The KOMAND Universal Charging System (UCS) provides resource accounting and user chargeback for an infinite variety of IBM and non-IBM hardware, software, and operating systems. Any system that is capable of producing machine readable records may be tracked and charged back through UCS.

UCS accomodates tracking such diverse systems as: ADABAS, tape management, manpower accounting, PBX telephone charges, terminal management, etc.. Each of the above systems produces a different format record. You may think for a single charging and resource accounting system to read and interpret so many different data types would require some form of user written front-end. This is not the case with UCS. The chargeback administrator simply fills out a Data Definition Table (DDT) describing the format of the input data. There is no code to write or consultants to call back to add new systems or modify existing parameters.

The unique UCS Data Definition Table concept supports multiple record inputs. It is possible, for instance, to process both a logon and logoff record and calculate the time difference to create and apply a charge for connect time. Up to fifty unique resources per record may be identified and charged for each input record.

PACE maintains a library of DDT’s for all UCS customers. Some of the DDT’s already available for charging are:

AS/400; DOS/VSE; NOVELL; CA-1(TMS)

And New for 2003: Webshpere and MQSeries

Any character or group of characters found in the input record(s) may be used to determine the billing entity responsible for the transaction. It is also possible to use exit points and translation tables for users to assign transaction ownership.

Table maintenance may be performed through the KOMAND Information Manager (KIM) running on a Windows 98/2000/2003, XP or Windows NT system.

As with the other KOMAND charging systems, UCS offers many options for the chargeback administrator. Shift accounting is available for weekday, weekend, or holiday charging. Shift costs may be applied to the individual resource or at the transaction level. Any field in the input record may be used to apply "special" costing options such as:

• Free - track the resource consumption, but do not apply a charge
• Drop - do not track this transaction at all
• Extra - apply a surcharge to basic resource charges
• Fixed - apply a flat rate charge rather than charge by resource consumed

Costed records produced by UCS may be at the summary (account) level or at the detail (transaction) level.