Case Study: Surcharge
The section demonstrates how to design a billing extension that solves the business problem of billing surcharge on project invoices.
Business Rule
The first step in the design process is to determine the business rule that you want to solve using client extensions.
Business Rule: Surcharge
Charge an additional surcharge to an invoice based on a percentage of the labor amount invoiced. This surcharge is referred to as Communication Charge.
Business Requirements
After you define the business rule you want to solve using client extensions, list the business requirements behind the business problem. This will help ensure that you are acknowledging all of the aspects of the business problem during the design stage.
- The surcharge is applicable only for projects for which it is negotiated. Project users specify the communication charge when they record the billing terms during project setup.
- You calculate this surcharge as follows:
- Surcharge = Surcharge Percentage X Labor Amount Invoiced
- Usually, the percentage is 2%. However, some project managers are beginning to negotiate 2.5% or 3% surcharges.
Required Extensions
You have determined that you will create a billing extension to automatically handle the Communication Charge within the invoicing cycle.
Suggestion: To review the sample PL/SQL code that corresponds to the implementation of this case study, view the file named PAXITMPS.pls in the Oracle Projects admin/sql directory.
Additional Implementation Data
You must define additional data for this billing extension which includes the following:
- Event type of Surcharge with an event type classification of Automatic
- Descriptive flexfield segment on the Communication Charge billing assignments to hold the event description that users can enter to override the default description
- Descriptive flexfield segment on the Communication Charge billing extension to hold the corporate default percentage for communication charge
In addition, you must include the steps to enter a communication charge for projects in your company's procedures manual.
