Studio Billing is a generic term used for charges that are keyed and billed by one company in your organization for work performed for a different job. In-house studios owned by one company often do work for a client/job that is owned by another company. The studio-owning company is internally charged for this work then bills the client-owning company. These charges are then automatically directed to a studio-target job for the client-owning company for rebilling to the client.
In the studio-owning company, the normal journal entries and posting at billing occur. A/R is updated to receive cash and WIP is relieved, unless the receiving transaction code indicates not to create a payable. In this case, the cross-company clearing account is debited instead of A/R.
In the target company, WIP is debited and a payable is created just as it would be if it had been keyed manually. An audit trail report is printed if any transfers occur. If the transaction code used in the target company is setup not to create a payable, the cross-company clearing account is updated instead of A/P.
By recognizing the setting for not creating a payable, it eliminates the need to write checks and receive cash if you want to skip this step.
To perform a successful automated transfer of this billing from one company/job to another company/job, the following is required.
The studio-owned company must identify the target job in the other company in either Workflow or in Job Maintenance.
The target company must consent that it will receive the transactions by identifying in the Jobtype, the transaction codes, work codes, and receiving instructions to be used.
The client used in the studio owned job must have a cross-reference vendor identified so the system can create a payable record.
If only Item 1 above is performed, the charge is shown on the audit trail report with a message that it has been identified but was not transferred to the target job, along with the reason of why it was not transferred.
Before billing, you must ensure that the client-owning company has set up a new jobtype in Admin|Jobtype. Also, the studio-owning company must specify the Transfer Company, Transfer Job, and if applicable, Transfer Component in Workflow|Maintenance|Definition or Production Maintenance|Job Maintenance|Enter/Change/Delete Jobs. When billing is performed Billing|Client Billing|Billing, the system looks at information keyed in these options to determine one of the following actions:
If a studio target job has been specified in Workflow and if the receiving company has set up the new job type codes for the target job, then the processing of live bills by the studio-owned company automatically directs billed charges to the studio target job.
If the receiving company's jobtype specifies that the invoice should be received as an EDI transaction, then the invoice is added to Charge Entry where the Receiving User, specified in the job type, processes/posts invoices through Vendor Charge Entry.
If the jobtype specifies a Receiver Type of immediate post, then the charges are automatically posted and journal entries are made.
After posting, an audit trail report is printed by company and job type and shows all items transferred over and the name of the receiving user. The audit trail also prints items not transferred over and the reason. Reasons include:
The target studio job was entered in the job header, the receiving company did not put any receiver information in the jobtype of the target job.
The client of the receiving job does not have a cross-reference vendor, so a payable cannot be created.
This vendor/invoice is already in the receiving company's A/P file (it would be a duplicate).
The receiving job is either no longer open or has been marked for final billing. In this last case, the charge is received, but as an EDI charge even if marked for immediate post.