Facility Billing

Business Automation • Shared User Facility

Challenge

The facility had a largely manual way of generating billing reports and invoices. This was a time consuming process that required a lot of manual data entry. The goal was to automate this process as much as possible.

The Solution

An automation script was created that would download the tool usage records, as well as the access reports and the supply usage, and then format these billing data in the format necessary for the university banking system. This script is triggered on a monthly basis. The final formatting and data manipulation is done using a python codebase. The output is sent to excel files that are then sent to the university banking system.

Results

Implementation of this code has saved the billing department at the facility 2 weeks per month that was previously spent on this process. This has allowed the facility to focus on other projects and activities.

Future Plans

Looking ahead, the facility is looking to furhter systematize this process so that it includes other labs and facilities and so it utilized a database to store the historical data. This will allow for a more unified system that can be used by all facilities, and further optimize the record keeping and billing process.