Billing
Core Process
About Billing
Billing refers to collecting billing information about the following and ultimately creating invoices that you can send to customers:
- Part usage
- Non‐part usage
- Contract periodic billing
- Meter billing
- Special charges
Billing is a multiple‐step process that enables you to review and validate information before invoices are final and sent to customers.
- Vouchers are created based on billing information.
- Voucher detail is reviewed and posted to invoices. As voucher detail is reviewed and posted, it is added to the appropriate invoice based on the place ID to bill or on consolidation and voucher grouping rules. The voucher detail is deleted from the voucher after it has been posted.
- Once all voucher detail is reviewed and posted, the voucher is deleted.
Billing generation is an asynchronous process that may take some time to complete.
About Vouchers
Vouchers contain detailed information about items to be billed, including the item ID, the price, and pricing details, which means the method used to calculate the final price.
One voucher contains all of the details for the items to be billed based on the billing generation criteria you specified. For example, you can choose to bill only part usage for a specified place. All of the part usage for that place then appears on the voucher. For each item to be billed, one voucher detail is created.
The voucher generation process performs validation. For example, it validates that the place ID to bill is a billing place. The status of the voucher detail indicates whether errors must be corrected before the voucher detail can be posted to an invoice.
The voucher generation process can create the following types of voucher detail:
- Regular—regular voucher detail is the most common type created from usage and contract and meter billing
- Warranty chargeback—if your organization performs warranty service that is charged back to an OEM, this voucher detail is created
- Credit memo—this voucher detail is generally created from reversing an invoice or a manual debit
- Debit memo—this voucher detail is generally created from backing out a manual credit
You can also create manual voucher detail directly on the Voucher screen.
About Voucher Grouping
Voucher grouping rules enable you to group vouchers based on information on voucher detail lines. For example, you may want to group vouchers by request ID to create one voucher per request.
Voucher grouping also enables you to more easily handle exceptions that may cause a voucher to not post.
About Voucher Filtering
You can use voucher filter rules to help determine which vouchers are extracted. One or more rules can be specified for a filter, and you specify the filter you want to use during voucher extract.
About Warranty Chargeback
Warranty chargeback voucher detail is automatically created when you set up the following:
- The application parameter ENABLE_WARRANTY_CHARGEBACK is set to Y (yes).
- A whose‐place value is defined on the whos_place code table toidentify places associated with warranty chargeback processing.
- A whose‐place value is specified for the applicationparameter WARRANTY_CHARGEBACK_WHOSPLACE.
When the place ID to bill has a whose‐place value as specified above, any voucher detail created for that place has a voucher type of warranty chargeback.
About Invoices
Invoices are documents you can send your customers that detail the charges owed to you. As voucher details are validated, corrected, and posted, invoices are created.
You can use escalation hierarchies to record approvals for invoices.
About Consolidation
You can group or consolidate invoice details by creating consolidation rules to use as criteria for billing generation.
Rules with a consolidation type of Filter are used to group and separate invoices by the specified information. For example, if you specify that invoices are filtered by request ID, a new invoice is created for each request ID. If you specify a constraint and a value, only invoices that match the constraint are affected by the rule.
Rules with a consolidation type of Group By are used to combine invoices according to multiple levels of rules. For example, you can group invoices by contract ID and then for each contract ID, group invoices by contract version. The rule order is used to determine how the invoices are created. Multiple rules are specified using a consolidation rule group.
About Invoice Correction
There are two methods to correct invoices:
- Backing out an invoice creates a voucher with voucher detail that offsets, or reverses, each invoice detail. You back out the invoice when you do not need to create a new, replacement invoice.
- Crediting and rebilling an invoice creates a voucher with voucher detail that offsets, orreveres, each invoice detail. In addition, the billing status of each item, including part usage and non‐part usage, is reset so that the request or RMA can be billed again during billing generation. You credit and rebill an invoice when you must correct information on usage, such as quantity or price.
If you delete an invoice, it also resets the billing status of each item on the invoice.