Generating Rental Bills
Generating rental bills with TrackAbout is a multi-step process:
Create Rental Billing Period
In TrackAbout, your customers are charged rent within a Rental Billing Period. The first step to creating a Rental Billing Period is to select a Rental Billing Type.
What is a Rental Billing Type?
Customers may be billed once a month for cylinder rental, but more frequently for equipment rental. However, even if different Rental Classes are billed on the same cycle, assigning them to different Rental Billing Period Types allows their rental bills to be run separately.
You can’t create new Rental Billing Period Types directly. Contact TrackAbout Support to set up your Rental Billing Types for you.
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Go to TrackAbout Web > Rental > Create Rental Billing Period.
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Select the type of period you’re creating from the Rental Billing Types drop-down.
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Select both a start date (click “From the start of”) and an end date (click “Through the end of”) for the rental billing period.
The first time a Rental Billing Period is created, its Start Date and End Date may be any dates. However, for any Rental Billing Period created after the first one, the Start Date must be the very next day after the previous Rental Billing Period ends. TrackAbout does not allow overlapping Rental Billing Periods or breaks in time between Rental Billing Periods.
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Click CONTINUE to create the rental billing period and open Check Rental Billing Prerequisites.
WARNING
Once a Rental Billing Period has been created, it cannot be deleted through the TrackAbout website. If deletion is necessary, contact TrackAbout Support before bills are generated.
Review Rental Billing Period Prerequisites
The Check Rental Billing Period Prerequisites page lists and describes the prerequisites which must be passed before rental bills can be generated. All “Failed” prerequisites must be corrected before you can continue.
For example, TrackAbout checks to make sure that all assets are classified and that all invoice records delivered before the end of the Rental Billing Period are verified.
For any prerequisites with a status of “Failed”, click the link(s) in the Details column and perform the recommended actions.
Once all the failed prerequisites have been addressed, click RE-CHECK PREREQESITES to see if the issues have been corrected.
Once all pre-requisites have passed, click CONTINUE to open Rental Billing Period Dashboard, where you can generate the rental bill.
Generate Rental Bills
The Rental Billing Period Dashboard is where rental bills are generated, reviewed, and sent to the printer and to accounting.
It is very important to work through this page from top to bottom. After rental bills have been sent to the printer and to accounting, it is too late to go back and regenerate them, or to review them. While it is possible to contact TrackAbout to unlock these bills after they’ve been sent, it is much easier to carefully review the rental bills before sending them.
To Generate Section
The To Generate section is where you generate rental bills.
The table shows a count of all customers in TrackAbout. TrackAbout will attempt to generate a rental bill for every customer. Many customers will not need a rental bill, but the system will try to generate one for every customer.
GENERATE ALL — Click to generate bills for all rental customers.
GENERATE BILLS FOR THE FOLLOWING CUSTOMER IDS — Click to generate bills for the customer ID(s) entered in the box below the button.
Overwrite Any Existing Bills — Select to overwrite any existing bills with the ones generated now.
Leave Existing Bills — Select to keep any existing bills instead of replacing them with new ones.
DELETE PREVIOUSLY GENERATED BILLS — Click to delete any previously generated bills.
CHECK RENTAL BILLING PERIOD PREREQUISITES — Click to check the rental billing period’s prerequisites. Results are displayed on the Check Rental Billing Period Prerequisites page.
Generated Section
The Generated section shows a summary of the rental bills once they have been generated.
Clicking on any of the blue links will open the Bill Review page which gives detailed information pertaining to the selected group of bills.
Above Minimum — These are rental bills whose dollar value is greater than the minimum that has been set for billing. See section on Minimum Billable Amount for more information about this setting.
Will Not Bill — These have totals less than the minimum billed amount and will not bill.
Below Minimum Will Roll Forward — These have totals less than the minimum billed amount and will roll the total into the next billing period.
Below Minimum But Rounded Up — These have totals less than the minimum billed amount but have been rounded up to meet the minimum billable amount.
No Rent — These are customers for which there are no rental charges. Generating a "bill" for every customer for every billing period ensures that no customers who should receive a bill are missed.
Hold Count / Hold Value — As bills are generated, some will fall into a Hold state. Rental bills can be Held for a variety of reasons. For example, they may be held because they’re missing information, such as the mailing address. Or, the customer may have their bills held for some special handling or reviewing. See Bill Holds for more information.
CREATE FILE FOR PRINTER — Click to create a file of rental bills for printing, as well as mark the bills as ready to be picked up by your accounting system.
Once a bill has been 'Sent to the Printer' it is considered locked - no further modifications are allowed on the bill and the bill cannot be re-generated.
A user can unlock a rental bill if he/she belongs to a role that has the 'Unlock Bills' permission, or is a System Admin.
Sent to Printer Section
The Sent to Printer section summarizes the bills set to the printer.
Sent to the Printer — Click to open a page where those invoices can be seen.
SEND TO ACCOUNTING — If enabled, click to send the rental information to your accounting/business system. Invoices sent to accounting are marked as Locked in TrackAbout.
Once a bill has been Sent to Accounting, it cannot be unlocked by any user. TrackAbout support can unlock these bills after a written request is sent by TrackAbout administrators.
Sent to Accounting
The Sent to Accounting section summarizes the bills sent to accounting.
Sent to Accounting — Click to open a page where those invoices can be seen.
CLOSE BILLING PERIOD — Click to close the billing period after the rental invoices for the selected Rental Billing Period have been reviewed and sent to the Printer and/or Accounting.
