Background

The financial department of a UK based shipping company used Excel to make financial reports in the past. In order to increase working efficiency, and also perfect the customer experience, the company decided a highly automated and web-based charging system should be developed to meet the demands of the accountants.

Business Requirements

The aim of the charging system is to charge the owners of the vessels a mutually agreed cost for the management of the vessels for a specified period of time. The charging system provides the financial department with an automated means of estimating, generating and reporting on the charges for the management of the vessels under the company’s management.
The main tasks are broken into sections as follows: -

• Quotation
  This section provides a procedure to create and manage estimate costs for a vessel for a given period of time (usually one calendar month).
• Calculation
  This section provides a procedure to create and manage estimate costs for a vessel for a given period of time (usually one calendar month). The charging system bases all other sections on the “Calculations?created here.
• Invoice
  This section provides a procedure to create and manage invoices / debit notes for the owner, charging them the estimated cost for the management of the vessels for a period of time (usually one calendar month). The invoices / debit notes are based on the estimates held within the “Calculation?
• Statement
  This section provides a procedure to create and manage statements. These statements show the actual costs for the vessel for the given period of time, they also compare them with the estimated amount as invoiced. The statements will show the difference between the two amounts as either a credit or a debit. The statements also require backup documentation to support the actual costs displayed on them.
• Addendum
  This section provides a procedure to create and manage addendums. These addendums are used to adjust the estimated amounts of the “Calculation? thereby increasing the accuracy of any new invoices created for the owner. They also allow the user to change the “Calculation?based settings.
• Export
  This section provides a procedure to export financial transactions relating to the invoices and statements. These exported transactions are then used to update our accounting system.
• Templates
  This section provides a procedure to create and manage templates for use by the other sections of the charging module.
• Print Preview
  This section provides a procedure to view the reports that are generated from the templates and information from the sections within the charging module.
• Global
  This section provides several procedures for managing global settings and data for use by the other sections of the charging module.
• Rights
  This section provides a framework for defining what actions a user can perform and what information they can perform them on.
• Audit Log
  This section provides a framework to track the actions of users within the charging module.
  

JFsys' Role

At the beginning, the customer company prepared and delivered the detailed project requirements documents. JFsys had a lot of communications with the customer team through different kinds of platforms such as emails, telephones; net meetings, call conference, instant messengers and so on. The customer company also came over to China to hold several project meetings in order to make everything understandable. JFsys got involved with the analysis of all the requirements and feedback their solutions. JFsys made very good communication and understanding of the whole project. The project went on smoothly according to the requirements and right hit the deadline. At the final stage of the project, JFsys engineers went to the customer’s work premise to conduct on-site installation, debugging and training. The whole project was completed beautifully and gained the applause of all the financial people of the department.  

Benefits

1) The system very much loaded the burden of the accounting people of the department, save their time, increases their working efficiency.
2) Error making possibility is very low.
3) Smarter workflow for the department.
4) The whole departments are able to work in a connected system through web browsers even cross the regions
5) Information sharing within the internal department
6) The company’s customers –the vessel owners are more satisfied with the cooperation. 

Core Technology