Thanks Ralph. That is an interesting way to approach it, but I am still leaning towards the price list approach.

Yes, my pricing is very much ad hoc. Yes, it does vary from customer to customer and from project to project within that customer. However, while that creates is own problems in itself, I think if I can create mini price lists with the any missing items defaulting to "list price" (as if we really have one), that it may work.

My current system has been trying its hardest to hold onto the pricing from a quote in the system. And while most of the time, the pricing is static, often that pricing does not pull through to the invoice for way too many reasons. For one, too many employees can manipulate the quote and profile for items like turn around time etc and any change seems to mess it up in some factor or another. Another item is that if the water or soil sample is not logged into the sytem in a precise manner it will void the quoted price. Currently, we check each and every invoice by hand against hard copies of quotes. I was hopeful to move the invoicing to a third party system which as least will lock out others (except for accounting) to start and have that invoicing system not be affected by the login process.

Sadly, these issues are inherent flaws in the billing/pricing section of otherwise a very good sample tracking LIMS system. It was just not set up well for billing.


For example:
Customer Number: SK7535
Profile Number: 129769 (always a 6 digit and a profile is created from a quote)
Line Item Analysis: 601051PB (Total Lead Testing with a quoted price of $10 for that customer on that quote/profile)

I was hopeful to have that profile set up as a price list in Adagio under that customer number with that price for that line item. I know I can extract the necessary items for importing into Adagio to identify it.

A lot of our work does require new and changing quotes, however we also have a large number of repetitive businesses like landfill and wastewater treatment facilities that use and have been using the same quote (profile) for years. I think if I can get the billing out of the LIMS with fixed pricing in Adagio, these customers would be more automatic with less manual checking.

I apologize for the wordiness.

Again, I appreciate any feedback anyone is willing to toss at me. I have been nothing but happy with the GL, AP, and AR modules that I have been using for years (I actually love the AR update) and if I can get this piece converted over, it would be tremendous monkey off of my back in regards to billing.

Thanks.