DPS Production Invoicing Update

05. Feb, 2009 Comments Off

As of a yesterday, Daycos has submitted 81 “live” DPS invoices. After a slow start, and a lull due to the holidays, the pace of invoices has picked up recently, with 30 of those 81 generated in the last week.

Since many are recently submitted and still in process, it is hard to draw too many conclusions about the success so far, but we have been able to receive payment on 24 invoices. Of those 24 that were paid, 4 went into Audit Exception status. Although it is too few of invoices to draw any firm conclusions, it represents about a 17% Audit Exception ratio. That percentage is higher than we hope to be long-term, but it is a reasonable number for the start of a new system.

In addition to the 4 audit exception invoices, for which we are still investigating the causes, the only other problems we have encountered so far have been the transmission problems last week, and a slower than normal response time from PPSO in approving the DPS invoices. We believe the reason for the delay in PPSO response is due to a few different factors.

First, DPS is a new system and they are not yet used to working those invoices on a daily basis, like they do with CWA. Second, the ETA login problems that plagued DPS obviously made it difficult for PPSOs to access the system to do invoice approvals. Finally, we have seen some delays due to the uncertainty of PPSOs on how to handle the electronic nature of the 400NG domestic tariff. We have received notes from PPSOs indicating that they will not approve the invoices until they can “see the rates,” in reference to the underlying rates in the 400NG, which are not published in the tariff and only available electronically. It appears that not all of the PPSOs were aware that the tariff was an electronic tariff, and that their only way to verify the rates is to access the AMSA software program through ETA. As that word is spread among PPSOs, we hope to see response times improve.

All in all, it has been a fairly positive start to the invoicing process in DPS. I would expect that over the next month, as invoicing picks up in volume, we will really get a good idea of how smoothly the DPS invoicing process will go.