| The Billing and Accounts Receivables System, or BARS, developed by University of Maryland staffers Ann Holmes and Muddu Salem has recently been non-exclusively licensed by two universities within the University System of Maryland. The BARS technology reduces the cycle time required to bill and collect revenue from both federal and private sponsors of research and development projects by automating the creation of invoices and the tracking of receivables. The system also substantially reduces the labor costs associated with maintaining and administering the financial aspects of sponsored research and development project awards.
BARS is an integrated system that eliminates duplicate entry of data by accepting downloads of award data from the pre-award system. The data is then reviewed in BARS and uploaded into the accounting system. Expense and payment data is shared between the systems via daily batch files. Holmes and Salem developed BARS to work with SCT Corporation's Financial Records System, also known as FRS, but it can be modified to work with any accounting system.
Highlights of BARS include: - Automatic creation of invoices to sponsors based on requirements of the contract or grant. Invoices can be created on U.S. federal government-approved forms, such as the Office of Management and Budget-approved 269 and 270 forms.
- Functionality to send copies of invoices to third parties.
- Electronic storage of all invoices created.
- Logic to capture common billing problems such as overspending and insufficient billing information.
- Capabilities for the reviewing of invoices before production.
- Creation and maintenance of accounts receivable records such as invoices are produced by the system.
- Integrated payment processing that allows daily updates of funds received and postings of the receipts in both BARS and the accounting system. - Management reports that allow for monitoring workflow.
- Accounts receivable reports by sponsor or user that assist in the collection of funds and track the performance of the staff.
- Management of letter-of-credit draws on an account-by-account basis.
Currently BARS is only available to organizations and institutions within the state of Maryland. However, the university it researching several options for the distribution of BARS on a commercial basis to a nation-wide market. For more information about BARS, contact the university's Office of Technology Commercialization (OTC) at 301-405-3947.
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