| << Back to Rates | Up to Contents | Ahead to Documentation - Billing >> |
The Activity tab allows staff members with the appropriate roles to correct activity records (e.g., if a user's usage should be cancelled due to an equipment malfunction) and record staff time and sales of inventory. Each type of activity has its own tab, though the procedure for each is the same. (Note, however, that Subscription records are generally longer than the others, and you might need to specify an earlier begin date to capture those.)
The Activity tab was originally intended for billing cycle audits, but now the billing tab performs that function. The Activity tab, however, still reflects the data used for billing at its most fundamental level; in particular, it shows the records that are input to the billing logic, so some changes cannot be made through the Billing tab, but must instead be made in Activity.
The filter allows you to see a subset of the records. Select the desired lab and fill in at least one of the other fields. You should see results below the Results label. If nothing appeared below the label, your filter has not yet been processed.
CORAL provides an auditability guarantee on its records, so when a record is deleted or updated, the old record remains in the database as it was in every respect except that it is marked stale. Stale records appear in the list here, but are presented in a grey color.
To select a record for editing, click on the blue line number to the left of its name. This will bring up an activity editing box. Make the appropriate adjustment and click the Save button (or Cancel if you decide not to).
To create a new record, click on the Create New Record button. You will see the same activity editor dialog, but with most of the fields blank. Fill in the appropriate fields, and press Save. Because the values for some of the fields depend on the fields above them, it is suggested that you will in the fields from the top down.
To delete a record, press the X button on its line.
Benign bug: deleting a record causes two stale records to appear: the old one, and the new one with stale already set.
A common task is to retroactively change the project and/or account of a particular member's charges on the request of their PI. Once you have used the filter to select the records you want to redirect, you can use the Redirect To panel to specify what member, project and account the records should be made to reflect. This action cannot be undone, though there is enough information in the audit trail for a database administrator to manually reconstruct the record in the case of a catastrophic mistake.
Adjustments appear as corrections to a user's invoice, with no information attached other than the date. They do not reference an instrument, location, or inventory item. These are most commonly used to credit a user for a correction to an invoice that they have already received, by placing the credit on a later invoice.
Agreements represent signatures on lab use agreements, or a user's clicked assent.
Alerts allow users to be notified when their spending exceeds a certain threshold. The monitor field specifies an email address which will be sent the notification.
It is more common to use Account Capacity to limit the amount that may be spent on a given account.
The WNF lab has historically used the CAAMS building access system to perform much the same function as the Door readers described next, except that these are manually uploaded into CORAL at the end of every month. Similarly, these records are used for billing, and it may be important to be able to modify them at need.
Certain users have agreements with the lab management that allow them a discount on certain instruments, perhaps because they donated the equipment to the lab or because those users perform maintenance on the equipment. The Discount activity records this arrangement as a filter. Any equipment use records that match the filter will be flagged for discount according to the Discount field, where 0 means no discount, and 1 indicates full compensation. How discounts are applied depends on the individual lab's billing logic; for example, in the WNF lab, they are applied unconditionally, while MAF lab discounts are only applied to off-hours use.
The WNF lab has card readers that we use to show who is in the lab at any given time, and to track lab usage hours. This information is also used for billing, so it is important that there be a way to manipulate it in the case that a PI asks us to retroactively change a user's billing. Every record here represents a card swipe.
Equipment activity represents the majority of the activity in the lab. An equipment record is created every time a user disables an enabled piece of equipment. The equipment activity panel allows the adjustment and deletion of activity records as well as the creation of new records.
The Inventory activity tab is very similar to the Equipment activity tab above. The only real difference, aside from the domain for Item, is that inventory transactions have an explicit quantity field replacing the implicit minutes field of equipment use records.
These tabs are almost identical to the Equipment activity tab described above. At present the value of the Item field is not used for anything. It is assumed, however, that staff time is associated with an instrument, so you should enter an instrument name in the Item field. If you need to enter staff time that is not associated with an instrument, you can use LAB-No-Equipment.
Subscription records are somewhat different, although they have a similar form to equipment use and inventory records. This interface allows direct manipulation of the subscription records in case the interface under the Users tab is too restrictive to allow the changes you wish to make, or if you want to see the entire history.
| << Back to Rates | Up to Contents | Ahead to Documentation - Billing >> |