The Preliminary Billing Analysis (PBA) collects activity for billing. You may request an immediate PBA by Client, Estimate, Media, Vendor, Client/Vendor or Client/Product. Activity is determined to be billable based on the settings for the client/product/media/estimate in Profiles Definition. Depending on the settings in FSI Collection, the PBA may also collect data for the Financial Status Inquiry. Those agencies using the Billing Calendar have automatic routines that periodically collect billing for specified clients.
While the PBA is running, the activity being collected is unavailable. When the PBA completes, the results are available on the PBA Report that is sent to the billing output queue defined in Profiles Definition for the company/office. Activity from previous PBAs continues to be included on the PBA Report until bills are released or canceled for that activity through Live/Draft Bills.
To schedule the collection of activity:
Use Monthly Billing Schedule to schedule a client for inclusion on the overnight PBA for one or more specific dates.
Use Billing Request to add specific estimates to the next overnight PBA.
Use Billing Request to request a PBA immediately for specific clients, media, estimates, vendors or Client/Vendor or Client/Product rather than waiting for the next scheduled overnight PBA.
You may request draft bills to be produced for your review, instead of needing the to take the extra step of ordering them in Live/Draft Bills.
While a PBA is in progress:
No one may release live or draft bills for any client that is included in the PBA.
For a client request, no one can request the client or any of that client's estimates for an immediate PBA until the first PBA is completed.
For a media request, no additional requests may be submitted by the sign-on company/office that made the request until the first PBA is completed.
For an estimate request, the PBA only collects the latest activity for that estimate, but it will also show any unreleased activity that was previously collected for the estimate.
Note: You may only request an Immediate PBA by media if the company/office profile in Profiles Definition is set to Allow Media Level Immediate PBA.