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Animal Products E-cert Help Files

Frequently Asked Questions - Billing

‘Please do not Pay’

The payment advice is for your records, so you know what your month’s activity is.

To minimise our administration costs, we do not send out invoices that are less than $50 (exc. GST). If you receive a "Please do not pay" invoice, the amount will be carried over to the next invoice period until the threshold of $50 is exceeded.

Can a Breakdown be Provided According to Certificate No.?

Costs are incurred according to user ID and transaction, not according to certificate. We are unable to easily track how many transactions it may take you to prepare a certificate. There are also other transactions that are charged which do not relate to preparing a cert, such as checking ‘most recent in’, and logging in, and completing searches.

Can the Invoices be Posted?

The main reason for e-mailing the invoices is to keep costs, and therefore cost-recovery, at a minimum.

We’d ask that you make the necessary arrangements for receiving invoices via e-mail. This may involve downloading Acrobat Reader to read the PDF format, adjusting settings on virus protection software, or adding ‘AP_Ecert_Accounts@nzfsa.govt.nz’ to your list of ‘safe’ addresses.

Acrobat Reader is free software available by clicking on the ‘Get Adobe Reader’ at http://www.adobe.com

Can the Invoices be Sent in a Different Format?

The only way to generate these invoices is in PDF format. If you are having problems opening PDF files, we’d suggest you have your IT person or department take a look.

It could be any one of the following:

Virus protection software is rejecting the PDF format
Settings on Acrobat Reader need to be changed to read larger files
A font issue (you may be able to open PDF but not print)
An Acrobat Reader version issue (remove older version before installing updated Acrobat Reader)

Make sure that the system meets the requirements of Acrobat Reader (see Adobe website).

Acrobat Reader is free software available by clicking on the ‘Get Adobe Reader’ at http://www.adobe.com

Can the Invoice PDF be Split into Several Attachments?

We have tried to accomplish this, but we have found that the only way to ensure that the invoice is correctly sent is that all data goes into the one PDF. The invoicing process is not able to separate the invoice from the supporting information and send several PDF’s on the one e-mail

How are Charges Incurred?

NZFSA is obliged to recover the cost of developing and maintaining the E-cert system from the users of the system. These charges may vary and are specified in the latest Animal Products (Electronic Certification System Costs Specifications) Notice. At times, the cost of development is less than the amount recovered and a fee waiver or refund notice will be issued.

You will incur a cost for each time you request information from the database, and a cost per second that the server takes to respond to the request. You will not be charged for the time it takes to enter information or for the time that you are logged into the system.

This means that you will be charged when you log in (your password and permissions will be checked), when you bring up a certificate form and when you submit the completed form. So preparing one certificate will take more than one transaction.

There are also charges for searching for a cert, checking 'most recent in', and re-submitting certs.

Please go to http://www.nzfsa.govt.nz/ecert/animal-products/index.htm  and check out the section 'Efficient use of E-cert' for more advice. You can also look at 'Organisation to be Billed Information' to review the information sent out with your Organisation to be Billed form.