UNDERSTANDING YOUR CARI BILL

CARI manages its billing and accounts receivable through RAMS-FORCE, VCU’s internal billing system. On a bi-weekly basis, CARI personnel submit billing information for services rendered to our users. Upon entry into RAMS-FORCE, these services are considered “orders” and assigned an order number (ORxxxxxxxx).

At the close of each month, RAMS-FORCE totals all open orders and creates an invoice and invoice number (IIxxxxxxxx) for each PI/index combination. It is that invoice number and total that will post to each Banner index.

For example, on July 1, RAMS-FORCE will total all open orders in the system (typically everything physically entered in during the month of June) and invoice. PIs and fiscal administrators have the ability to log into RAMS-FORCE and download invoices for their financial records. Click here to see “RAMSFORCE-How_to_Retrieve_an_Invoice_Copy.pdf”.

A couple of things to note:

1. Because of the limitations of the RAMS-FORCE system (one may not back-date), please note the “Date of Service” is actually the date of data entry. For the actual date of service, please refer to the “Additional Comments” section of the order. Here is where CARI records the actual date of service and the participant ID number.

2. Because of the schedule by which billing data is entered into RAMS-FORCE and the monthly cut-off date invoicing is run, the following service dates typically align with the following monthly banner posting periods:

• July = 5/16 to 5/31 and 6/1 to 6/15
• August = 6/16 to 6/30 and 7/1 to 7/15
• September = 7/16 to 7/31 and 8/1 to 8/15
• October = 8/16 to 8/31 and 9/1 to 9/15
• November = 9/16 to 9/30 and 10/1 to 10/15
• December = 10/16 to 10/31 and 11/1 to 11/15
• January = 11/16 to 11/30 and 12/1 to 12/15
• February = 12/16 to 12/31 and 1/1 to 1/15
• March = 1/16 to 1/31 and 2/1 to 2/15
• April = 2/16 to 2/28 and 3/1 to 3/15
• May = 3/16 to 3/31 and 4/1 to 4/15
• June = 4/16 to 4/30 and 5/1 to 5/15