iLab FAQs - Cores

For short-term downtime, go to the equipment’s schedule view and select the time you’d like to block off. Under Event Type, choose Unavailable.

For long-term downtime, go to the Core’s Equipment page. Find the equipment and click “Take Offline”. Optionally, provide a time for the equipment to go back online.

Go to your core page. Select the “Administration” tab. Open the “Members” section. Search for the name of the person to add. If you can’t find them, make sure they have registered for an iLab account. Select their role and send the invite.

Roles available are:

• Member: Members may manage workflow. They can approve equipment reservations, add services and milestones, and complete charges for billing.
• Manager: Managers may manage workflow, edit equipment and services, and run billing and reporting.
• Financial manager: Financial manager has access to the above roles but also can access the Other Settings panel under the core's Administration tab.
• Admin: Admins can complete all tasks available to members, managers, and financial managers, along with access to all administration settings.

First, make sure you have sent the invoice via your email to the institution’s accounts payable department (or other contact). You may want to split purchase orders across multiple invoices to make it easier to track.

Once received, the external payment status should be automatically marked as “Paid” in iLab. If you are seeing prolonged, unpaid external invoices, reach out to the institution’s accounts payable.

For further guidance, questions, and policy, please contact your Core’s financial administrator. They may have specific requirements or procedures.

Login to iLab. Click on my cores on the left-hand menu and select your core. On the core site, click on the View All Requests tab. Find the request that you wish to update and click the blue triangle to expand the service request. Under the forms and request details, click on the add “service link”. In the services window, click on the service that you wish to add, enter the quantity, and click the green plus button to add the service. Agree to the new services by clicking the Agree button. 

Sometimes you need to include a miscellaneous charge like a processing fee. Follow the directions above but select “add charge” instead of “add service” below the request details. More info on charges.

• Login to iLab.
• Click on my cores on the left-hand menu and select your core.
• On the core site, click on the View All Requests tab.
• Find the request that you wish to assign.
• Click on the pencil icon next to the request.
• Click the track work link.
• Select the core personnel’s name from the drop-down list, click the add worker button, and click the apply changes button. 

You can assign more than one person to each request.

You can mark an entire request complete or mark individual services for a request as complete. Marking individual services as complete will allow you to bill for services as they are completed even though the entire request is not yet complete.

Marking a request as complete:

Login to iLab. Click on my cores on the left-hand menu and select your core. On the core site, click on the View All Requests tab. Click the Complete button under the Status column for the request. This marks all services within the request as completed and ready to bill.

Marking a service as complete:

Login to iLab. Click on my cores on the left-hand menu and select your core. On the core site, click on the View All Requests tab. Find the request that you wish to update and click the blue triangle to expand the service request. Find the service that you wish to mark complete. Select ‘Ready to Bill’ from the Billing Status drop-down menu and ‘Completed’ from the Work Status drop-down menu. Services marked ready to bill and completed

To change for the entire core:

Select the Administration tab and expand the “Other Settings” tab. Find the “Custom Fields” section. Please reach out to Agilent support (iLab-support@agilent.com) to make sure you are editing the right fields.

To change for a single service:

Find the service under the Request Services tab. Click the pencil next to it. Scroll down to “Custom Billing Fields”. 

“Internal Receiver” is the destination for charges from BCM customers, “External Receiver” is the account that charges to external users will be deposited. These are typically the same. Make sure to follow the existing format, or else you risk money being deposited into a missing/wrong account.

Billing internal customers: 

On the billing tab, click the New Billing Event button. Select internal only from the Include drop-down menu. Select lab from the Group By drop-down menu. Click the Load Charges button. Exclude any charges that are red flagged by clicking on the green arrow under the actions column. Red flagged charges are missing payment information. The payment information will need to be added before these can be included in a billing event. The payment information can be added by the customer, PI, or the core admin on behalf of the customer/PI. Click the Create button. Click the Send file to Baylor College of Medicine.

Billing external customers: 

On the billing tab, click the New Billing Event button. Select external only from the Include drop-down menu. Select payment info from the Group By drop-down menu. Click the Load Charges button. Exclude any charges that are red flagged by clicking on the green arrow under the actions column. Red flagged charges are missing payment information. The payment information will need to be added before these can be included in a billing event. The payment information can be added by the customer, PI, or the core admin on behalf of the customer/PI. Click the Create button. 

Click Send file to Baylor College of Medicine. Then select the Invoices button for this billing event. Click on the pdf icon. Click Save as a pdf, download and save the file. 

Send the invoice to the appropriate person/accounts payable. Here are the institutions that currently require invoices to be sent to accounts payable and where to send them:

• MD Anderson: mdaccap@mdanderson.org
• Texas Children’s: accountspayable@texaschildrens.org
• Houston Methodist Hospital: accountspayable@houstonmethodist.org

More information about creating billing events.

These services have been red-flagged because they no longer have a valid charge source. Please contact the customer and PI to determine what charge source should be used. The customer or PI can login to iLab and update the charge source by clicking on the dollar sign next to the request, selecting the appropriate charge source from the drop-down menu, and clicking save. Core staff can also update the charge source on behalf of the customer or PI by following the same steps.

• On the core site, click on the Billing tab.
• Click on the Summary link next to the billing event with errors.
• Click on the Billing Errors tab. This tab displays the invoices with errors.
• Click on the View Invoice button.
• Requests that have errors are denoted by red arrows. Typically, these errors are due to an invalid charge source. Contact the customer and/or PI to determine what charge source should be used. 

The customer or PI can login to iLab and update the charge source by clicking on the dollar sign next to the request, selecting the appropriate charge source from the drop-down menu, and clicking save. Core staff can also update the charge source on behalf of the customer or PI by following the same steps. 

Once the charge source is updated, click the revalidate button on the Billing Errors page. The billing event will then be resent to SAP overnight and the status of the billing event will be updated the next day.

Refunds cannot be created through iLab. Please reach out to your financial administrator for support in creating and processing a refund. There will need to be an internal funds transfer between the Core and the customer.

The iLab Help Site is a fantastic resource covering all of the features of iLab. For other inquiries about using the iLab software, contact iLab-support@agilent.com . For issues with billing or BCM related questions, contact ilabs-support@bcm.edu

Contact ilab-support@agilent.com and cc ilabs-support@bcm.edu . BCM and Agilent will work together with you to create and configure the core to your liking. We’ll also train you on the functions of the website and the service workflow.