Integrating with 3rd Party Billing Systems

Also worth checking out is the new Product Integrations page for more details on all types of integrations.

Professional and commercial environments such as Law Firms, Accountancy Practices, Architecture Firms and some Higher Education sites may require transactions from PaperCut to appear on statements or bills for a client. Integrating print cost recovery with 3rd party billing systems (Finance Packages) enables this.

In our experience, two flows of information need to be considered before deployment:

Information in

The first conversation to have on this topic is how PaperCut will be kept up to date with the codes that users should charge to. These are referred to as matter codes, client codes, job numbers, case numbers, etc.. In order to export transactions to a finance package, it’s important that users are charging against valid codes in these systems and therefore important to understand how we can access a list of current and valid codes. PaperCut looks for a definitive list and structure of Shared Accounts.

Information out

The finance package will often prescribe a format of export that must be met if transactions from PaperCut are to be successfully imported. This format will define if the file is comma-delimited or tab-delimited, if transactions should be summaries against an account code, if each transaction should be exported against an account code with a date/time stamp and so on. With this in mind, PaperCut doesn’t provide any out-of-the-box plug-in for any Finance Package type, though many successful integrations have been performed by our valued Authorized Solution Center (ASC) network.

Process

An ASC working with a customer will follow a process of:

Choosing the best information in process.

PaperCut has a number of out-of-the-box solutions for importing Shared Accounts. If the Finance Package can meet this format, then PaperCut will natively import it and keep up to date with the matter list. If the formats are similar, then an ASC will be able to massage the export into the required format with some scripting. If the formats are significantly different, in a source other than file, or the rules for creation are complex, PaperCut provides a rich API set to allow for an ASC to create a custom solution.

Choosing the best information out process.

As with the import process, PaperCut also provides an out-of-the-box export process, where transactions can be written to file in CSV format. If the Finance Package is flexible enough to work with these formats, then the export process is complete. If the formats are similar, an ASC will be able to help transform these formats with some scripting. Once again, if the formats are significantly different, deploying PaperCut onto an instance of an RDBMS will allow the ASC to develop a custom view of the transactions and generate these to file as needed.

If you have any questions about choosing the right process or guidance through an integration, please contact us via ( http://support.papercut.com ) .

If you are interested in any of our other 3rd Party Integrations, view our full list here.