The Telecom Billing dashboard provides recharge costs and details for services billed to the unit receiving the services. Each month, a unit is "recharged" (charged for the cost of providing the service) for certain telecom services. This dashboard provides the basis for these charges. Some are based on usage, others are recurring monthly charges and some are one-time charges for a particular service.
Access to the Telecom Billing dashboard is included when Finance including Ad Hoc is requested. See Getting Access to Cal Answers for the instructions and link to request Finance including Ad Hoc.
Topics
Access the Cal Answers Telecom Billing dashboard
- Summary Report
- By Month Report
- Transactions Report
Reports and documentation
- Overview: This initial page for the Telecom Billing includes links to the Finance Wiki which provides documentation on the dashboard, the reports included and options for customization, and a data dictionary for the filters and columns in the dashboard. This page also describes the reports in the dashboard.
- Summary: This report provides a summary of the charges by Chartstring or by Billing ID Account.
- By Month: This report shows each Service Item ID and Service Item Description and the amount of the service charged each month for a selected fiscal year.
- Transactions: This report shows each individual transaction that incurred a charge, including the user name, Service ID, Quantity, Unit Price, and Amount.
- Data is sourced from Pinnacle and loaded monthly.
- Values are displayed in accounting (credit/debit) signage; amounts charged are positive numbers.
Summary Report
- The Summary Report tab provides a summary of charges by Chartstring or by Billing ID Account.
- The report also includes both the Service IDs and Service Item IDs and can be filtered by various Org levels, Funds, CF1, CF2 or Service Item IDs.
- The charges are categorized by Usage, One Time, and Recurring, and includes a total under Amount.
Filters
- You must remove the dash from the Dept ID – Desc filter before you select Apply to generate the report.
- Fiscal Year and Fiscal Month are required selections.
Report Views
- By Billing ID Account is the default report view presented. It is shown below.
- To see the report view By Chartstring, select it from the drop-down view selector.
Learn more about what you can do with the report:
By Month Report
The By Month Report displays the Service Item ID and Service Item Description along with the amount of the service charged for each month of a selected fiscal year and filtered Org level.
Filters
- You must remove the dash from the Dept ID – Desc filter before you select Apply to generate the report.
- You select the Fiscal Year and the report displays all of the months of the year, even if they do not yet have data.
Report Views
- Amount shows the amount by month for each Service Item Id
- To see the report view Quantity and Amount, select it from the drop-down view selector.
Learn more about what you can do with the report:
Transactions Report
The Transactions report displays each individual transaction that incurred a charge, including the chartstring, user name, Service ID, Quantity, Unit Price and Amount.
Filters
- You must select a Fiscal Year and Fiscal Month before you select Apply to generate the report. The report may be run for a single month or for multiple months.
Learn more about what you can do with the report:
View, print and export report results
- View: Use the buttons below the report to view first 25 rows, previous 25 rows, next 25 rows, and all rows
- Print: Once you have run a report, you can use the Print link below the report to print it.
- Export: Once you have run a report, you can use the Export link below the report to export the formatted report to a PDF file, or an Excel or Power Point file. If you'd like to further manipulate the data, you can export to Data. The CSV Format is recommended because it exports unformatted data from all columns, not only the ones visible in the report.
Customize the report
Each report is built with a default set of columns arranged in a specific order. You can right-click on a report heading to present a menu of options to customize your reports including:
- Include a column that isn’t present or exclude a column that isn’t needed
- Change the order that columns are displayed
- Sort by a single column or by multiple columns
- Show subtotals and grand totals
- Move a column to a prompt so that you can further filter the results
- Move a column outside of the table to create sections for your report
The Customize Reports chapter of the Cal Answers Basic Navigation self-study course includes detailed descriptions and instructions on ways you can customize your reports. The Work Efficiently chapter describes how you can save the customizations you made to filters and report output so that you can apply them again and again.