A recent number of phone calls with questions about how billing for services works with Media Services has prompted a bit of explanation of what is going on.
First off, Media Services is one of a few departments on campus that does not use the traditional Interdepartmental Invoice system in which an invoice is sent over to the department being charged and that department accepts the charge and provides an account number and sends a copy back to us and we submit that to the Finance Office for payment. Instead, requests are made, with the Requester providing appropriate billing information regarding which department is charged. Services are rendered, and billing is tracked internally using QuickBooks which is used to generate reports that are given to the Finance Office with money being transfered automatically, and PDF’s of Statements and Invoices being sent to the Budget officer or designated account manager on file.
Some things to know:
We have been provided very specific account numbers by the Finance Office that we are to charge departments (typically 00-department account number-71550, which is the object code for “Media Services”) and are only able to charge other accounts if they are Restricted (10-00000000-00000 or 90-00000000-00000) and the account number is provided at the time of request.
We use Quick Books to manage the internal accounts payable tasks that are necessary to do what we need to do. We selected Quick Books because it it flexible enough to do what we need (multi-user, invoicing, statements and basic communication with customers like the ability to email PDFs of invoices and statements) without being overkill (especially in the cost department). Because we use QuickBooks, it is important to know that emails of Invoices etc are sent through the QuickBooks email server, so depending on how closely you look, messages will appear to come from Instructional Media Services, but are actually sent from <qb-billpay-errors@billpay.ctcfe.quickbooks.com>. These messages are not spam, nor are they fake. When in doubt, feel free to contact us with questions.
Who receives the above emails is based on budget officer information that we receive from the Finance Office. This information was just recently updated because we had been running on information that was several years old. We understand that there are departments that have individuals that manage budgets for the budget officers, so in the event that the information we send out should be CC’d to someone else (most commonly the Department Administrative Assistant) or should just be sent to that person and not the budget officer, we will need to be contacted by the Budget Officer to indicate that is the case, and be provided with the information that needs to be corrected. As people move from one position to the next, or leave and there are new hires, we are not given any information regarding these changes, and instead rely on updates from those who are aware of these changes (instead of just forwarding the emails to someone else, contact us and let us know about the change so we can correct this for future communications).
When in doubt, we are here to answer questions and take suggestions. Thanks for your cooperation and feedback.