new for this week

This week we pushed out Appendix 14 to the CARS Website.

I had hinted at this last week about giving you some sort of documentation how to take an Excel export and create a working XML invoice that you can upload into CARS.

The link to the CARS Website where you can find Appendix 14 is here.

Another thing that I got a sneak peek at today is a WisDOT notification to help us identify when invoices are aging. We have a dashboard similar to what consultants have, except on ours we have a timeline to get invoices approved, which is 30 days. When an invoice sits inside someones CARS Application for more than 10 days without it being approved, the invoice shows up as a yellow status. If the invoice is more than 20 days since submitted, the status shows the invoice as red in color. Just another neat thing for us to make sure we are getting done with the work on time.

Finally, just when I thought I would see a lull in firms signing up to use CARS, I got about 3 or 4 smaller firms into CARS today. If you are working on invoicing and have subs that are not familiar with CARS, please enlighten them so we can get them all into the application.

The list of all firms in CARS is here.

The link to the CARS Training Videos is here.

what we're doing now

Our training period has concluded in CARS, which only means we move onto making the application better.

One of the big fixes that is upcoming is notifications. We've got thousands of "active" project/contracts in CARS that we're busy assigning roles to. If you have attended training, one thing I've always reminded you was that when you submit an invoice into CARS, you need to email the project manager to alert them of the invoice. You still need to do this. 

In the meantime, we're busy assigning who will be notified and who will be approving each and every one of those invoices when they come in. We're also busy working on notifications for you. For instance, if an invoice is paid, everyone who was part of the invoice (primes and subs) will be notified via email. If you don't have someone with the notification role for the particular project, the administrator for your firm will get the email. There are a bunch of different notifications we are working on for you.

For now, continue to email your PM when you send in an invoice. I will make sure to keep you up to date on when notifications are working in CARS. I'll also make sure to email the vendor administrators of this change as well.

Another thing we're working on is some XML documentation. While our solution is not the one button fixes all approach, it could operate as a work around. Look for that update in the manual sometime next week.

Finally, there are a lot of invoices coming and going in CARS. I feel like I'm getting a lot of questions, which is great, but I'm monitoring CARS all day to see a lot of invoices getting submitted and paid. I feel like there's a lot happening behind my back, which is really neat.

The list of firms trained in CARS is here.

The link to training videos of CARS is here.

end of CARS Training - summary

This week marks the end of our CARS Training for WisDOT and consultants.

Thanks to everyone for attending one of the training session. In all, we trained over 600 WisDOT employees and consultants.

I've been very happy with all of your comments and excitement about CARS and the future of CARS.

While we've gotten over 100 firms signed up to use CARS, I'm still missing many of the Joint Ventures. If you have contact information about the Joint Ventures, please let me know by emailing me who the contact person is. I need to get them into CARS in the same manner I have gotten the individual firms into CARS.

Although the in-person training sessions are over, the link to watch the training videos is here.

I will be adding in two or three new videos to assist WisDOT employees how to handle an invoice and create an evaluation.

A link to all firms trained in CARS is here.

End of CARS Consultant Training

This week marks the end of our CARS Consultant Training sessions. We trained a total of 37 consultants in the Milwaukee area on Tuesday (2/3) and Wednesday (2/4).

While this marks the end of the formal training, we're always available for you should more questions come up in CARS.

Also, I can see us doing a webinar or some sort of formal web training to assist you when changes are coming to CARS. We certainly don't want to spring new changes on you without trying to give you some sort of heads up.

Next week we have our final WisDOT training sessions for CARS. We have a total of 50 WisDOT employees to train in West Allis and Waukesha. Starting on 2/12, you should be able to invoice any project in CARS for the State of Wisconsin.

A list of firms trained in CARS is here.

A list of the video tutorials of CARS is here.