superhog_personal_notes/invoicing_comeback/README.md

# Invoicing Comeback

As of today (Dec 23) the invoicing process is a mess. It's terribly manual, not elegant at all, it's causing a lot of troubles and is putting the company at risk.

Everyone agrees on it, yet we still need to put a solution in place. The Data Team has been asked to step in and help. This repository aggregates contents on this issue.

## Content index

- `FW Payments and Invoicing process.msg`: some contents sent by Elaine, including Excel sheets they use to merge and process data.
- `step_files`: the Excel sheets mentioned above.
- Invoicing flow chart: a flow chart built by Ben C. with the different steps: https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVMirYfDg=/


## My notes on the video

My notes when watching through the video Ben C. recorded with the Finance team.
Link to the video: https://guardhog-my.sharepoint.com/:v:/g/personal/ben_cotte_superhog_com/EXMpEnpXVmpErLmDedCxpyEBMbYKS4lezEp_gihbbSfsxg?e=eVFhxM

- Jamie has the task of calculating the waivers (can this be divided into a subprocess?)
  - Data is exported out of PowerBI and Acquired and "validated". There are inconsistencies between both sources and the team manually fixes them.
    - What are in the inconsistencies? Why do they happen?
    - If Acquired is the source of truth, why bother export the PowerBI data?
    - Which PowerBI is it exactly? What exact table gets exported?
    - With this, waivers are calculated and payments are reconciled.
  - Some manual information needs to be obtained through the dashboard
    - Which?
    - How can we get it out of the backend without having to go through the UI? Can I make a nice query to fetch this out instead?
  - Info also gets manually searched for in Hubspot and the Acquired dashboard.
  - So, what's not really in PowerBI?
    - Manual refunds
    - Chargebacks
    - Errors 262 from Acquired (PowerBI considers it as paid even though it isn't)
    - Sometimes the payment is simply not in Dashboard at all, so it doesn't appear in PBI.
- Manually convert the currencies (Can I lookup some small excel wizardry to make this simple for them???)
- There are Payment Requests that get manually generated by the Customer Service team in Stripe and sent to customers out-of-process if Acquired fails.
  - Records in Stripe about who the host is, what the booking is, need to be checked manually from the UI
- From Hubspot
  - Get the new clients and pricing structure there
  - Client names in Hubspot and Dashboard are different


Some random thoughts:
- I feel a lot of negativity in the meeting. Everything is deemed hard and not doable. "We are doomed and that's it."
- Would all of these PBI exports be simplified by having direct queries to the databases?
- It feels like Dashboard is not 100% perfectly synced with the Payment Providers?



Fronts:
- Quickish
  - Ease data export from dashboard with tailored queries
  - Formalize things and win spreadsheet agility by simply formalizing and documenting things
  - Somehow make nicer exports from Acquired and/or Stripe
- Longish
  - Remove manual payments from process limbo. We need some degree of organization around there, even if the first version is just a well maintained shared spreadsheet.
  - Single payment processor
  - Integrate payment processor data into a database of ours. Dashboard backend if it makes sense, DWH if it doesn't. Join with Dashboard data.




## Untangling session #1

CANCELLED BECAUSE FINANCE IS NOT AVAILABLE

- Data
  - Acquisition
    - Be clear on what we export and need, ease up process
    - Learn timings, when do we need each bit of data
  - End state
    - How does it look like

- related processes issues
  - Pricing information
    - Current status
    - How to fix this
  - Manual payments
    - Current status
    - How to fix this
  - Stripe vs Acquired
  - FX Rates accessibility