The Devil is in the details...

Sooo... You're ready to enter your first billing to the Department of Defense in the Wide Area Workflow (WAWF) application system. You've logged in, opened your vendor menu, and selected "Create New Document" - and you're looking at your first screen for input. It asked for your contract number. Where's that? No problem, it's in your contract. Moving to the right, you see it wants your order number. Huh? What's that? Where is it? Not much of a problem, if you've got one, it's right there in the contract (and if you don't see one, you can leave it blank). Moving the last step to the right, the screen wants your CAGE code. Hmmm, No problem, it's right there in your contract, in the block where YOU are identified. OK, this screen is done, click "continue".

New screen wants your Pay DoDAAC, but you've got a message that says it doesn't find your contract in EDA - is that bad? Well, it can be, very easily, because if the contract is not in EDA, it costs you some keystrokes, and does not provide a check on whether you may have mistyped something (oh yeah, make sure right now you haven't mistyped the contract number - that is ONE reason why you might have gotten that message). But further, when your billing gets through this process to the Pay Office, EDA is the first place they look for your contract, and if it really isn't in there, you get delays. DELAYS! Ouch! I don't want delays, I want to get paid! Sure you do, perfectly natural. So get your contract loaded into EDA. How? Well, get your contracting officer to load it, that is one of their jobs. Who is that? Your contracting officer is shown in (drum roll, please) THE CONTRACT! And normally, so is the contact information for that person, whose job description says they live and breathe to make your contract work (Well, lets be fair, yours and the thousands of other contracts they are likely responsible for making work).

Are you seeing a pattern here? The information you need to make submission in WAWF is in your contract, including contact information for the people who make it work. And if what you enter does not match what the contract says, it slows down your payment. So make sure the details match!

This continues throughout the document entry. If you put gallons as the unit of measure later on, and the contract calls for barrels, the person who certifies that your shipment was received will look at the contract to verify how to receive it, and of THAT part of the process does not match the other parts (the contract and your invoice), well, the process WILL slow down - and you won't get paid on time. MAKE THOSE DETAILS MATCH!

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Delivering World Class Service

Always have the contract in front of you!