REDCap Automated Billing

REDCap Automated Billing is an automated, data-driven service billing system for a REDCap system. The University of Florida’s CTS-IT designed and wrote this system to charge a modest annual fee for each project and bill for customer support work logged in a REDCap-based service request system. This generates revenue, reduces data privacy risks by incentivizing the deletion of abandoned projects, and improves the quality of research productivity metrics.

Motivation

• Generate revenue to offset costs and improve service.
• Reduce data exposure risk via deletion of unneeded things.
• Improve the quality of metrics by not counting junk projects.
• Reduce support staff workload.

What we learned

• We can make money by charging for REDCap services.
• Charges are a tool to incentivize customer behavior.
• Good people data and project ownership data are required.
• There is no such thing as over-communication.
• Partner with your fiscal team.
• Use an incremental and iterative approach.
• Automate everything.

Novel Concepts

REDCap Automated Billing introduces some concepts outside the normal scope of a REDCap system. These are described in Novel Concepts

Billing for support work

The complexities of billing for REDCap support work are described in Billing for REDCap support work

Business workflows

• Cleaning person data

  • cleanup_bad_email_addresses
  • cleanup_bad_project_pi_email_addresses

• Cleaning ownership data

  • cleanup_project_ownership_table
  • Ban accounts/emails of people who left your institution. See update_invoice_line_items_with_invoicing_details

• Exempt special people and special projects from billing

  • update_project_billable_attribute

• Manage abandoned projects

  • delete_abandoned_projects
  • sequester_orphans

• Create & Manage charging records

  • create_and_send_new_invoice_line_items
  • update_invoice_line_items_with_invoicing_details
  • sequester_unpaid_projects
  • cancel_invoice_line_items (Ad hoc)

• Manage organizational data

  • write_uf_fiscal_orgs_to_org_hierarchies (temporarily disabled)
  • write_uf_fiscal_orgs_to_person_org (temporarily disabled)

• Manage pro bono service request work

  • update_free_support_time_remaining
  • update_probono_service_request_records

• Internal reporting

  • billable_candidates
  • revenue_status_and_projections

• Manage customer communications

  • remind_owners_to_review_ownership
  • request_correction_of_bad_ownership_data
  • warn_owners_of_impending_bill

When jobs run

Most ETLs and reports are run in a regular basis via Cron. The schedule of those events can be found at When jobs run