Automated Billing System for Research Facilities
Business Automation • Shared User Facility
Overview
A production automation system for consolidating, validating, and generating monthly billing across shared research facilities. The system replaces manual reconciliation workflows with a scalable, auditable pipeline that integrates legacy lab management data with university financial processes.
Challenge
Billing across multiple shared nanoscience facilities was largely manual and fragmented. Tool usage, access fees, training fees, and materials charges were stored across disparate reports generated by an outdated, Java-based lab management system with no reliable monthly export path.
As a result, billing required extensive manual data extraction and reconciliation, consuming nearly 50% of a full-time staff member’s time each month, increasing error rates, and contributing to delayed or missed invoices.
The Solution
An automated billing system was developed to standardize monthly billing across three shared research facilities, supporting over 120 principal investigators and nearly 500 users per fiscal year. The system consolidates tool usage, training fees, and materials charges from approximately 65 instruments operating continuously, integrating data from available APIs and structured exports from legacy lab management systems.
Billing inputs are normalized and reconciled into project-level summaries that align with university financial and accounting requirements. The platform is implemented as a Python-based automation pipeline that executes scheduled data processing, generates standardized billing outputs for downstream financial systems, and supports automated invoice distribution and follow-up notifications. The system operates on a recurring monthly cadence and is designed to scale as additional facilities and data sources are incorporated.
Results
This automation reduced billing effort by approximately two weeks per month, freeing staff time for higher-value operational work. Billing accuracy and consistency improved, invoice delays were reduced, and overdue payments became easier to track and resolve, resulting in more predictable cash flow for shared facilities.
Future Plans
This system is being extended to support centralized historical data storage and multi-facility reporting. Future integration with the open-source NEMO lab management framework will enable tighter coupling between operational usage data and billing workflows, supporting scalable, institution-wide financial automation for shared research infrastructure.