TBA TOS Billing Engine – developed by utilising best practices from clients from all sectors of terminal operations – is operational and well established on every continent on the globe. The solution works by mapping multi-tier tariffs against the operational and storage activities performed by the terminal. In addition, TBA TOS Billing Engine uses service requests and work orders to track incidental services and ensure that there is no revenue leakage.
Driven by customer needs, TBA filled the gap in the market place where customisation was typically used to deal with the complexities around terminal operations with a stand-alone billing tool. Although TOS systems can record billable activities and push this data to finance systems for invoicing, the automation of the billing process in the finance/ERP package requires significant customisation to deal with the terminal specific operations and therefore is very costly and time consuming. The alternative of creating manual line items for charges -those which could not be handled by the standard finance configuration – requires manual processing and is error prone.
The software can be used as the Tariff Master or derive the tariffs from either ERP or CRM. The Billing Engine has two options for the ERP interface, either the invoice is generated in the software and the data is pushed up against customer/cost codes or the invoice can be generated in the ERP. Integration is proven to SAP, IFS, Navision, Oracle and others using TBA’s standard API tools.
TBA TOS Billing Engine can handle:
- Global or customer specific agreements
- Rolling annual increases
- Variance by product type
- Cargo handling activities
- Service and conditioning activities
- Storage rental charges (long term, short term, guaranteed)
- Minimum volume contracts
- Labour and equipment
- Berthing and marine services
- Cash collections
The software has a comprehensive reporting package with many standard reports and an ad hoc report builder, which allows the user to create their own reports.
The software is well-proven when connected to TBA’s CommTrac and Autostore products, however TBA are so sure that the system outperforms other solutions that they have now made it available as a stand-alone application. The return on investment calculation is a strong incentive for terminals to explore the capabilities of the software; customers report up to 10% reduction in revenue leakage and reduction in manual administration can significantly reduce headcount. Nowadays 25 terminals are using the TBA TOS Billing Engine to users’ satisfaction.
TBA has an established and encompassing portfolio of software and service solutions to operate and optimise container, bulk and general cargo terminal operations. During the development of the completely new CommTrac Bulk and General Cargo TOS in 2015, it was decided to apply real focus on the capability of the software to convert operational activities into revenue.
