Products

Focus

Flight Costing System

Introduction and Overview

Damarel provides business solutions for Airport Operations.

Traditional flight costing operations in accounts departments are heavily paper based and manually intensive. Paperwork is fed to accounts departments from airport operations for billing. Teams of staff manually cost up rates for each flight and service and enter this on to the paperwork. Totals are then produced and passed on for invoicing

Focus automates this entire process. The collection of data and printing of invoices occurs in a matter of minutes thereby effecting a massive reduction in time taken to prepare invoices and corresponding increase in accuracy resulting in recovery of costs for otherwise easily-missed items.

Typically the entire billing process including any manual intervention and spot-checking takes less than an hour per station. From receiving the operational details electronically from each airport, through automated charging and invoice production, to sending the financial details electronically to the accounts package, Focus assists you all the way.

With a contract maintenance facility and an intuitive interface for system operation, Focus consolidates and streamlines your billing operation.

When coupled with Damarel's Company Charge Screens (CCS) and Flight Information System (FiNDnet) this solution provides a totally integrated front to back office flight handling and billing solution - a truly streamlined end-to-end business data flow.

Functional Highlights

Contract Maintenance

Handling-contracts for each customer airline are entered into the system as a series of service rates. These rates can simply be a fixed figure, or a more complex formula for determining the correct charge. Focus uses these to generate automated invoices. A printed version of the stored handling contract is provided by the system.

Facilities are provided for automatically switching rates as contracts are re-negotiated. Focus also has a comprehensive audit history recording all changes to the contract rates.

System Operation

Once the contracts have been entered, and the system configured, operation follows a number of periodic activities. The Focus operator will simply run the import routine to import the operational details for the required period.

Electronic transfer of operational details from the FiND system into Focus increases accuracy and efficiency within the billing process, generating a faster turnaround and reducing overheads on time, paper and mailing services. On screen viewing of invoices allows operator intervention if necessary, including the operational maintenance facility for correcting any flight details.

Following this an automated production run will be carried out. The operator will then check for alerts, confirming that invoices are correct and then print and send the invoices.

Focus provides electronic batch export of financial details to the accounts package. Focus can be modified to send the details in an appropriate format for different accounting software packages.

Invoice Scheduling

Focus provides an invoice scheduling facility, allowing you to set up the regular invoicing periods for each of your customer invoices. When an invoice is due, it will appear in the Focus daily activity in-tray ready for production.

Up to 100 types of invoice can be configured for each customer, giving you the flexibility to group service charges onto invoices according to customer requirements or signatory approval, so that payment of the whole invoice is not delayed due to a query by one department.

Invoice Production

Focus can process invoices individually or generate the entire invoice run in a matter of minutes at the touch of a button.

Once calculated, invoices can be viewed on screen in their printed form. You can also view the complete list of individual service charges.

During automated production, Focus will alert the operator if manual intervention is required before an invoice is fully generated (this may be, for example, because there is no rate set up in the contract for a service being charged).

Invoice Printing

Print to any MS Windows configured printer. Print individual invoices or the entire run in a single step.

The precise format of invoices can be pre-configured into the system. Invoices generated by Focus comprise a front-sheet-only summary or can include an accompanying support sheet listing further service and charge details.

Focus Provides Valuable Management Information

As well as generating billing details Focus captures a vast amount of operational and service details. These can provide valuable information, such as monthly statistics on flight movements and revenue generated per customer for each type of service provided.

Details on services such as GPU are gathered and the amount supplied can be compared to the amount budgeted in an inclusive contract, giving valuable feed back to the contracts department.

Architecture

Technical Information:

• Is built around an ORACLE® Relational Database
• Is available as a 32-bit application for Microsoft Windows
• Has a modular construction that can be tailored for a precise business fit
• Integrates with other products from Damarel and independent suppliers
• Can produce reports using a variety of Report Tools

To discuss how Focus or any of Damarel's other products can help your operation, please contact us by phone +44 (0)1252  783787 or email This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it