Scanning Setups
KEY VALUE	What it does ...
QUICK-SCAN-[trancode]	The QUICK-SCAN-xxxx setup is used when you have a fixed length scanline on your source billing documents. The program also supports an alternate format (see next setting) for use when your documents have a variable length scan line. This setting tells the program how to process scan lines from BarCode or OCR documents. The key value is made of three parts - the first is the word QUICK. The second portion is the word SCAN and the third is the specific transaction code that this rule applies to. The three portions of the key value are separated by dashes. The square brackets shown above are there just for reference - they are not included in the actual key value ... which might look like this: QUICK-SCAN-1000 The data value you will enter consists of four two digit numbers, separated by dashes. 01-10-11-08 The four groups of numbers define the barcoded scanline to the program. Each value must be present in the following order: Starting Position of Account Number Size of The Account Number Starting Position of Scan line Account Number Size of Amount Field in the Scan Line You need to adjust the specific setting values to match your site-specific scan line. In most cases, the scan line consists to a contiguous string of digits, with the account number field first, followed by the amount. The program requires by the account # and amount field to be fixed size fields for the edit mask to work properly. Typically the account number is between 8 and 12 characters, and the amount field is usually 8 or 10. The program can handle amounts with or without a decimal point in the scan line. If there is no decimal present the program will divide the scanned amount by 100 to determine the proper value. If the 3rd and 4th pair of numbers, which define the starting position and size of the amount field, are set to zeros (e.g., 01-10- 00-00) the program will ignore the scan line amount field and simply let the operator put in the amount manually. If they are set to non-zero values then the program will assume the customer is paying what the scan line says they should. This can be manually overridden in need be. If you have linked your trancode for scanning to a look up file we suggest you set the values to 00-00 and let the program determine the amount due from the lookup database instead of the scan line. In addition to setting up the QUICK-SCAN-[trancode] entry in the misc parms table, you also need to create an entry in the EDITMASKS table to tell the program what a normal scan line looks like. If the scan line is 18 digits long, you'd need an EDITMASK defined with 18 #'s in it, and the key value you use for the edit mask would have to be set in the EDIT-MASK-KEY value in the specific trancode to be used for scanning. For example, if you set up an edit mask of UBSCAN with a value of ################## the setting for the EDIT-MASK-KEY field in the trancodes table would be UBSCAN. This is how the program knows it has make a good scan (complete # of characters).
PARSE-SCAN-[trancode]	The PARSE-SCAN-xxxx setup is used when you have a variable length scan line on your source billing documents. This mode of scanning assumes the account and amount fields are both present on the scan line, but separated by a delimiter character such as a / (which is the default value). The account number field MUST be on the left side of the delimiter character, and the amount value must be on the right side, for example 01-1234-55/45.67 01-6663-33/7.89 01-3311-45/5678.45 Create a new miscparm key value in the general form of PARSE-SCAN-[trancode]. If your trancode for scanning is 0500, the complete key would be PARSE-SCAN-0500. The TEXT_VALUE field should be the character used as your delimiter (most likely a /). When the program sees this setting it will use the delimiter character to determine the account number (to the left of the delimiter) and then use this value to perform the customer account inquiry. The amount portion of the scan line to the right side of the account number field will be discarded and the current balance due will be retrieved from the customer database. IMPORTANT NOTE: If you have a QUICK-SCAN-xxxx record in the MISCPARMS table and wish to use the PARSE-SCAN-xxxx method in its place delete the QUICK-SCAN-xxxxentry. The program can handle only one of these two methods at a time for any given trancode. Also, you can't need an EDIT-MASK for this type of scanning, as the program requires a fixed size edit mask when these are used. Delete the edit-mask-key value from the TRANCODE table AND from the EDITMASKS table to insure that it does not confuse the program logic. Please note that if you are in a transition period between old style fixed-size scan lines and the newer variable length scan lines and customers are presenting both types of documents, you can use a separate trancode for each scanline format to support scanning of either document type (via separate QUICK-SCAN-xxxx and PARSE-SCAN-yyyy settings for each. The system has no way to automatically determine which scan format is being used so the operator would have to select the correct trancode in order to start the process of posting a receipt with each specific document type.