PilotFish Interface Exchange (PIE)

In the insurance industry, carriers work with a variety of service providers, each with their own, unique products and pricing. At the end of each billing period, the carrier will receive an invoice – sometimes paper, sometimes electronic, with hundreds if not thousands of individual line items. The carrier is then faced with choosing the lesser of two evils. They may remit payment without detailed review, leading to possible overpayment. Alternatively, they may undertake a manually-intense reconciliation effort, matching each line item to services rendered. The gamble in this scenario is that the cost of time spent will be less than the amount recovered as a result of errors discovered. Even when this option is chosen, the information on the invoice is often insufficient to associate a charge with a specific requirement.

Service providers face a related set of challenges in managing accounts receivable. Each customer that does have an electronic billing process is likely to dictate their own data format and transmission protocol. Many will not provide any meaningful feedback after the initial invoice is sent, leaving the provider without the right information to follow up on disputed items or to chase aging bills.

The ACORD XML standards offer a solution to this costly dilemma with the introduction of the Automated Vendor Invoicing transactions. PilotFish has been deeply involved in the first production implementations of these transactions. Based on that real-life implementation experience, we are pleased to announce the general availability of the Automated Vendor Invoicing Bundle for the XCS eiConsole. The Automated Vendor Invoicing Bundle includes transaction templates for production-tested ACORD AVI messages, including:

For Carriers:

• Receive ACORD 118 Invoice
• Submit ACORD 1119 Invoice Status

For Service Providers:

• Submit ACORD 118 Invoice

• Receive ACORD 1119 Invoice Status

Each transaction template includes the following features:

• A paint-by-numbers mapping template, with the full structure of the ACORD 118/1119 preconfigured and ready for your configuration.

• A sample data transformation, demonstrating how a proprietary invoice format (e.g., a spreadsheet) can be converted into or generated from given ACORD AVI transaction.

• An example interface topology, complete with secure web services endpoints for the submission and receipt of each message type.

The Automated Vendor Invoicing Bundle also includes a step-by-step “Getting Started” tutorial and discounted implementation services package.