What are Bill Codes used for?

Bill codes are used to quickly create charges on a customer’s account. You might set up bill codes for regular curbside pickup or dumpster service, bill codes for the same service at higher rates for customers requiring longer distance travel, bill codes for different rates when negotiating with commercial customers—the bill codes in Trash Flow are very flexible, and our customers find new uses for them all the time. Your setup will go more smoothly if you enter all the bill codes you can think of before you begin to type in customer information.

How do I enter Bill Codes?

When creating a code, you may want to choose something easy that will remind you of the description. If you’re entering a rate for residential pickup you might call the code RES; if you’re entering a rate for landfill disposal you might name it LF1. Click here for an Example of Bill Codes.

1. Click System > Setup > Lists > Bill Codes.
2. Type a code in the Code field and press Enter. (Bill codes can be one to six characters long).
3. A pop-up window will inform you that you’ve entered a new bill code and ask you to confirm whether you want to Add This Code; click Yes.
4. Type a Description for the code; this can be up to 17 characters. The description will show up on the customer’s bill and in their financial history in Trash Flow.
5. Type the amount you will charge in the Rate field. There may be times when you need a bill code with the rate left at 0; you can adjust the amount of a zero-rate bill code on individual customers or charges.
6. The Period menu does not directly affect the bill code, but you can use it as a reminder of whether this charge is normally Monthly, Quarterly, Other, etc.
7. For Type of Charge, choose whether the rate is:

• Flat: Charging a set amount of money.
• Percentage: Charging a percentage of an existing charge.
• Variable: Charging by the day, ton, unit, cubic yard, etc. (Note that you must have Trash Flow’s Commercial Billing module to create a variable rate bill code.) For variable rate bill codes, the most common units of measure are DAY (for container rental), TON (for landfill fees), YRD (for waste charged by the cubic yard), and EA (for charges per item, such as tires or appliances). If you’re entering a variable-rate code, type the unit exactly as shown above in the Unit of Measure box.
• Variable 4-digit: Same as Variable, but allows for more precise measuring of weights.

8. If you’re using accounting link and this code is being created for a specific account in your accounting program, type that Account # in the box.
9. If you set up fee descriptions earlier, you’ll also see boxes on the right half of this window where you can set whether the bill code you’re creating now will be subject to taxes. Keep in mind that if there is any circumstance under which the bill code will be taxable, all these fields should be checked.
10. Click OK to close this window.

Additional Options

Some of the settings below may not be available in your version of Trash Flow—it depends on which modules of the program you have purchased.

• Minimum Quantity: TipTicket users might want to set a Minimum Quantity on variable-rate codes; this means that if a customer comes across the scale at all you’re going to charge them for at least this much weight, often 1 ton. If you are using the material tracking built into TipTicket you also want to enter a TipTick Material.
• Prorate when needed: If this charge will be assessed to some customers on a regular basis—every month, every quarter, etc.—you may want to check Prorate when needed. This will make it easier to charge customers for partial periods of service later on.
• Surcharge Exempt: You may decide to charge your customers a surcharge (usually for fuel costs) for some jobs; the Surcharge Exempt box here will set whether the particular bill code you’re working on now can be subject to surcharges.
• Inactive: If you decide to stop using a bill code, you can check Inactive; that will prevent it from showing up in the Bill Code selection screen unless you choose to show all bill codes instead of only showing active ones.
• Cost: The Cost box should normally be left unchecked; this is used only if you’re setting up a code to track how much it costs you, the trash hauler, to get rid of refuse.
• LEED Billcode: For TipTicket users tracking waste dumped for a LEED project; checking this tells Trash Flow to include charges made with this bill code when calculating the LEED report.
• TipTick Material: If you have set up different materials for TipTicket use this field to assign the correct material to the bill code.
• Minimum Exempt: Checking this box tells Trash Flow to ignore any minimum charge settings in TipTicket when charging a customer using this bill code.

How do I change the name of a Bill Code?

1. Click System > Setup > Lists > Bill Codes.
2. Select the code you want to change, then click Change Code in the lower-left corner of the window.
3. You can now change the name of the bill code.
4. Click OK to save your changes.