Defining a Billing File within CSI Utility Billing and Revenue Management Software.

What is a billing file (BF?)

To group all of the accounts for readings, Capital creates a billing file (BF) each month. Billing File is a generic name assigned to the accounts you are about to read. Each time you CLICK the CREATE BILLING FILE button; the system goes to the service tab and gathers all of the accounts that qualify. The system then puts them into a billing file and adds a number to the end of it like BF100. You can create as many billing files, as you want. The purpose of the billing file is to give you a clean reading entry system and history of all the readings you’ve done in the past. Billing files hold all the services, dates, readings and usage information for a given DUE DATE.

What is the Borland Database Engine or BDE.

The Boreland Database Engine is like a middle man between the software you see on your screen and the location of the physical data. The BDE manages the flow of data back and forth between the screen you see and the database. The BDE must be pointing to the correct location of the data or the program will not function. The connection is established at the time of logging into the program. In The Utility Bill, the BDE path is displayed at the top of the program. The default location is c:\capsoft\util32.

What is the difference between the Date Due and the Date Past Due within Capital Software Applications.

Both of those dates have jobs that they perform. One is to be used for when the charges go into affect and the other is used for delinquents. I bet you can guess which one does which. The date due is the main date inside of the system. All of the billing reports are based on the date due. It is the one thing that will always be consistent on each charge.

The system starts counting the number of elapsed days from that date and does not stop until it is paid. Once it is paid the system stops counting the elapsed days and the charges are considered finished. In the trancode setup for penalty and interest you may have seen a field called days. Once the charge has reached that number of elapsed days then it looks at the next item we will discuss which is the date past due.

The date past due is really the last straw before the penalty and interest start applying. Once the computer passes the date past due, it then looks at the days setup in the Tran Code to see if the elapsed days has also past. When the elapsed days have passed and the date past due has passed, then the account is bound to get penalty and interest applied to it. If an account is missing a date past due, it will never get a spawned penalty or interest charge because a date that looks like this ( / / ) will never become delinquent.

Defining a Tran Code within Capital Software Property Tax Software.

What is a tran code?

A transaction code (rate code) is an item setup each year by the user to accurately calculate and track all of the charges to be applied within the system. The transaction code or tran code as referred to from this point on, is the cornerstone to all calculations performed by the system.

Tran codes are typically setup for Taxes, Penalty, Interest and any miscellaneous charge such as advertising or attorney fees. You can setup a tran code for any type of tax related charge.

A tran code contains descriptions, rates, general ledger numbers, discount days and rates, penalty days and rates, interest days and rates. Each of these items must be addressed during tran code setup to guarantee the desired outcome and performance.

Capital Softwares Maintenance Program. What does it really do?

The maintenance program is a very powerful support tool. The maintenance can perform many functions. Understanding what the program does may help you understand how the program runs. The maintenance program can be configured to correct damaged tables. It can be configured to archive history. It can even be configured to correct fields that may otherwise cause a conflict in the system.

But the biggest thing that it does is re-index the tables every day. The term re-indexing means that there are fields inside of the system that is more important than others. There are fields that link all the tables together, or the fields that you search by. It indexes those fields to be able to perform those functions. If you ever encounter an error that states that the TAG is not found, then chances are the indexes need to be re-indexed to be able to perform properly. This is a very rare occurrence, but it may happen if the maintenance has not been run for a very long time.

Keep in mind that the maintenance can not be run while the system is being used for anything else. If you leave your program open when you leave for the day, it may cause another error. So make sure that you close your program every day before you leave. One other thing that you may want to check is that the backup system is not overlapping the maintenance program. This may cause a much larger problem because they are both trying to access the same files at the same time. We call that exclusive use of a table. The maintenance has to have exclusive use of all the tables to be able to perform its functions.