Each consignment within iCOS LIVE generates an entry on the Invoicing Workbench, where your admin team can move it through an easy three step process to ensure you bill every job correctly and minimise sending out credits to your customers.

Each function within the invoicing workbench can be individually granted, or denied on a per user basis, making sure the right people are in control of your billing process.

iCOS LIVE has a simple but powerful automatic rating system that lets you tell iCOS LIVE how your company bills it's consignments.

Once set up, most of your consignments will be automatically rated with the correct charge amount as they are entered into the system by your staff, your customers, or electronically via EDI.

This doubles as a time saving, revenue leakage stopping tool, and a customer service tool to let you quickly quote accurate charges for your customers.

The iCOS LIVE Invoicing Workbench provides several tools to help you ensure you are charging the correct amounts out to your customers;

• Zero Rated Jobs
  

  When you first enter the Invoicing Workbench, you are presented with the 'Zero Rated Jobs' view. This view shows you all jobs within the system that will need to be invoiced at some point, and that have a $0 charge amount on them.

  This can happen for instance, if you are doing business in an area you never have before, and do not have a rate setup for the area.

  While in a perfect world all your rating will just happen automatically, this screen makes it instantly obvious if there is an issue, at which point you can investigate, setup a rating rule to cover the issue in the future, and do a 'Re-rate', applying the new rule to any selected jobs.

• Re-ratable jobs
  

  The Invoicing Workbench also provides a 'Re-ratable jobs' view. This view shows you all jobs within the system that can be re-rated.

  This essentially is a list of all the jobs in the system which may or may not already have a charge amount, and that can have their charge amount changed. Jobs that have already been verified (see below) have their charge amount set in stone, and so will not show up here.

Once consignments have been correctly rated by your automatic rates and your admin team, they are ready to be verified.

In iCOS LIVE, every consignment must be verified before it can be invoiced. This is an extra check to allow the accounts receivable team to give jobs a once-over before they are ready to be included in the next invoice run.

All consignments must have a charge amount before they can be verified, and once verified are locked and can no longer have their details changed by any staff or customer. If for some reason you have a consignment that you are not charging for, you have the option of marking the consignment as 'No Charge', which will then allow it to be verified even though it has a $0 charge amount.

Both of these situations are visible in the two verifying views on the invoicing workbench, as well as a list of consignments that have already been verified;

• Unverified Jobs
  

  This view shows you all jobs within the system that have a charge amount.

• Unverified, Not-chargable jobs
  

  This view shows consignments that have a $0 charge amount, and that have been marked as 'No Charge', and provides special visibility for your team to double check why a job should be invoiced out of the system without being charged for.

• Verified jobs
  

  This view shows all consignments that have already been verified, and gives users the option to unverify consignments so that they can be re-rated if the consignment for some reason needs to be amended.

Once a consignment has been rated and verified, it is ready to be invoiced and will show up in the 'Invoicable' view. From this view, you may print an audit report to file, and then click the invoice button, which will mark the consignments as invoiced and if you have an integration with an accounting package, send the invoices to it.

Consignments will only show up at the verifying step if they are at a stage where they should be able to be invoiced. Normally this would be once the consignment has reached the 'Delivered' status, as you may not want to send an invoice out for a job which hasn't arrived at it's destination yet!

The step that iCOS LIVE allows jobs to be invoiced is called the 'Invoicing Milestone', and can be changed to whichever step best suits the way you do business. For example, if you deal with containers, you may want to invoice as soon as the job reaches the consignee, and not wait for the container to be dehired.

Additionally, the Invoicing Workbench allows you to select a date that you want to invoice up to. Any consignment that is on or before this date will show in the job list on the Invoicable view, and anything later will be hidden.

Consignments that have already been invoiced will disappear from this list, and will not be visible again on the Invoicing Workbench

iCOS LIVE has existing interfaces to many common accounting packages, but where it really shines is it's full integration to iCOS LIVE partner Xero Online Accounting.

Xero picks up the ball right where iCOS LIVE leave's off, meaning you can have an end-to-end paperless system to take your transport consignments right from job submission to invoice, that all works together seamlessly.

With integration to Xero, who's free trial you can sign up to right on the web in a few easy steps, your invoices automatically drop off the iCOS LIVE invoicing workbench and appear within the Xero draft invoices screen, ready for you to approve.

Once approved, Xero lets you print your invoices, which you can customise with your own company logo and look'n'feel, or you can even email them straight out to your customers.

Xero makes the steps where iCOS LIVE leaves off just as easy and quick as moving consignments in iCOS LIVE, and is a perfect fit for a web-based, work anywhere, paperless office.

For more information, visit http://www.xero.com