Re: Invoice Surcharges

from Al Mac at Tim's PC
____________________________________________

My suggestion would be that you set some field in customer master
identifying customers for which this deal applies - we use certain ranges of
customer numbers for which various deals apply - or wherever you have
CARRIER identification in the shipping documents, use a duplication naming -
one for OUR TRUCKS & one for OUR TRUCKS WITH FUEL COSTS so that when the
threshold is low, there is the simple entry but when higher, the selection
of FUEL COST info into some field in the shipping document will trigger the
modification to plug in whatever your algorithm is.  Perhaps you ought to
modify the prompt screen that launches invoices - add 2 parameters - Yes/No
add the fuel surcharge in this invoicing run - and what percentage to use.
Alternatively, have a stand-alone mod that you run before the billing run,
for the purpose of using input to billing to add special lines to the
relevant customer orders, with the details of the extra charge & just let
billing handle it unmodified.

From: Martha Bayer <mbayer@badgerminingcorp.com>

Subject: Freight Surcharges


>We are 6.0.02 C/S AS400.

We now 405 CD mm AS436 but recent memory BPCS/36 & had to abandon a lot of
mods in the move.

>Has anyone out there ever had to do a work around or system mod (ugh) to
>allow them to deal with adding a separate line to the invoice for a fuel
>surcharge?

We had a lot more mods to add stuff to invoices on BPCS/36 than we have
today on 405 CD, none specifically for that, but some conceptually similar
activities.

>We have our own trucking division.

We do have a fleet of pick-up trucks considered cost of doing business, not
to add any cost to whatever is moved by them, such as customer stuff
delivered to the airport or package service places, or direct to customers,
or our own inter-facility inventory, just like fork lift trucks inside
warehouses are indirect costed.

Different customers get deliveries by their trucks, our trucks, independent
trucks & the rules are usually by bulk or weight of shipment, so we might
not know until right before a shipment which way the rules dictate the parts
need to go, thus some flag in customer master, or even in individual
customer order, might not be the smartest way to determine whether this
surcharge applies.

> When diesel prices reach
>certain levels, BMC wants to calculate a freight surcharge which is a
>variable percentage of the freight rate.  The percentage varies based on
the
>current per gallon price of diesel fuel and ensures that we are charging
>enough freight to cover our costs.  They don't want to just change the
>freight rate because it is a temporary thing.
>
>Any suggestions would be appreciated.
>
>"I think... therefore I am single." - Liz Winstead
>Martha Bayer
>Badger Mining Corporation
>920-361-2388
>mbayer@badgerminingcorp.com

We bill same day as we ship, because much of company uses daily invoice data
as a shipping reference story & production people like the assurance next
morning that the requirements & inventory are not waiting on any
transactions from previous day's ship outs.

Then a few days later we get freight charges which are often re-billed to
the relevant customers ... manually entered both to payables & to billing,
with a pointer to the original invoices they are for.  Many customers want
part #s & other info that was on original invoice also on freight invoice,
since their authorizations for paying are tied to part #s or to PO#s.
Reprints of original invoice are not good enough for them ... I think that
given the degree to which we have customers questioning information that
could have been on an invoice except we did not have that info at time of
shipping, such as signature of customer person receiving the shipment, there
needs to be some mechanism to add $ entries (freight) & textual entries
(delivery confirmation) to the original invoice that had all the info the
customer needed, then reprint the original invoice with the new stuff added.
If accounting needs to keep straight the $ from original charge vs. adjusted
charge, think in terms of a credit of invoice 12345A & a new debit 12345B.

Sometimes we have to do special charges for special services, such as
customer that justified extreme measures to get their work completed faster
than usual.  We manually add an entry via ORD500, which is then picked up by
next Billing, such as overtime charges, setup charges, tooling charges, etc.
On BPCS/36 we had a modification in which the shipper captured known freight
charges at time of shipping & incorporated on the shipping document, then
before billing we had a modification to transcribe those charges from
shipping document into a special charge added to the corresponding customer
order, pre-coded as picked to be included in the next billing.

Some customers supply re-usable containers that we have to use, when
available, and have to track.  This is more work for us but because we are
using them, the customer expects an extra percentage discount.  This factors
into langage on invoice, and we located where the math is done & inserted
automatic adjustments based on the customer number involved.  This was on
BPCS/36 - we have not yet done anything like this on 405.

We manufacture electrical wiring harnesses.  Copper content is high,
proportionally in some customer parts.  Price of Copper is very volatile on
world markets.  Some price contracts with customers are keyed to global
copper prices & there's a timing issue ... when we bought what we used to
make what they want & when we update pricing on products now in production.
Codes in special pricing is used to help with this, and data maintained on a
PC by customer part giving a figure for copper content so that effect of
copper price fluctuations can be recalculated by customer part.

Hope one or more of these explorations is helpful to your planning.

____________________________________________
Al Macintyre
Central Industries of Indiana, Inc.
www.cen-elec.com


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