DPS SAT Update: Invoicing

I had previously mentioned my concerns about the progress of invoice testing in the DPS SAT process, and had promised to write a complete article soon. However, I had been holding out until I could report some good news. Well I am pleased to announce that one week after we submitted our first invoice to PowerTrack for a DPS shipment, it finally reached the DPS system on Wednesday. For the record, the first invoice ever to be submitted to DPS was a linehaul and SIT invoice for Silver Ridge Forwarders, a fellow SAT participant, in the amount of $4,889,500.00 for the linehaul and $1,264,000.00 for SIT, for a total invoice of just over $6 million. If we can get invoices like that one paid, I think it is safe to say that the 13% cap will be hard to maintain. Unfortunately, the obscene amount of money was not given as a reward for spending three long weeks in DC doing on-site testing. It was due to a recalculation problem at DPS, which caused the line item amounts to be slightly inflated over the $4,081 invoice we originally submitted.

So with that invoice we have started to test the invoicing functionality of DPS. Unfortunately, we are moving at a much slower pace than I would have liked. I expressed my concerns during the on-site portion of SAT, and continue to express my concerns, that invoicing has not been given enough attention during SAT testing. We were told the first day of SAT that the two “show-stoppers” were invoicing and bulk rate filing. While I had hoped that meant we would spend a fair amount of time testing those two areas, we were later told that the reason they were considered “show-stoppers” was that they were not able to get either to work at all in IV&V testing, which was the internal testing they completed prior to SAT. Despite being labeled a show-stopper, and despite the fact that they had been unable to get one invoice paid in DPS, invoicing was not a big part of the test plan.

TSPs were given a work flow of how many instances of each process they were to test. For example, they were to test bringing on three different SCACs through the TSP Qualifications module. I was very disappointed to see that the number of invoice to be submitted was only 5 per TSP, or a total of 60 invoices for the entire test. For comparison, each SAT participant was to test the process of changing their SCAC code twice. So something that happens extremely rarely was going to get almost half the testing of something that happens thousands of times a day. When I raised these concerns to the test team, I was told that they felt that 60 invoice was sufficient to test the invoicing module in DPS. I respectfully disagreed with this opinion, and predicted that without a more thorough testing of the invoicing system, rating engine issues would cause major problems once the system was deployed. For comparison, during SAT testing of the CWA system, we sent tens of thousands of invoices through CWA to test that rating engine, and we still didn’t find all the problems until deployment. To say that 60 invoices is sufficient, especially considering that is 30 international and 30 domestic (on the brand new 400NG rating engine), is asking for major problems down the road.

However, we will do the best that we can and test as many different scenarios as possible with our limited opportunities. So far, the going has been slow. As I mentioned, the first invoice had troubles getting from PowerTrack to DPS, and then when it did get there, we discovered a problem with the way it was recalculating the quantities submitted. We will need to wait for that error to be fixed in DPS, or all invoices we send will end up in the millions. Also, we were just informed last Friday that the test platform uses the 2006 version of the 400NG rates, not the current 2007 version that will be used in production. So we will have to change our invoice system to roll back to those rates so the invoices have a chance of matching. Other TSPs that perform their own invoicing haven’t even been able to get the 400NG rates from AMSA, so right now we are the only ones submitting invoices, which is not the best scenario.

All in all, I am very fearful that we will not be able to adequately test the invoicing module during the testing period. It is a shame because whatever errors we find and can fix during SAT don’t cost a thing. However, once we enter the production mode, and we start to run into issues (and I am convinced we will run into a lot of issues) those problems become very expensive. We have to rebill for the items that are rated incorrectly, the PPSOs will have to approve additional invoices, and prompt payment interest will be looming.

Related Posts

1. DPS Invoicing Update - June 1st, 2007
2. DPS Invoicing Problem Highlights Importance of Testing - October 22nd, 2010
3. Invoicing Updates from the DPS Town Hall - March 18th, 2008