, so if the discovery period record only cancels DNS/RNS pairs, no integration message will be sent. If the record is removing RNS or doing both RNS removal and RNS/DNS cancellation, the net change will be sent in the message. The message will be sent as an Accounting Adjustment message with a type of Discovery Period.

Questions

How long should the discovery period be?

Determining the discovery period length is key to ensuring the process will work for our clients. It should be the longest time that a client thinks it will take for a cylinder to be picked up from a customer, travel back to a plant, and then be inspected or filled, plus a week or so buffer. TrackAbout typically recommends 30 days.

'How does an RNS removal affect the client's balance'?

The RNS will give the customer credit for the return for the duration of the discovery period. After that period, the RNS will be removed, thus bumping the balance up by 1. The net result for the customer is that their balance will be down 1 for the discovery period.

What happens if an asset returned as an RNS is discovered to be in-house after discovery period runs?

The customer's balance will be reduced by 1 at the time the asset is found to be in-house, via an accounting adjustment. The customer will see this as an increase of their balance by 1 from the time the RNS is removed by discovery period until the asset is found.

This is why it is important to ensure that the discovery period is long enough.

Will this negatively affect clients calculating Rental?

No, Rental balances are calculated as Uniques + DNS - RNS. With Discovery Period in play, in the case of canceling DNS / RNS pairs, we're not actually reducing rental balances.

For example, consider a customer with 12 uniques + 14 DNS - 8 RNS. Their rental balance would equal 18. Once Discovery Period takes effect, this same customer would be left with 12 Uniques + 6 DNS - 0 RNS. The net result is still a rental balance of 18.