Mod note: Additional adCenter Billing update information posted for July 25th

http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=12900
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Hello everyone,

I just wanted to let you know that our product team is making some more updates to our billing system between 8 am and 7 pm PST Sunday, July 23.

During this time the "Accounts & Billing" tab will be unavailable, and Budget and Billing reports will not be available.

The rest of the service will be available and your campaigns will continue to run.

Thanks!
adCenter411

Thanks for the heads up, and for keeping everyone informed!

Great!! What kind of updates? Any new reporting features? Like being able to run a report for adjustments, reports of actual spends (totals minus adjustments) etc.?

adCenter411,
My jaw drops again. What did they do? Not only are there no new billing reports, they have changed EVERY invoice they had in my client's account. Where have the adjustments gone to? I had invoices that showed adjustments for MOST of the days this account has been open. I have been back through EVERY invoice since this was opened until today and NOT ONE adjustment is listed any longer. I can't check it against the old invoices because I no longer have access to them.
This was not an upgrade, it was a regression to WORSE reporting than there was before. Now are you saying I can't have adjustments broken out by invoice, day, or anything, and I will never be able to get a report that shows total adjustments? How is this better? How can you possibly think that going back and changing EVERY invoice you have given me in the past is a smart thing? I am now having my client verify every charge that has been made to his account and am looking for inconsistencies. If there is even one, I will recomend that he boot MSN becuase these billing issues are the ones that scare me most. With NO billing department you can't even answer the questions with any athourity.

(re-posted from similar thread)

MSI and Community,
I am reaching out to you all regarding the issue MSI noted earlier today. In order to look into the issue further, it would help greatly to have an old invoice (prior to the weekend update) and a new invoice. I know that may be difficult unless you've saved previous invoices to your desktop.

If you, too, are seeing differences in your invoices and have access to an "old" and "new" one, please PM me so that I may look into it further.

Thanks,
adCenter411

adCenter411,
I got a charge statement from my client that covered 5/22 to 6/24. The charges match exactly the invoice totals. This is a good thing, but doesn't explain where the adjustments have gone. I'm assuming they have just started inluding them as negative clicks in the click totals but this is NOT acceptable. I've been begging for months for them to get better reporting of these adjustments, now they have taken a step back. My last client is in an industry that is extremely competative and we find MANY fraudulent clicks on the other search engines. As an example we got a $16k refund for June in Yahoo on a spend of about $250k. That is ABOVE what their system catches automatically. I keep a close eye on traffic that I think is suspicious. I CAN'T do that with you all because I can't even figure out what order the adjustments went to now. At least before the adjustments were broken down by order in the invoice. Now I can't even figure out what they are at all. Invoices are not kept by days, but by billing levels. I can not run a report and subtract an invoice to figure adjustments because I can not run an account performance report for the period covered by any invoice. Or run a report on the invioces to show chrages broken down by specific days. Accounting issues are getting WORSE by the day. I think it is time that MSN drop everything else they are working on and address these issues ASAP. Your client base will never grow through me if you can't start addressing these billing issues in a more proffessional manor......

And more about an unexpected Billing Center update posted here:

http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=12900

Kudos adCenter411,
They put our ajdustments back where they should be in the invoices. That's the fastest I've ever seen them fix anything. Now, if I could just run a report on the adjustments...............

I want to thank MSI for alerting us to the billing bug in this forum. The adCenter product team specifically asked me to thank you because your escalation allowed us to act quickly and resolve the issue last night.

We value your feedback here, so please keep it coming.

Thanks!
adCenter411

Thanks,
Be sure to let them know I appreciate the speed with which they fixed it. :)

I found other problems that could be related to this update. I tried to run a Budget Summary Report by Day for This Month In Days. After 2 HOURS of it being "in process", it now says FAILED! Why is this? I can not get any reports on my spend now. And OF COURSE WITH NO BILLING DEPARTMENT there is no way to get these stats at all today. During this two hours of waiting, I found another problem. I ran a budget summary for today and one for yesterday. I am going to round off numbers, but I think they will be good enough to show my point. The report for yesterday says we spent $2115. That's ok, but the MTD in the report shows $2115 too. Then I ran the reoprt for today and it says we spent $587 so far today and the MTD total on this report was $2540!!! Now considering this account has spent over $50,000 this month already, where are these MTD numers comming from????

Once again might I say that these billing issues and lack of accounting or reports for the spend of my client is extremely unproffessional and in need of IMMEDIATE attention.

I found another problem and want to give every one an update about the others.

I found that when I did finally get the month by day report, that it says I had a -$6 spend for one day. How is that possible? When you figure that the account performance shows almost $3000 business for the same day? I've been told for 2 1/2 months now, by every customer service rep, that these reports do NOT reflect any adjustments. If that was true these totals could never be below zero EVER. And I promise you I did not get a credit that big anyway. The invoice that includes this day (and parts of two others) says there were $52 in adjustments, but not $3000!!! Another reporting glitch?

And as far as the other goes, I got an e-mail from adCenter411's "stand-in" for the day. "They are working on it", sound familiar?

Here is the answer I got from the QuickLaunch customer service team....

"As promised I am contacting you to update you on the issue of your Budget Summary report showing - $6.51.
What I was able to find out is that when running a Budget Summary report you will receive information that may or may not be 100% correct dependant upon the time of the day/week/month and the information that is being requested. As well the information in the Budget Summary report can vary based upon when the database has been updated."

I ran this report on 7/28. The -$6 day was on 7/5, they KNOW THAT. Are you telling me that 23 days later these totals can still VARY??? They say it is reported correctly in the accounts and billing tab, so that should be good enough. They don't seem to care that the budget report is wrong at all. This is totally unacceptable as an answer to my question. But look what else this says....


"I would like to think that this will continue to be looked into due to the fact that the Budget Summary report was not available at the time of this update. However I am not sure if that will be the case."

This is really my answer?? REALLY??

And I recieved this in an e-mail this morning....

"I wanted to contact you today and let you know that I have looked into the issue again for you and there is no other information available to me at this time.

What I provided you with yesterday is as much as I am able to receive. By the looks of it, this is no longer in escalation and is considered resolved."


I have run this report several times since the first time and still get the same totals. Why is it happening? There is no excuse...

MSI,
I wanted to let you and the other forum readers know that all of the issues you've noticed recently in youy Budget Summary report are being escalated internally. The service email you received this morning saying that the issue is resolved was incorrect, and I apologize for the misinformation. We have been able document all of your concerns and I will be posting here with any and all resolutions as they become available. Again, I thank you for your feedback as it is our number one source for tool fixes and enhancements.
Best,
adCenter411

Thank you adCenter411,
I am glad to know they are still looking into it. I'll be awaiting updates as they are available.

I can't believe it, here is my answer.....

"I got information for you regarding the data you’re seeing for July 5th.

We have two stamps for any set of transactions (two views), the first is one the actual click occurred (this would be what shows up in all delivery reports) the second is when the transaction was actually recognized (or booked) from a revenue perspective (all Financial reports). Usually the differences here are measured in minutes or an hour, however, in some cases we have what we call a late log situation. In this scenario, some of the logs from delivery are delayed, extending the time lag between the transaction date and the recognition date. This is not dissimilar to a credit card bill where you your purchase date might be different from when the charge was cleared (up to 10 day difference)."

Here was my reply....

"Let me see if I got this right. The daily budget summary report is less reliable than a daily account performance report for telling me what I am actually spending in a day. The budget summary by your definition is only reporting the budget as you charge it to me just like the invoices. What good does this report do then? How can you call it a DAILY budget summary when you are reporting the click charges when it is convenient for MSN to and not the actual day they are occurring? That makes this report useless. And might I add that still does not explain away the negative balance since the budget summary (according to EVERYONE) does not include adjustments. It still should never be less than zero!! I still want an answer as to why it is negative. Bottom line is that there are NO budget or accounting type reports that accurately report my client's spending for any given day and this is UNACCEPTABLE. "

Does anyone else agree that this is idiocy?

MSI,

If you just need somebody to agree with you, count me in. That may help you feel better but my input is virtually useless in trying to get anything done at MSN.

Hope you can find somebody bigger and more important to help you push this through ast MSN.

I think one of your biggest frustrations is that very little actually gets posted about the problems at MSN. I wouldn't look for that to change, since it appears more and more people appear to "try but NOT buy".

JB,
I don't just need to feel better, I need numbers to get a fire lit under MSN. What problems do they seem to address quickly? Only ones where many of us have complained together in these public forums. It is obvious they can't put together multiple complaints on the same issue through the customer service department.

I totally agree with your comments MSI. My account budget is not close to yours, but I do run ads that I co-op for others. In order for me to know when the co-op spend amount has been met, I need accurate reports (daily, monthly, specific date ranges).

As a software engineer, I cannot understand why MSN is unable to make reporting work correctly.

Google and Yahoo have clear, accurate, and fairly fast reporting. What is the problem at MSN?

This is my #1 issue with MSN and it makes it extremely difficult to run my ad campaigns when budget and performance reporting is so poor or completely unavailable.

Come on MSN, this isn't rocket science!
...
Mike

Mike,
Thanks for your support on this issue. I did want everyone to know the final outcome of this problem. My -6.51 total on 7/5 is correct. The budget reports DO include adjustments and the time stamp issue moved the rest of that day's business to the following day. Of course that makes this report useless, with the time stamp issue being the problem really. I need the DAILY budget report to show me the true budget for each day, I don't need 2 or 3 days business thrown into one day because financial time stamps are different than performance time stamps. I can not, in ANY report right now, get the spend for any individual day minus adjustments so I know my client's bottom line for the day.

So in review it took MSN 1 1/2 months to come up with the answer that what I am seeing is what the system is set up to show me. Why was NO ONE able to tell me that sooner? Does NO ONE in customer service have a clue how the system works? What good are they for tech support then? For four months I have been told that budget reports do not include adjustments by EVERY rep I asked. Now MSN has beem told, but that is because I complained (I believe) and they finally had a meeting and told them all in the last few days.

I'm not a software engineer like you Mike, but I have done enough database coding myself in the past to understand they should not be having these big problems with reporting and should be able to give us what we need.....ACCURATE and USEFUL reporting to be able to optimize these accounts on a daily basis and account for every dime that is spent. I don't think that is asking too much.