University ITS
Data Administration

Monthly Job Accounting and Billing Reports (JARS)

Description

Monthly Billing (JARS) is used by the Business Office to bill paying accounts for use of the mainframe server and for computer resources, disk space, printing, etc. The system was orginally fed by CA-JARS job accounting and data collection software, hence the name JARS, but is now run using CA-MICS information. MICS data is extracted by SAS programs and the data is reformatted for reporting. A FOCUS file is created for Business Office use. This file contains summary information from the billing reports.

The Monthly Billing job, J0001R01, is run monthly any time after the third day of the month. MICS summarizes the previous months data on the third day of each month. The MICS Administrator; Mark Wiggins as of this date; also sets two MICS global variables on the third. This data is used by Monthly Billing to define the month that is being reported. If this is not changed, the data from 2 months ago will be extracted again. This will cause duplicate data to be loaded to the FOCUS file and the FOCUS file must be restored before rerunning the billing job. Monthly Billing data is extracted from the previous 50 days of MICS data. This allows for some flexibility in the time of the month J0001R01 is run. The Business Office provides adjustments to billing that are included for each run. This data is stored on the BILLING account on the 291 disk. The filename and filetype for these files is 'CAJARS mmmyy'.

When J0001R01 is scheduled, the J0001R01 EXEC is run to include the adjustment data from BILLING and setup the job. This job can run any time after 11:00 am during the day. Prior to this time MICS is collecting the previous day's data and will lock out J0001R01, causing it to abend.

The FOCUS file, 'PRO.JARS.D0001Xyy', is updated by J0001R01 each month of the fiscal year and a new file is created for the coming year after the job runs in July. The first run of each year is in August and extracts July data. The last run is in July, extracting June data. The request for the new file should be submitted by the Business Office. J0001R01 JCL must be changed to use the new file prior to the first run of the year in August. This is done in AUTODOC.

Major Components of the Monthly Billing system.

J0001R01: This is the Monthly Billing job.
J0001R01 EXEC: This EXEC includes adjustments to billing in the job when the job is scheduled.
CAJARS mmmyy: This is the file containing adjustments to Monthly Billing. It is stored on the BILLING 291 disk.
PRO.JARS.D0001Xyy: The Monthly Billing Summary FOCUS file. It is used for ad hoc reports by the Business Office.
MICS: The accounting software that collects job accounting data from the system. Extracts for Monthly Billing are from the MICS database.
C0001R0n: C0001R01, '02, & '03 are the SAS extract programs used by J0001R01. They are stored in PRO.CTLLIB.
E0001X0n: E0001X01, '02, & '03 are the EZTPLUS report formatting programs used by J0001R01. They are stored in PRO.EZTLIB.
&MNTH_NUM: This is the MICS global variable that is set for the month being reported. This is set to the previous month, ie. in May this is set to 04 for April's data. This variable is stored in members UCHEAD and UCFYHEAD in PDS library MICS6.MACAUTOS.
&MONTHYR: This is the MICS global variable that is included in the report title. This is set to the previous month and includes the year. This would be set to APR 1999 if the job is run in May of 1999. This variable is stored in members UCHEAD and UCFYHEAD in PDS library MICS6.MACAUTOS.

Important milestones for the Monthly Billing system.

July: The first month of the Billing cycle. The new FOCUS file is created and J0001R01 is changed to use the new file.
June: This is the last month of the Billing cycle.
The third of the month: Monthly Billing can be run after this day each month. MICS data for the previous month is summarized and the month counter is changed by the MICS Administrator.
Previous 50 days: Monthly Billing only looks back for the previous 50 days to extract data. This reduces the size of the extract file, which can be quite large. If J0001R01 is run after 50 days past the first of the previous month, the extracts must be changed to include more days. See the MICS Administrator for instructions about changing this in the SAS extract programs.