Hi Michelle,

Long ago I worked on a long-distance telephone billing system which had the characteristic you describe (one monthly statement for lots and various usage).

I certainly agree that you impose far too many restrictions on the user (and yourself) with the present method.

I'm sure many people have successfully solved this problem, and their memories will be better than mine. However, probably the key for the way we used to do it, which imposed no restrictions on users (but which, of course, meant that they should always be as up-to-date as possible on their entry, was to have the "billing" system *FIRST* extract all billable entry to a specific monthly billing file and, thereafter, use that file as the primary input.

This meant that users could continue to input, or do whatever else their hearts desired, while billing was processing. At sometime during billing processing (we did it at the end but there are arguments to do it at the beginning too) we set a 'flag' in the *original* record corresponding to our copied record to indicate that that record had been billed.
Of course,, next month's record selections would disregard any records where the 'has-been-billed' flag was ON.
This is a brief sketch of the basics. I hope it helps

Cheers,

Jim N

>Hi all,
>
>I'd like to redo the way our app does billing and I'm looking for some new ideas. I'm not expecting anyone to redesign it for me, just some hints and nudges. Maybe someone out there knows a better way of doing it that I haven't thought of.
>
>I've seen lots of stuff on the standard orders and invoices thing, but ours doesn't exactly work that way. What we have is people taking trips all month long. At the end of the month, all the trips are put on to one invoice for that person.
>
>The way I do it now is I have a client balance table, and a payment/charges table. Trip prices are added to the balance file when they are verified. Payments are added when they are entered. Both are added to the p/c table. At the end of the month, I have the user save the client balance file to record what the balance was at that point. (Otherwise stuff entered in after the month end, but before the running of the bills would affect the balance). When they run the bills, I use the list of names in the balance file, scan the p/c file, and build the invoices.
>
>This works as long as the user makes no mistakes. They can't edit the p/c file because that would put it out of synch with the balance file. Plus they have to remember to save the balance file before anything is entered for the next month. There's also no way to edit the invoices because that would put the billing out of synch with everything.
>
>So, I'm looking for a better way. If anyone has done this sort of thing where invoices are made at the end of the month instead of, say, one invoice per order, I'd appreciate knowing how you did it. And anyone else who has an opinion, too, of course. :)
>
>Thanks,
>
>-Michelle