CASS & Airline Invoice Processing

[gravi_in]

Hi,

Has anybody been able to map the CASS Invoice Processing in OTM?

For those who don't know what CASS is, CASS is a form of consolidated electronic invoice sent by CNS-CASS on behalf of airlines that Freight Forwarders do business with. This consolidated invoice consists of shipments which are carried by various Airlines and is issued on a fortnightly basis. One check needs to be issued for the consolidated invoice to CASS, but the matching needs to happen for all the shipments included in the consolidated invoice.

Another question I had for Airline Invoice processing. In most countries, even if an Airline Invoice is different from the Buy Shipment that is setup, the Airline has to be paid for what it has invoiced. For any disputes, it has to go through the dispute resolution process and subsequently there is a possibility to receive a CM from the Airline for the additional amount paid by the Freight Forwarder. How can this be mapped in OTM?

Any ideas will be of great help.

Thanks in Advance

Ravi

[AlejandroBarba]

Re: CASS & Airline Invoice Processing

Hi Ravi,

I dont have the map for that process but I totally think OTM has enough functionality to meet some of the requirements that you described but I also foresee some issues:

OTM can handle Parent Invoices where all the Child Invoices have to be matched in order for the Parent Invoice to be matched. If some Child Invoices are matched but not all of them, the Parent Invoice has a Partial Match status. One problem you may face with this is that the invoice has to be from the same carrier and you mentioned having various Airlines in the same invoice.

You can also set up Auto Approve Rules with a extremely high tolerance rate so everything would be Auto Approve Automatically. At a later stage you could validate those invoices and Adjust the Payment. Two issues that you may face as in OTM 4.5:
- In order to adjust an invoice you need to have it vouchered first
- You cannot adjust Child Invoices, adjustments can only be done at the Parent Invoice Level.

Hope this helps,

Alejandro Barba

[gravi_in]

Re: CASS & Airline Invoice Processing

Hi,

Thanks for the update

As you see, the CASS invoice will have CASS as the vendor, but all the lines within this invoice will have various Airline vendors and hence we cannot go the Parent/Child invoice route.

Also, if we setup Auto Approval rules with extreemly high tolerances, then we will not have any control on what amounts are approved and what is the additional amount we have paid to each of the airlines which is needed for our dispute resolution process.

Thanks

Ravi

[AlejandroBarba]

Re: CASS & Airline Invoice Processing

Hi Ravi,

Now that you mentioned that the invoices will have CASS as the service provider, there might be a way to make it work. The Match Rule allows you to list different service providers in an invoice that can be treated as the same service provider. Then you create a Match Rule Profile for your Match Rule and assigned it to your Service Providers. We have done this for carriers that present invoices under 1 SCAC code but their shipments have 2 different SCAC codes.

About the tolerance level, you can come up with different rules. As up to what percentage you want to be automatically approved and have someone approve manually all the rest. But you will have to come back and check the differences between what was approved and what you estimated.

Hope this helps,

Alejandro Barba