One of the largest nationwide telecommunications company began using WinBill^® Telecom Expense Management as an internal invoice processing tool to chargeback specific IT expenses to their employees. While this process was successful and profitable, when the new IT Finance Manager arrived she soon recognized that WinBill^® was more than just an invoicing tool.

Tasked with combining three invoice processing groups into one, she was faced with managing over 30,000 expense entries a month for all internal employees' cell phones, calling cards, and pagers. The IT Finance group received all invoicing in paper format and manually entered the billing information into WinBill^®. After processing invoices, the IT Finance group would send daily vouchers to Accounts Payable for manual entry of the data into the company's accounting system.

Due to the complexity of each bill, only summary data was being tracked in WinBill^®. Thus the IT Finance group was only able to chargeback total expenses to their internal cost centers. Additional time consuming efforts were required to provide managers with the detailed expense breakdown they needed to oversee their staff expenses.

To keep updated with all internal cell phone, pager, and calling card services, the IT Finance group was entering in WinBill^® the data input into their internal ordering and change management system. These changes were also being entered manually.

The IT Finance Manager knew there had to be a better process.

First, they needed to eliminate the need for manual data entry where possible. The IT Finance Manager opted to utilize WinBill's existing Electronic Vendor Interfaces and had TTI create new Interfaces based on their specific requirements. Electronic Vendor Interfaces import detailed expense data from electronic files provided by telecom vendors. The time savings and increased detail tracking obtained by usage of the Electronic Vendor Interfaces allow for increased productivity and greater reporting capabilities.

"Now we import all of our cell phone, calling card and pager vendor billing within minutes into WinBill and capture all detail and data. No more manual data entry, key-punch errors, or paying for disconnected services," stated the IT Finance Manager.

Next, they needed to eliminate the double data entry of billing information and service orders, and changes. TTI tailored WinBill's standard AP export module to meet their criteria for import into their AP software program. End of double expense entry!

"We eliminated countless hours per month of data entry time in Accounting and pay bills faster. WinBill has helped eliminate paying late charges and provided us with an immediate ROI," stated the IT Finance Manager.

In addition they opted to run the SQL Version of WinBill^® which allows synchronization with other databases. TTI assisted in the developing a link to internal ordering and change management database to automate entry of the large volume of daily occurring adds, changes, and cancellation orders for cell phones, pagers, and calling cards into WinBill^®.

Now upon completion of a new service order or changes to an existing service, WinBill^® is automatically updated with the vital information. End of double service data entry!

"We recently migrated to the SQL version of WinBill and it has been great. We have a robust, centralized database that holds more information for better expense management," stated the IT Finance Manager.

The IT Finance group is now able to automate the laborious task of adding new IT services, process an invoice, and allocate charges back to the proper departments. The Accounts Payable group's function of manually entering any IT invoice has been eliminated. Recently TTI added the ability to track contract rates in WinBill^®. This will be an extremely useful feature for managing numerous contractual relationships. In the future, other IT groups will be using WinBill^® to allocate their billing expenses. In addition the IT Finance group is in the process of developing several reports in WinBill^® that will be sent automatically to management via e-mail on a scheduled monthly basis.

WinBill^® has saved the IT Finance group time, provided an effective tool to utilize their resources, and automated their IT billing environment.