Warning: main(..//needlogin.php) [function.main]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /data01/focommy/public_html/protected/reconcilliation.php on line 3

Warning: main(..//needlogin.php) [function.main]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /data01/focommy/public_html/protected/reconcilliation.php on line 3

Warning: main() [function.include]: Failed opening '..//needlogin.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in /data01/focommy/public_html/protected/reconcilliation.php on line 3
Focom Ltd - Telephone Call Logging User Group
   
time
login user |
 

Telephone Bill Reconciliation

Many of you use LUMBERJACK to verify the accuracy of the telephone bill and, we are glad to say, most of you are happy with the results. However, from time to time there are discrepancies between the bills and the logging reports. There may be several reasons for this so we thought it would be useful to set out here some of the checks you can make to find out where the difference lies.

In the first instance, if the LUMBERJACK reports are not as high as you would expect, you will need to look for zero and low cost calls.

Zero Cost Calls

Run a detailed report looking for calls that have no cost:

  1. You will need to create a filter to look for outgoing calls with a duration but no cost, and exclude calls that you know should not have a cost or are not carried by that provider.
    For example: Cost < 0.0001 AND Duration > 0:00 AND Flag not equal to Freephone AND (Call Type = Outgoing OR Trunk to Trunk)
  2. Set up a detailed report with the following fields: date, start time, party 1, party 2, access code, dialled number, location, tariff, charge band, charge rate, cost.
  3. Sort this report in Dialled Number order.

This will give you a list of all the calls with no cost. A few things should now become obvious:

Is there a tariff named? If not, this could mean that your system costs calls by trunk and you have installed new trunks which need to be set up. Give the help desk a call.

Do the dialled numbers look correct or do they appear to be prefixed by an access code? If so, contact the help desk and ask them to set up a costing style for the new access code.

Is the access code correct for the named tariff? If not, the costing styles may need to be updated.

Is there a location against the dialled number? If not, it will mean that the tariff does not recognise the number. Check the dialled numbers against the “Not Classified” list. (see below).

If tariff and location details are given, it may be that your tariff does not have a minimum call cost and calls do not show a cost until they last a minute or more. If you set the Cost filter to several decimal places as shown above, these should have been ruled out. Alternatively, create a column with cost set to five decimal places and run the report again to see the cost.

Not Classified List: When we receive the tariff details from your provider, we can only cost calls where we are given the information. If it has not been supplied we will send you the Not Classified list so that you can see the problem numbers. As a general rule these will be non-geographic locations such as Personal Numbers or Premium Rate Numbers, quite often we do not receive information about the international mobile numbers.

If this is the case, we generally set up a costing style to charge the call by the correct tariff then, if there is no cost (NC) attached to the dialled number, we substitute the cost using the BT standard rate. This way, the calls will have a ball park cost which is preferable where you are charging Departments for calls.

To find out how your system is set up, look at the costing style. This is under System>Costing Style. Highlight the style that relates to the carrier and see if it is “Direct to Tariff” or “First Costable”. If it is “Direct to Tariff” then you will probably find that most of the calls with no cost are on the Not Classified list.

Incorrect Low Cost Calls

If a new route is added, it can often produce a new access code. For example, say we had set the system to strip off an access code of “9”. However, the new route produces an access code of “9718”. If this is not set-up within LUMBERJACK we will strip off the 9 as usual, and cost the call according to the rest of the dialled digits. In this case, the number would begin with 718 and the call would carry a local cost. This is easy to spot. If you run a report on Local calls, check if the numbers dialled really are local. If they are not, call the Help Desk and ask us to set up a new costing style.

Missing Calls

One other reason may be that some of the data is missing. Have a look under System>Days Stored, check all the days for the period and see if you have the number of calls you expect for each day. This would mean that logging was disabled for a period.

If the calls are higher on the reports than you would expect look for the high cost calls.

High Cost Calls

Run a similar report, this time looking for high cost calls:

Is the access code correct for the named tariff? If not, this probably means that we have not received a full tariff from your provider and have substituted a cost from another more complete tariff. (See How First Costable Works)

This report may highlight the fact that all costly calls go to the same destination and this may need further investigation.

If none of these options help, there is, of course, just a chance that you may have moved to a new carrier and not told us!

How First Costable Works

Once the system has defined the tariff (either by Access Code or by Trunk) it looks at the Area Code and searches for the Charge Band. It then checks for the Charge Band classification.

If “No Classification” is found, and the costing style is NOT set to First Costable, it will return NC as the Charge Band and a zero cost.

If the costing style is set for First Costable and alternative tariffs are given, the system will look through the tariffs listed, in sequence, looking for a tariff with a classification for the Area Code.

If none is found, the system will return the original tariff with a Band of NC and zero cost.

If it finds a tariff with a charge, this will be substituted and a charge will be returned. The substituted tariff details will also be logged against the call.

Back to Previous Page
icon

As you will all know by now, there are major improvements in the web interface but LUMBERJACK's client interface has had a few changes as well so we'll talk about those first:

Client Side

The first thing you will notice is the new background screen. Beautifully designed by The Magic Box who do all our artwork. All the windows have been toned to match. We hope you enjoy it.

Call Costs : The costs have been changed from a 32bit floating point number to a 64bit fixed width number. Yup, thought you'd be riveted by that. What it means in practice is that we now store all the costs to 3 decimal places instead of five, the majority of carriers only supply to three digits these days. The good news is that costs will no longer suffer from rounding errors if a large number of call costs are being totalled.

Please note, though, that if you have any filters set up to look at calls greater or less than 0.00001 these will have been effected. However, to make cost filtering easier, we are been able to add 'costequal to 0.00' which was not possible with five decimal place costs.

Filters: These have been extended to allow a filter of a Group of Groups. Until now you only had the option of 'Extensions in Group', now you will also have 'Extensions in Group of Groups'.

Fixed costs: We have added an import facility. Those with information in external sources will be pleased to hear this.

Remote Notification (Spawner): Part of the work of the Spawner is to let you know if you are running out of hard disk space. Once this alert was sent, the notification needed to be reset. This meant you could miss the alert and run into trouble when the disk filled up. It will now send the alert every hour - until you do something about it :>)

Emailing Report Sections: Much awaited this one. With the help of a control file (instruction will be given) you are able to run a single report against the company structure and then Email the relevant part to each department. This can also be used if you want to send the whole report to a lot of Email addresses.

Tariff Imports: User Defined numbers had to be added manually. This was a bit tedious so we have changed this to allow import of user defined numbers. By the way, there are two ways of entering User Defined numbers: globally, i.e. applying to all tariffs, or only against a specific tariff.

Unused Item: We have modified the terminology in this report. If it is being run again 'last month' it will now include coming up to date as well. Since the purpose of running the report is to find something that is not in use, this is a safer option.

Turbo Fields : We have added a couple more turbo fields: Account Codes and PIN numbers are now available.

The more observant amongst you will notice that there are some Turbo reporting options under Defaults. In practice, these should be left Enabled as per the default. They only benefit larger companies with high volumes of data. Change to these settings should only be made after consultation with Help Desk!

BUGS : There were a few ...

Printing Reports : We had an odd problem here when trying to print a multiple columned report that contained histograms. If the report was too wide for the page, some of the columns overlapped. In fixing this problem, we have set a report to automatically scale down where it is too wide for a page. Rather neat that one :>)

Fixed Costs: There was a problem when trying to allocate a fixed cost to a block of extensions, it was not showing Not Consistent where other costs were included in the block.

Unused Item : This was showing deleted extensions in the list - very confusing.

Web Side

We are very pleased with the Web interface improvements. You will have access to all Report running facilities in this version. There are two main menus at the moment: Generated Report (i.e. Reports Saved renamed) and Create Report (i.e Report Set-up renamed).

More than Reports Saved

The list of generated reports can be sorted by Report Name, User, or Date. If you are looking for a specific report you can search for those you generated or for a specific title. Much easier than ploughing through the whole list.

The list shows: the report title, the user that created the report, the modified date, report type, report period, and status. You can print or E-mail reports from this list.

Once you've found the report, a click opens it in a new window. From here you can Print; Email the report; Protect it; or Delete it. All the things you wanted to do in Report Viewer but couldn't! The Sections can be opened and closed with minus/plus buttons and what you open is what you send to printer.

Alternatively, click in the report Type column and you can go to the Create area of the report to make any modifications.

Create Reports

Clicking on Create Report brings up a list of all the reports that have been set-up on the system, sorted in their various sub-directories. This list is more comprehensive than on the client and shows: Report Name; Report creator; Report Type; PBX; Scheduled status. Clicking in the Schedule column allows you to create or modify the scheduled event for that report.

The report set up screen is shown with Tabs for: Date/Time PBX/Group; Filtering; Columns; Report Name and Folder; Confirm.

The Confirm tab shows all the details of the report and the option to Run; Add; Update; Protect; and Delete the report.

Filtering gives access to the full list of filters created within LUMBERJACK and access to the quick filtering boxes.

The exciting bit here is that you can sort on the Filter in order to find out which reports are using it, something we have wanted in LUMBERJACK for a long time. You can also sort on User, Report Type; and Report Sub-directory.

QA

Most of the QA has been completed with a few glitches to iron out, so the new version will be with you very soon.

Happy logging!

icon

We are currently working on creating the web based manual which will be available to all users via these pages. There will also be an integrated link in the new LUMBERJACK web interface.

In the mean time, we are still offering the How To Sheets as .PDF files and other snippets

A full printed manual is supplied with each training day. Further copies are available from support@focom.com. Price:£50.

icon

MAINTENANCE CONTRACT - updated March 2006

New Maintenance Contract .pdf

We have made a few amendments to the maintenance contract and need to bring this to your attention. The first thing you will notice is the name changes. These are now more descriptive of the service provided.

Tariff Maintenance

We have revised the tariff charges. Some will find this advantageous but a few will find their maintenance costs increased. The gist is that we will now be charging per tariff that we maintain.

The old 'Kernel', a copy of BT standard published tariff, will become Tariff and the cost has been reduced from £350 p.a. to £250 p.a.

Thereafter, they become Tariff 1, Tariff 2, etc., which means the Standard BT tariff plus one other, two other, etc., bespoke tariff. These are also charged at £250 per tariff.

Cancellation or Delay of Works

Mobile tariffs are not usually as complex and, for this reason, will only be charged at £100 p.a.

We have added a paragraph to cover late cancellation of paid site visits and training days asking that a minimum of three working days be given. Cancellation after this time will be chargeable.

Remote Diagnostics

As many of you will know, we are able to keep maintenance costs low by using remote diagnostic methods to solve 99.9% of customer queries. To date, there has never been a security breech as a result of this access and we work with all our customers to make sure security is give the highest priority.

Many people are now using VNC with an internet connection. This gives a direct IP link and avoids the PSTN charges. For more information on this and how to set it up, please call the Help Desk.

Change text size
small text  medium text  x-large text  x-large text

Useful links

Other stuff



©  Focom Limited  1996 - 2006
 products  |  services  |  about  |  contact  |  map  |  articles