Billing and posting clerks and machine operators, commonly called billing clerks, calculate charges, develop bills, and prepare them to be mailed to customers. By reviewing purchasing records and making or verifying calculations, they ensure that even the most complicated bills are accurate.
Billing clerks review hospital records, purchase orders, sales tickets, or charge slips to calculate the total amount due from a customer. They must take into account any discounts, special rates, or credit terms. A billing clerk for a trucking company, for example, often needs to consult a rate book to determine shipping costs. A hospital's billing clerk may need to contact an insurance company to determine what items will be reimbursed. In accounting, law, consulting, and similar firms, billing clerks calculate client fees based on the time required to perform the service being purchased. They keep track of the accumulated hours spent on a job, the fees to charge, the type of job performed for a customer, and the percentage of work completed.
After billing clerks review all necessary information, they compute the charges, using calculators or computers. They then prepare itemized statements, bills, or invoices used for billing and recordkeeping purposes. In some organizations, the clerk might prepare a bill containing the amount due and the date and type of service; in others, the clerk might produce a more detailed invoice with codes for all goods and services provided. They might also list the items sold, the terms of credit, the date of shipment or of service, and a salesperson's or doctor's identification.
Computers and specialized billing software allow many clerks to calculate charges and prepare bills in one step. Computer packages prompt clerks to enter data from handwritten forms and to manipulate the necessary information on quantities, labor, and rates to be charged. Billing clerks verify the entry of information and check for errors before the computer prints the bill. After the bills are printed, billing clerks review them again for accuracy. Computer software also allows bills to be sent electronically if both the biller and the customer prefer not to use paper copies; this, coupled with the prevalence of electronic payment options, allows a completely paperless billing process. In offices that are not automated, billing machine operators produce the bill on a billing machine to send to the customer.
In addition to producing invoices, billing clerks may be asked to handle follow-up questions from customers and resolve any discrepancies or errors. Finally, all changes must be entered in the accounting records.
Work environment. Billing clerks typically are employed in an office environment, although a growing number—particularly medical billers—work at home. Most billing clerks work 40 hours per week during regular business hours, though about 16 percent work part time. Billing clerks use computers on a daily basis, so workers may have to sit for extended periods and also may experience eye and muscle strain, backaches, headaches, and repetitive motion injuries.
| 1. | Enter into machines all information needed for bill generation. |
| 2. | Train other calculating machine operators, and review their work. |
| 3. | Operate special billing machines to prepare statements, bills, and invoices. |
| 4. | Operate bookkeeping machines to copy and post data, make computations, and compile records of transactions. |
| 5. | Reconcile and post receipts for cash received by various departments. |
| 6. | Prepare transmittal reports for changes to assessment and tax rolls, redemption file changes, and for warrants, deposits, and invoices. |
| 7. | Encode and add amounts of transaction documents, such as checks or money orders, using encoding machines. |
| 8. | Balance and reconcile batch control totals with source documents or computer listings in order to locate errors, encode correct amounts, or prepare correction records. |
| 9. | Compute payroll and retirement amounts, applying knowledge of payroll deductions, actuarial tables, disability factors, and survivor allowances. |
| 10. | Maintain ledgers and registers, posting charges and refunds to individual funds, and computing and verifying balances. |
| 11. | Compute monies due on personal and real property, inventories, redemption payments and other amounts, applying specialized knowledge of tax rates, formulas, interest rates, and other relevant information. |
| 12. | Verify and post to ledgers purchase orders, reports of goods received, invoices, paid vouchers, and other information. |
| 13. | Assign purchase order numbers to invoices, requisitions, and formal and informal bids. |
| 14. | Verify completeness and accuracy of original documents such as business property statements, tax rolls, invoices, bonds and coupons, and redemption certificates. |
| 15. | Bundle sorted documents to prepare those drawn on other banks for collection. |
| 16. | Transcribe data from office records, using specified forms, billing machines, and transcribing machines. |
| 17. | Sort and list items for proof or collection. |
| 18. | Send completed bills to billing clerks for information verification. |
| 19. | Transfer data from machines, such as encoding machines, to computers. |
| 20. | Sort and microfilm transaction documents, such as checks, using sorting machines. |
| 21. | Observe operation of sorters to locate documents that machines cannot read, and manually record amounts of these documents. |
| 22. | Compile, code, and verify requisition, production, statistical, mileage, and other reports which require specialized knowledge in selecting the totals used. |
| 23. | Clean machines, and replace ribbons, film, and tape. |
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