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DOI

REDCap Automated Billing is an automated, data-driven service billing system for a REDCap system. The University of Florida’s CTS-IT designed and wrote this system to charge a modest annual fee for each project and bill for customer support work logged in a REDCap-based service request system. This generates revenue, reduces data privacy risks by incentivizing the deletion of abandoned projects, and improves the quality of research productivity metrics.

Motivation

  • Generate revenue to offset costs and improve service.
  • Reduce data exposure risk via deletion of unneeded things.
  • Improve the quality of metrics by not counting junk projects.
  • Reduce support staff workload.

What we learned

  • We can make money by charging for REDCap services.
  • Charges are a tool to incentivize customer behavior.
  • Good people data and project ownership data are required.
  • There is no such thing as over-communication.
  • Partner with your fiscal team.
  • Use an incremental and iterative approach.
  • Automate everything.

Novel Concepts

REDCap Automated Billing introduces some concepts outside the normal scope of a REDCap system. These are described in Novel Concepts

Billing for support work

The complexities of billing for REDCap support work are described in Billing for REDCap support work

Business workflows

When jobs run

Most ETLs and reports are run in a regular basis via Cron. The schedule of those events can be found at When jobs run