How do you make sure you don’t enter meter reads more than once in Jim2 Business Engine Managed Print Services Edition?
By using ‘Meter Read Entry Period Days’, a feature that ensures you don’t double enter information.
The function’s primary feature is to stop a meter reading being entered multiple times within a billing period. Once a client has entered a read for a machine you essentially want to hide that machine until the next period. This rule also applies for reads entered from automated MPS systems. Once a read has been entered for a period we don’t want to process another read for that machine until the next period.
How do we calculate the Read Entry Period Days?
To apply this rule we use the next bill date on the machines. Once a meter read entry has been entered the NextBill date is updated to the next date the meter will be billed. So, on monthly billing a machine the NextBill date of 2/11/2012 will then be updated to 2/12/2012.
The easiest way to understand the calculation is to take the NextBill date minus the meter period days, then from that calculation, if the current date is on or after that date the machine is ok to bill. If the current date is before that, the machine won’t appear on the meter reads website and won’t be billed via Automated MPS systems.
If the current date was 20/12/2012 then it would be good for billing, otherwise if the current date was 26/11/2012 then it would be out of the billing window.
Here’s the example via a diagram.
Taking the time to set this feature up in Jim2 means that you can spend less time working out what has to happen next – Jim2 will simply do it for you.
Michael has been programming the web since he was a teenager at school. He is responsible for most web development at Happen Business, developing on the Happen Business Web Framework.