Process to monitor the base and overages/underages charges on contract invoices.
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Overview | Samples | Variables | Alert Functionality | Best Practices & Tips | Related Alerts
Overview
Overview
Knowing if your customer's contract is too high or too low can help you maintain happy customers. This alert will monitor base and/or overages/underages so you can get ahead of any contract adjustments to consider. It can serve as a quick heads-up to reps or management about individual invoices that might produce a shock when the customer opens them.
Run Schedule: Weekly on Monday mornings
Type of Output: Email
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Sample
Sample
Dollar Imbalance: N/A indicates that the contract does not have a base rate. More details on the Dollar Imbalance calculation here.
Click Imbalance: N/A indicates that the contract does not have any covered clicks. More details on the Click Imbalance calculation are here.
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Variables
Variables
Variable W: Minimum Base Rate - The minimum base rate charge on the contract invoice to be considered by the alert. The default value is 10.
Variable Y: Minimum Clicks - The minimum number of covered clicks on the contract to be considered by the alert. The default value is 1.
Variable X: % of Overage - The percentage of overage to flag, whole numbers. The default value is 30, which will report invoices billing 30% of the base dollars as overages or 30% of clicks over the covered clicks.
Variable Z: % of Underage - The percentage of underage to flag, whole numbers. The default value is 20, which will report invoices billing where the group clicks billed are 20% less than the covered clicks.
Variable 1: Branch Numbers - The b ranch numbers to trigger on, leave blank to run for ALL branches.
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Alert Functionality
Alert Functionality
This alert looks at individual contract billings on an invoice, not the overall contract performance.
1. The alert looks back 14 days for invoices based on the creation date of the invoice, not the invoice date.
2. This alert cannot trigger when the Base Rate is $0.00 AND the Covered Clicks are zero, since it has no number to compare actual-billed values to; however, as long as it has either a Base Rate or Covered Clicks, it can be monitored for that one dimension.
3. It considers dollars billed in addition to clicks billed, which allows it to consider contracts with a Base Rate but zero covered clicks.
4. Variable W allows you to set a minimum base charge that the contract must exceed to be considered for the Dollar Imbalance percentage.
*This only eliminates the Dollar Imbalance check; the contract invoice will still be checked for the click overage/underage.
5. Variable Y allows you to set a minimum number of covered clicks on the contract that must be exceeded for the click imbalance check to trigger on the invoice.
*It's important to note that this alert is looking at the TOTAL covered copies and TOTAL clicks billed on the contract invoice. There is no separate trigger for each meter group. In the contract example above, the total covered copies the alert is using is 360,000.
Dollar Imbalance
Dollar Imbalance
The dollar imbalance percentage will only trigger the alert when the calculated percentage is greater than the value in Variable X.
The dollar imbalance percentage is calculated as:
The overage amount is the dollar value of the overages billed on the contract invoice, the base rate is the base rate charge for the billing period.
The Dollar Imbalance column of the alert does have an extra percentage in the value. This is because in order for the math to calculate instances where the overage charge was zero but was base was above $0.00, we had to give it a value of 1%. So, all rows have that extra 1% on them unless the overage charge was above $0.00 and the base was $0.00, then those are N/A.
The lower the percentage, the more in line the customer's usage is with the amount of the base rate. In other words, the customer is not using more clicks than are allocated to the base amount on the contract.
Expand to show example:
(1) The base rate billed on the invoice is $163.29.
(2) The overage amount billed on the invoice is $63.64.
The dollar imbalance is (1 - (63.64 / 163.29)) * 100 = 39.97
The overage amount is 39.97% of the base amount. If variable X is set to 30, then this contract invoice would trigger the alert.
Click Imbalance
Click Imbalance
The click imbalance percentage can trigger the alert if it is greater than the value in Variable X, OR if the value is less than the value in Variable Z.
The click imbalance percentage is calculated as:
Group copies are the sum of the total clicks on the invoice and the covered copies is the sum of all covered copies for meter groups on the contract.
The closer the percentage is to zero, the more in line the customer's usage is with the number of covered copies on the contract. A negative percentage indicates that the number of billed copies is below the covered copies on the contract. A positive percentage indicates that the number of billed copies on the invoice is higher than the number of covered copies on the contract.
Expand to show example:
(1) The group copies on the contract invoice are 1,513. (Total copies on the invoice.)
(2) The covered copies on the contract are 2,459. (Sum of covered copies for all meter groups on the contract.)
The click imbalance is (1 - (1,513 / 2,459)) * -100 = -38.47
The clicks billed on the invoice are -38.47% of the covered copies on the contract. The alert will trigger for this invoice if either of the following conditions are met:
-38.47 < The negative value of Variable Z (If Variable Z = 30, the alert will check to see if -38.47 > -30, this is true, so the invoice will trigger the alert.)
-38.47 > Variable X. The invoice will only trigger when the click imbalance is a positive percentage and greater than the value in Variable X.
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Best Practices & Tips
Best Practices & Tips
The alert looks at all meter group contract invoices and brings that data in. Therefore, base invoices will show up as 0 billed copies. You can choose to copy the report results and paste them into Excel and filter out these line items.
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Related Alerts
Related Alerts
ID321 - Alert on last Contract invoice if Overage > W% of Base or Underage <X% of Base (requires ECi Digital Analytics)
ID330 - Customer not hitting minimum volumes
ID256 - Invoices billing Overage or Underage
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