PRODUCT CUSTOMIZATION EXAMPLE



Logo © Copyright Airport Terminal Services


AIRPORT TERMINAL SERVICES (ATS)
St. Louis, Missouri

Labor Scheduling, Production Control, Cost Reporting, & Financial Information Systems

Moving, maintaining, cleaning, cargo loading, deicing, and fueling aircraft on the crowded airport terminal tarmacs of North America along with passenger ticketing, VIP lounge servicing, boarding, and baggage handling are the primary functions of Airport Terminal Services (ATS).  ATS clients include both airlines and municipal terminals.  ATS employees serve in approximately 50 locations throughout North America.  Unibased provides all of the ATS information systems and support.  The current systems were developed over several years and continue to evolve as new terminals, requirements, and countries are added.

Servicing airlines and terminals is a highly competitive industry and ATS is one of the few firms that succeed year after year.  Contracts are awarded based upon competitive proposals, which guarantee costs per contractual line items.  Typically, contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder.  In order to maintain profitability, labor and gate schedules and related costs are managed in a truly real-time environment.  For example, billings for contractual line items occur at the time of services.  Costs also are collected at this time and are based upon real-time collection of labor and materials data.  Other variable costs, such as local fuel procurements, are also collected at this time.  The profitability of the line item billings is known immediately.  Receivables and cash flow management begin prior to the loaded aircraft pulling away from the terminal.  Resource utilization and productivity are key to profitability and service quality.

Scanners and handheld data collection devices are employed on the tarmac and within the terminal, data communicated to the St. Louis headquarters and data center through secure Internet linkages, posted and billed electronically to the airlines or terminal clients.  Payments and credits are received in a similar fashion.  With 50 locations and 4,000 employees distributed throughout North America, real-time communication is a critical component.  CITRIX is widely used as the platform of choice.  A wintel-based server environment processes more than 50,000 transactions daily at the St. Louis Westport data center.

Unibased began its relationship with ATS by initially providing a modified real-time integrated hospital information system that included payroll and human resources, time reporting and employee scheduling, inventory, billing and accounts receivable, charge management and collection, accounts payable, general ledger, budgeting and security.  Since the inception, the systems have been modified extensively and upgraded on an as needed basis.  Today, these systems are totally integrated, multi-entity, multi-currency, and profile driven.  (Many of the system components are also utilized internally by Unibased for financial and administrative purposes.)  Highlights of the financial system are included in the following paragraphs.

ATS Financial System

The General Ledger is fully integrated with all other modules.  Each detail entry in G/L is easily traced back (with a point and click method) to a display of the original process generating the entry.  Budget entries are uploaded for Excel input data.  Each inquiry can be customized to show as much detail as needed or in a summary format provided.

The Payroll module is fully integrated with the Employee Scheduling/Time Reporting module.  The only separate module in the entire financial system is the one attached to each time clock at each location, which downloads rings from the clock into a local database.  These rings are then uploaded to the corporate financial system, where all processing is accomplished.  Employee taxes, benefits, and deductions are profile driven.  A payroll check run may be processed in a non-final mode to view detail results (including G/L detail) without actually posting any results.  The check run includes an interface to Accounts Payable for garnishments.  Multiple checks per employee may be included in any check run.  Taxes, deductions, and benefits may be turned off or on by check group.  The detail results of any final check run are retained as historical data.

The Accounts Receivable module features allowing invoices to be created in a temporary working area and not be finalized until the results are satisfactory.  Each location processes charges on a real-time basis.  Specific billing requirements such as contract, time, locations of service, billing addresses, etc. are linked to a Contract Profile.  For example, the profile enables the station to process all taxes on a charge-by-charge basis.

The Accounts Payable module allows a single invoice to be allocated to each entity.  Recurring payments are posted to future periods to be processed and posted to the General Ledger.  Multiple invoices may be entered, but the user has the option to select one or more to be paid at any given time.

SUMMARY

Security and passenger/crew safety are viewed as the most important elements of the system.  A complete audit trail of all transactions is available real-time for evaluation and investigation.  Exception alerts, based upon standards for operations, are provided at all levels.  2008 completed 15 years of Unibased services to ATS.  For anyone who travels frequently, as you look out of your aircraft window and see equipment, bags, supplies, and people, it is highly likely you are seeing Unibased supported ATS employees and services.