September 6, 2022
Stop Revenue Leakage Automatically with Enhanced Client Billing
Innovative, Real-Time, Client Billing Solution for Blue Yonder Warehouse Management Reveals Revenue Opportunities and Operating Efficiencies
In today’s fast-moving 3PL operating environment, the epitome of having egg on your face is when you have to go back to a client and assert a billing charge you overlooked in your original invoice.
“We forgot to include the kitting charge.”
“Our pallet wrapping fee is actually higher than what your last bill indicated.”
“We charged you for custom labels, but not at the correct quantity.”
Now, you must decide. Do you eat the cost, or go in with egg on your face and fight the good fight?
With the multiple contracts, variable billing rules, and the myriad value-added tasks you perform daily for clients, errors are inevitable. Not to mention those errors that pass unnoticed. It adds up to revenue loss. And, who has the margin to spare given today’s razor-thin supply chain economy?
Truth is, throwing more bodies at the process is not going to fix anything. The smarter way to ensure correct billing consistently is to automate your process using Enhanced Client Billing (ECB).
Tailor-Made for Busy 3PLs
ECB was designed specifically for 3PL operations where clients, contracts, and warehouse activities can change in a blink. The application deploys conveniently on the cloud for seamless integration with Blue Yonder’s warehouse management system (WMS), enabling direct data extraction from the WMS for accurate, automated, up-to-date bill processing.
The program instantly “knows” the correct contract rules, billing rates, task charges, and incidentals associated with any customer order and reflects those charges correctly on the final bill. ECB supports English and Spanish users and multi-currencies; definable accounting periods are factored in.
Billing events are automatically configured and stored within ECB, with relevant transactions matched to actual tasks performed. The software validates billing information, including existing rates, expired rates, missing rates, missing events, and other details without human intervention, flagging exceptions for approval before dispatching the bill directly to the client and helping to stop revenue leakage.
Transactions may be approved individually, in bulk, or automatically. Invoices can be re-processed on-demand without engaging IT or WMS team members. And all invoice data can be integrated seamlessly into an ERP for enhanced visibility into the billing process.
Many Uses, Many Advantages
Imagine the problems you could solve by transforming your client billing process from manual processing to efficient, accurate, automated processing. With ECB from Open Sky Group, you could:
- Manage contract and billing rules across multiple clients with ease.
- Capture all tasks performed in your warehouse/ on your WMS and automatically transfer details to specific client invoices.
- Automatically track and approve transactions, inbound or outbound, down to the pallet level, based on data stored in your WMS cloud.
- Raise revenue by never missing a billable task on an invoice or finding billable tasks that should be paid for and adding new billing rates accordingly.
- Reduce processing costs, along with errors, by automating manual tasks and repurposing valuable staff.
- Assess client-level profitability using accurate, cost-to-serve metrics and analytics.
- Streamline billing across multiple WMS platforms via ECB’s system-agnostic, cloud architecture.
- Minimize potential credit settlements with ECB’s verified audit trail.
With a single, standardized billing system tracking charges automatically across your operating network, put an end to revenue leakage and gain an accurate picture of your cost-to-serve.
