Example: Billing for fixed monthly fees

Create a customer agreement

In the Customer Agreements application, Arthur creates an agreement for the maintenance services that A1 provides to SBR. Arthur can create agreements only for customers that he works with. Arthur specifies the agreement start date as the beginning of the current month and adds terms that are related to prices and taxes. Arthur verifies the contact information for this customer and saves the record.

Define the billing schedule

On the Billing Schedule tab, Arthur inserts a row for a new billing schedule and specifies a monthly billing period for a term of 12 months. A1 sends its bills on the 15th of each month. Today is the fifth day of the month, so Arthur specifies a first bill date of the 15th day of the current month. Because the billing manager reviews all bills before the customer previews them, Arthur sets the initial status of all bills for this agreement to In Progress. If A1 prefers not to review the bills before their customers review them, they can set the status of generated bills to Prebill. If they set the status to Prebill, the record is added to the billing review for the customer to approve, and the initial review by the billing manager is bypassed.

In the billing schedule details, Arthur adds the maintenance management fee of $3500.00 and saves the record.

The customer account manager reviews the agreement and approves it. The approval causes a workflow-enabled notification to go to the William, the billing manager.

Review the generated bill

Near the end of the month, William confirms with the system administrator that the PLUSPBILLGENCRONTASK crontask is active. This crontask is scheduled to poll records every day. For every active customer agreement, the crontask can create a bill batch for billing schedule items on the date that is specified as the next bill date. Sales orders are created for the fixed fee charges, items, service items, tools, and scheduled usage charges on the billing schedule. For SBR, the crontask creates a bill batch for the fixed fee that is specified on the customer agreement. The crontask creates and copies a sales order line for the fixed fee to a new bill batch.

In the Customer Billing application, William reviews the monthly bill for SBR. The bill is accurate and so changes the status to Prebill. A1 allows authorized customers to review bills before they are sent. A bill with a Prebill status is available for customer review in the Bill Review application. If an inaccuracy found on a bill line, the reviewer can hold or remove it and the line does not advance to bill review.

Eileen is the purchasing manager for SBR and is named on the customer agreement as a contact. Eileen is authorized to review bills for SBR. On the last day of the month, Eileen logs in to the A1 system to see limited billing information for SBR. Eileen reviews the bill batch with the fixed fee line and approves the line and changes the status of the bill batch to indicate that it is reviewed. On bills with several lines, Eileen can approve all lines that are waiting approval and then change the status of the bill.

William completes the review for A1 and changes the status of the bill to indicate that it is billed to the customer. The bill batch is complete.

If Eileen disputes a fee, William can review Eileen's comments and adjust the bill if he agrees with the comment.

Issue the fixed fee bill

The bill batch is issued through the A1 accounts payable system. The billed amount is added to the revenue shown on the customer agreement.