1 Overview to Equipment Billing

This chapter includes the following tasks:

Use Equipment Billing when you need to charge equipment costs or credit revenue to various business units, jobs, and cost codes within your organization. If you need to charge a customer outside of your organization for equipment costs, you use the Service Billing System.

1.1 System Integration

Equipment Billing is part of the Equipment/Plant Management system. When you use Equipment Billing, you can link to other JD Edwards World systems that your organization uses. For example, use the Work Order system to record maintenance charges against work orders as well as to track and monitor schedules by work order. Other systems you can link to include:

  • Job Cost

  • Inventory Management

  • Purchase Order Management

  • Shop Floor Control

  • Accounts Payable

  • Accounts Receivable

The following diagram illustrates the system integration between Equipment Billing and other JD Edwards World systems:

Figure 1-1 Integration Between Equipment Billing and other JD Edwards World systems

Description of Figure 1-1 follows
Description of "Figure 1-1 Integration Between Equipment Billing and other JD Edwards World systems"

ISystem Integration
Address Book Every JD Edwards World system works with the Address Book system to retrieve up-to-date employee, supplier, and other applicable name and address information.
General Accounting You enter all statistical values, such as miles, gallons, and so on, into the general ledger.

When you charge a job for equipment use, the system searches the Account Master for billing rate default values.
Accounts Payable You can enter equipment charges through the Accounts Payable system.

The system automatically enters the equipment number from the purchase order to the accounts payable voucher.
World Writer You use World Writer to create user defined reports, such as additional location tracking and parent/component history reporting.
Job Cost When you charge a job for equipment use, the system searches the Job Cost Master for billing rate default values.

When you track equipment location, the job defined in the Job Cost system is often the tracking location.
Payroll and/or Time Accounting You can use Payroll and/or Time Accounting to:

  • Enter equipment time for billing purposes

  • Charge for labor associated with operating or repairing equipment

  • Charge labor to a work order, and an individual routing step
Fixed Assets The Fixed Assets system shares many tables with Equipment Billing, including the Equipment Master Record and the Equipment Account Balance records.

You can access the STAR report writer through the Fixed Assets system. Use this report writer to create custom reports of equipment balances and units.

Equipment Billing uses automatic accounting instructions from the Fixed Assets system.
Work Orders You can use the Work Order system to track, schedule, and report on preventive and corrective equipment maintenance activities.
Manufacturing Systems You can use several of the manufacturing programs to plan maintenance parts and labor needs. You can:

  • Set up the Master Planning Schedule to indicate that machines scheduled for maintenance are not available for use during that time

  • Project labor and parts necessary for maintenance

  • Generate messages to indicate that parts need to be purchased and resources allocated to perform the necessary maintenance

1.2 System Features

The Equipment Billing features of the JD Edwards World Equipment/Plant Management system are designed to meet equipment management needs in a variety of ways. For instance, you can use Equipment Billing to:

  • Enter and search for equipment information

  • Track equipment movement and assign equipment to multiple locations

  • Charge for equipment use

  • Maintain detailed cost accounting records for equipment

  • Produce reports on a wide range of equipment-related topics

1.2.1 Equipment Information and Search

You can use Equipment Billing to locate, organize, and track the availability and repair status of equipment using the following types of information.

Information Type Description
Parent/Component relationships A parent is an item or piece of equipment that consists of other parts or components. It can also be a child or component of another piece of equipment.

Use parent/component relationships to group individual components in the system. You can establish up to 25 levels of components. This is useful if you manage complex equipment assemblies.
Equipment numbers You can identify equipment by any or all of the following:

  • Item number

  • Unit number

  • Serial number
Supplemental data You can define supplemental data to record unlimited types of equipment information that is not stored elsewhere in the system. For example, use supplemental data to track equipment based on horsepower, capacity, and so on.
Location You can search for and track equipment based on its historical, current, or planned location. This is helpful if you need to review equipment that is used at a particular jobsite or reroute equipment between jobsites. You can also bill for equipment use based on location.
Category codes Define up to 23 category codes to classify equipment for reporting and data selection purposes. For example, you can perform online searches for equipment based on category codes that represent major accounting class, major equipment class, manufacturer, model year, and so on.
Other user defined codes You can assign three additional user defined codes:

  • Finance methods

  • Equipment status codes

  • Equipment message types

For example, you can set up equipment status codes to apply to each piece of equipment, such as:

  • Down

  • Standby

  • Working

  • Available
Licenses and certifications You can record and track license and permit information for each piece of equipment. Use this feature to keep track of expiration dates and fees associated with equipment permits, certifications, and so on.
Online message logs You can use online message logs to enter messages about a piece of equipment. Standard message types include:

  • Planned maintenance

  • Actual maintenance

  • Problem reports

You can also enter additional remarks about any piece of equipment.

1.2.2 Equipment Location Tracking

You can locate and report on the availability and working status of equipment. You can also:

  • Revise location tracking information

  • Transfer one or more pieces of equipment

  • Consolidate equipment from multiple locations

1.2.3 Charging for Equipment Use

You can distribute equipment cost or credit revenue to business units and jobs. Different jobs and jobsites place unique demands on your equipment. For instance, unusually rocky soil may wear equipment more rapidly than other soil. Using Equipment Billing, you have the ability to reflect different conditions when you charge for equipment use. You can assign several billing rate codes for a single piece of equipment. In addition, you can bill equipment on the basis of location or time.

1.2.3.1 Location Billing

Charging for equipment use by location provides you with an efficient method for charging job sites with equipment use, especially if you bill for small tools. You can use the equipment transfer facility to assign billable equipment to a job, or return equipment to the yard at a nonbillable status.

In addition, you can:

  • Distribute costs on a percentage basis to various components of a piece of equipment

  • Define billing rates by job or job cost account

  • Track equipment use by billing rate code

  • Use automatic component billing to charge equipment costs to a parent assembly, but post the time directly to its components

  • Print reports of billing rates and rate components

1.2.3.2 Time Billing

Use billing rate codes and rental rules to distribute equipment costs to any account in the JD Edwards World General Accounting and Job Cost systems. For example, you can set up billing rate tables by:

  • Individual pieces of equipment

  • Similar groups of equipment

  • Effective dates

You can charge for equipment use by time through the following systems:

  • Time Accounting

  • Payroll

  • Equipment Billing

In addition, you can use time billing models to enter equipment time.

1.2.4 Detailed Equipment Cost Accounting

You can use Equipment Billing to handle cost accounting requirements. For example, you can:

  • Define a custom chart of accounts for your equipment cost and revenue. At any time, you can view these accounts at a summarized or detailed level.

  • Analyze costs according to the operating hours or miles logged for equipment using either payroll and equipment time entry records or meter reading entries.

  • Run reports on operating and maintenance costs based on costs per mile, costs per hour, or costs on a monthly, yearly, or acquisition-to-date basis.

1.2.5 Reporting

You can create a variety of reports to access a printed version of your equipment billing processes. These reports include:

  • Standard reports - You can tailor predefined DREAM writer reports to fit specific needs and fulfill various reporting requirements. Standard reports include:

    • Billing Rates report

    • Location Tracking report

    • Time Entry Journal report

  • World Writer reports - For reporting needs that are not addressed by standard reports, you can use World Writer to design and build custom reports from any table or file in your database.

  • STAR reports - You can design your equipment reports with the Spreadsheet Tool for Asset Reporting (STAR). STAR guides you through the setup of custom reports that specifically access the system's equipment and fixed asset tables.

1.3 Equipment Billing System Flow

The following diagram illustrates a typical flow of major processes within the Equipment Billing system:

Figure 1-2 The Flow of Processes Within the Equipment Billing System

Description of Figure 1-2 follows
Description of "Figure 1-2 The Flow of Processes Within the Equipment Billing System"

1.4 Equipment Billing Tables

1.4.1 Primary Tables and Descriptions

Table Description
Item Master (F1201) Stores basic information about each piece of equipment such as:

  • Equipment number

  • Description

  • Account coding

  • Category codes
Item Balances (F1202) Stores the account balance amount or unit for each equipment account.
Location Tracking (F1204) Stores location information for an equipment item, including the:

  • Location

  • Start effective date

  • Ending date

  • Equipment billing rate code

  • Location code, which indicates the type of location record, such as planned, current, or history
Account Ledger (F0911) Stores General Ledger journal entry audit trails for both the Item Balances table (F1202) and the Account Balances table (F0902).

1.4.2 Secondary Tables

The Equipment Billing system also uses the following secondary tables:

  • Equipment Rental Rates (F1301)

  • Location Rental Rules (F1302)

  • Billing Exception Days (F1303)

  • Equipment Location Billing (F1304)

  • Equipment Distribution Rules (F1305)

  • Status History (F1307)

  • Equipment Rate Code Definition table (F1390)

  • Equipment Category Code Mapping (F1391)

  • Item Messages (F1205)

  • License Master (F1206)

  • Location History Text (F1210)

  • Parent History (F1212)

  • Default Accounting Constants (F12002)

  • Default Depreciation Constants (F12003)

  • User Defined Codes (F0005)

  • Address Book Master (F0101)

  • Account Master (F0901)

  • Automatic Accounting Instructions Master (F0012)

  • Supplemental Data (F12090, F12092, F12093)

  • Supplemental Data Cross Reference (F1392)

  • Specification Data (F1216)

  • Specification Cross Reference (F1215)