Billing is the process of claiming amounts due from customers on their lease and loan contracts. Billing charges for rent, fees, and services are processed to include taxes and generate accurate accounting transactions. Documents called invoices or statements of account are created as a notice to the customer for payment.
Compliance with regulatory tax and accounting requirements and efficient collection of payment is essential in this process. Clear presentment of billing charges on invoices is necessary to meet internal billing policy and procedures while making the payable process easy for customers to make prompt and correct payments.
The Lease and Finance Management billing process consists of the following topics:
Billing Transactions
Options to Generate and Present Invoices
Create Invoices
View and Adjust Invoices
To begin the billing process, you first determine amounts to be billed, then you process options to format and present invoices in Lease and Finance Management, then Create Invoices, and finally you View and Adjust Invoices. An active contract in the status described below defines the payment schedule and streams for rent, fees and services to be billed.
Although the processing of billing data from different billing sources varies, every billing transaction of each billing type results in a record in Lease and Finance Management. The main billing data consists of the following data items:
Stream type, such as Rent, Insurance
Amount
Item Type
Item number, as stored in Oracle Inventory
Customer information, as stored in Oracle Receivables
The following table describes types of billing that financiers may need to bill their customers for and the Lease and Finance Management concurrent programs used to process the billing.
| Type of Billing | Description | Concurrent Programs |
|---|---|---|
| Contractual Amounts | Billing charges for use of equipment, fees, or services specified on the contract. Contractual amounts are charges defined in the contract to be paid on specific dates in a payment schedule. | Master Program - Process Billable Streams - Contract |
| Event Based | Billing charges or credit calculated as events occur based upon contract terms and conditions. Event based charges that may be specified in the contract include, but are not limited to, adjustments when the contract is revised or rebooked, quote fees for a repurchase quote, and contract obligations when a contract is terminated early. | Master Program - Process Billable Streams - Contract |
| Variable Rate | Lease or loan contracts are linked to an index that defines the interest rate used to calculate the charge for interest payment. | Create Receivables Variable Rate Invoices |
| Usage Billing | Billing charges for use of equipment based on counters or meters, for example, the number of clicks or sheets used by a copier, the number of miles driven by a vehicle, or the number of hours of use by a machine. | Usage Based Billing |
| Service Contract | Lease or loan contracts are linked to service contracts that process maintenance charges to be billed and combine these service amounts with the contractual amounts on a single invoice. | Service Contracts Billing |
| Service Contract | Lease or loan contracts are linked to service contracts that process maintenance charges to be billed and combines these service amounts with the contractual amounts on a single invoice. | Usage Based Billing |
| Usage Based | Billing charges for use of equipment based on counters or meters, for example, the number of clicks or sheets used by a copier, the number of miles driven by a vehicle, the number of hours of use by a machine. | Service Contracts Billing |
| Policy Based | Billing charges calculated as events occur based upon policies specified in contract terms. Policies that may be specified in the contract include, but are not limited to, late charges or late interest when payments are late, interest charges when funding is disbursed prior to contract booking, and evergreen billing after the contract expires. | Calculate Late Interest & Calculate Late Charges |
| Manual | Ad hoc charges based on new events or circumstances that are not billed automatically based on contract payment schedule or terms and conditions. | None When you create a Manual Invoice, the Master Program – Receivables Invoice Transfer program sends billing information to Oracle Receivables |
| Advance Billing | Advance billings are for payments received before the contract is booked. Running the Advanced Billing concurrent program creates an invoice to which the payment can be applied. | Advance Billing |
| Evergreen | When an evergreen contract expires, contractual billing discontinues and evergreen charges are billed in Evergreen Billing | Evergreen Billing |
| Investor Agreement | When an investor agreement is activated, you can bill the investor for their stake and fees defined in the agreement. | Master Program – Process Billable Streams – Investor Agreement |
| Taxes | Billing charges for property tax and upfront tax and generation of VAT schedules. Upfront taxes are charges over the expected life of the contract that are payable to tax authorities when the contract is booked. | None Oracle eBusiness Tax calculates tax based on billing information exported from Lease and Finance Management to Oracle Receivables. |
| Third Party | Billing charges imported from third-party files containing charges that you want to bill the customer and pass through to the third-party. For example, you may want to import and bill for a county’s property tax liability, a bank’s non-sufficient funds charge, or a vendor’s maintenance fee and pass the receipts back to the third-party. | Third Party Billing |
Billing for contractual amounts consists of billing charges for use of equipment, fees, or services specified on the contract. Contractual amounts are charges defined in the contract to be paid on specific dates in a payment schedule.
The contractual amount billing process begins by first determining the amounts to be billed, then processing the options to format and present invoices in Lease and Finance Management. After invoices are formatted and presented, you can create invoices and view and adjust the invoices.
Lease and Finance Management identifies customers for automatic billing based on the stream types to be billed, the due date for a payment, and the number of print lead days. Print lead days are the number of days before the invoice due dates that you can generate an invoice.
Before you can begin the bill contractual amounts process, you must have an active contract with terms and conditions that define amounts and formulas to calculate billing charges when events occur and a payment schedule with billable streams.
For more information on creating terms and conditions on a contract, see Contract Authoring
The following table describes the billing process for contractual amounts using periodic billing. A request set has been seeded called Lease Billing. The Lease Billing request set is comprised of the three concurrent programs listed below.
| Step | Description | Application |
|---|---|---|
| Book Contracts | Book contracts with terms and conditions with billing information, and payment schedules for rent, services and fees. | Lease and Finance Management |
| Run Master Program - Process Billable Streams - Contracts | This program is used to process the stream elements to create the billing transactions in Lease and Finance Management. | Lease and Finance Management |
| Run Master Program - Receivables Invoice Transfer | This program is used to process and transfer Lease and Finance Management billing transactions to the AR Invoice Interface table | Lease and Finance Management |
| Run AutoInvoice Master Program | This program imports the billing information into Oracle Receivables and creates an invoice with invoice lines. | Oracle Receivables |
To enable contractual billing, you must run the Master Program - Process Billable Streams - Contracts concurrent program. After this concurrent program is active, the process of selecting which contracts and items to prepare for billing is completely automatic. Lease and Finance Management identifies customers for automatic billing based on the stream types to be billed, the due date for a payment, and the number of lead days. Lead days are the number of days before the invoice due date that you can generate an invoice.
Similarly, if you require usage-based billing, all the necessary background processing automatically runs and generates the excess usage billing data. For usage-based billing items where you want to level-out counter readings across individual counters, you must set up one or more consolidated counter groups.
The Master Program - Process Billable Streams - Contracts concurrent program identifies contracts with streams due for billing and creates billing items. See Concurrent Programs, page B-1.
An active contract with defined terms and conditions determines the amounts and formulas used to calculate billing charges when events occur.
Event based billing occurs when billing is charged or credit is calculated as events occur based upon contract terms and conditions. Event based charges that may be specified in the contract include, but are not limited to, adjustments when the contract is revised equipment is repurchased by the vendor, and contract obligation amounts billed when a contract is terminated early.
An active contract with defined terms and conditions determines the amounts and formulas used to calculate billing charges when events occur.
To enable event based billing, run the Master Program - Process Billable Streams – Contracts concurrent program. After this concurrent program is active, Lease and Finance Management selects contracts and items to prepare for billing automatically based on the event. Lease and Finance Management identifies customers for automatic billing based on the stream types to be billed, the due date for a payment, and the number of lead days. Lead days are the number of days before the invoice due date that you can generate an invoice.
Similarly, if you require usage-based billing, Lease and Finance Management automatically processes and generates the excess usage billing data. When you create usage-based billing items and want to level counter readings across individual counters, you must set up one or more consolidated counter groups.
The Master Program - Process Billable Streams - Contracts concurrent program identifies contracts with streams due for billing and creates billing items. See Concurrent Programs, page B-1.
One of the parameters of a contract is the interest type upon which you base the contract. Examples of contract interest rate types include fixed rate interest and variable rate interest. In the case of variable rate contracts, there are several additional parameters you enter when you book or restructure a contract. The most important of these parameters identifies how you calculate the interest as a result of the change in rate.
The four methods for handling the interest adjustment are:
FLOAT - Uses internal simple interest calculation to calculate interest, or the formula defined during the booking process to calculate an interest adjustment. This interest adjustment billing is in addition to the principal billed.
REAMORT - Calls the stream generation tool to calculate new rental and income streams. With this method, you can have only level payment contracts--for example, monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, or annually.
FLOAT FACTOR - Calculates interest using float factor streams for a lease contract with floating factors.
CATCHUP/CLEANUP - Uses catchup of interest on a contract and is calculated periodically separate to the periodic interest billing cycle. Actual interest is recalculated periodically, resulting in the cleanup of principal.
When you perform billing for variable rate contracts, Lease and Finance Management automatically evaluates the interest rate basis linked to the contract for any increases or decreases in the effective interest rate. If the applicable rate changes, the billing process automatically calculates and bills the appropriate amounts. The interest calculation basis defined on the financial product associated to the contract computes the revised interest or loan payment amounts.
Before you can execute the variable rate billing process, the following prerequisites apply:
The interest index associated to the contract should be updated.
The interest rate parameters should be defined on the contract.
To process billing for variable rate interest contracts, run the following concurrent programs:
Create Receivables Variable Rate Invoices
Master Program - Process Billable Streams – Contracts
Master Program - Receivables Invoice Transfer
AutoInvoice Master Program
For more information on variable rate in Lease and Finance Management, see Variable Rate.
The following table describes the Variable Rate billing process.
| Step | Description | Application |
|---|---|---|
| Create Receivables Variable Rate Invoices | The interest or loan payment amounts are computed and the stream elements are created or revised in Lease and Finance Management. | Lease and Finance Management |
| Run Master Program - Process Billable Streams - Contracts | This program is used to process the stream elements to create the billing transactions in Lease and Finance Management. | Lease and Finance Management |
| Run Master Program - Receivables Invoice Transfer | This program is used to process and transfer Lease and Finance Management billing transactions to the Oracle Receivables Invoice Interface table. | Lease and Finance Management |
| Run AutoInvoice Master Program | This program imports the billing information into Oracle Receivables and creates an invoice with invoice lines. | Oracle Receivables |
The Run Create Receivables Variable Rate Invoices concurrent program performs the following tasks:
Identifies contracts set up with variable rates
Identifies if a change in interest occurred
Generates bills at the new interest rate
For more information on this and other concurrent programs, see Concurrent Programs, page B-1.
Equipment lessors often include metered equipment in their asset portfolio. Metered equipment, such as copiers, can be charged on a usage basis during the lease term. Usage Based Billing (UBB) enables equipment lessors to calculate the amounts to bill based on usage of the equipment.
Billing charges for use of equipment is based on counters or meters. Examples of UBB include the number of clicks or sheets used by a copier, the number of miles driven by a vehicle, or the number of hours of use by a machine.
When you author and book a lease contract with a usage service line, Lease and Finance Management automatically creates a contract in Oracle Service Contracts and links it to the Lease and Finance Management contract. When you enter meter readings to record usage, Oracle Service Contracts calculates the usage based billing amounts. Then, when you run the Lease and Finance Management billing processes, Oracle Receivables generates a consolidated usage service invoice.
Before you can use Usage Based Billing in Lease and Finance Management, you must complete all required set up tasks. For information on set up for UBB, see Oracle Lease and Finance Management Implementation Guide.
The following table describes the UBB billing process.
| Event | Description |
|---|---|
| Author a Contract | Author a contract with UBB as the billing method and create a usage line. |
| Service Contract | Once a Lease and Finance Management contract is booked, a service contract is automatically created in Oracle Service Contracts Manager. |
| Enter Meter Reading | In Oracle Service Contracts Manager, enter the meter reading. |
| Generate OKS Billing | To generate billing in Oracle Service Contracts Manager, run the OKS: Service Contracts Main Billing concurrent program, which calculates billing and creates transactions in Oracle Service Contracts Manager. |
| Transfer OKL Billing | To transfer the billing data to Lease and Finance Management, run the OKL: Usage Based Billing concurrent program, which transfers your Oracle Service Contracts Manager data to Lease and Finance Management and creates transactions. |
| Generate OKL Billing | To generate billing in Lease and Finance Management, run the following concurrent programs: Master Program: Process Billable Streams; Prepare Receivables Bills; Auto Invoice Master; Fetch AR Invoice Numbers. |
| View Invoices | To view the new invoices, navigate to Operations > Invoices and enter the contract data. |
| Termination | To terminate the contract you must terminate both the Lease and Finance Management version and the Service Contracts Manager version. |
| Inquiry | You can view the Meter Reading History and Billing History for a UBB contract in the Lease Center, Customer Self Service, and Vendor Self Service. |
Many financiers have multiple business units that provide service as well as financial services and want to use the full functionality of Oracle Service Contracts while consolidating their billing for service and lease. You can author a service contract and link to the lease contract in Lease and Finance Management and consolidate the service and lease charges on one invoice. After running billing in Oracle Service Contracts and Lease and Finance Management, Oracle Receivables generates a consolidated invoice on the two contracts.
You must have created a service contract in Oracle Service Contracts, created a lease contract and linked the two in Lease and Finance Management. You must run the Oracle Service Contracts main billing program after meeting the following prerequisites:
For each service line, an asset line in the lease contract is associated with a covered product inventory item in the corresponding service contract
Both contracts are for the same customer
Both contracts have the same Bill To information
Both contracts have the same contract currency
The date ranges of both contracts must overlap; that is, either all or some of the effective days of one contract must be all or some of the effective days of the other contract
When you author a lease contract and want to consolidate billing from a service contract on the same invoice, create a service contract in Oracle Service Contracts that meets the prerequisites. Then, when you author the lease contract, go to Additional Charges and select the pull-down menu Create Service from Service Contract.
In the Contracts screen you can select Service Contract as the payment type and supplier. Click Apply to link the lease contract to the service contract. When you run the billing for the service in Oracle Service Contracts, the billing charges will not be sent to the Oracle Receivables interface table.
When you run the Service Contracts Billing in Lease and Finance Management, the service contract billing information is associated with the lease contract. Then, when you run Master Program – Receivables Invoice Transfer in Lease and Finance Management, the service contract and lease contract billing information are sent together to the Oracle Receivables interface. The consolidated lease and service invoice is generated when you run the Oracle Receivables Master Import Program.
Financiers want the flexibility to initiate billing charges to control policies that discourage late interest and principal payments.
Before you can execute policy based billing processes, you must book contracts with terms and conditions that define the billing parameters.
Late payments may be subject to a late interest charge. The Late Interest policy determines the late interest charges.
For more information, see the Define Late Charges Parameters, Oracle Lease and Finance Management Implementation Guide.
This concurrent program identifies late payments, calculates interest, and generates bills for Oracle Receivables. See Concurrent Programs, B-1.
If a previous invoice still has a balance outstanding, late charges may apply. The Late Charges policy determines the late charges amount. The late charges amount is either a flat fee or a percentage of the total invoices past due, depending upon the setup configuration.
To begin the calculation of the late charges, you must start the Calculate Late Charges concurrent program. This program evaluates all outstanding invoices to identify the invoices past their grace period and where the late charges are not placed on hold for the contract. After the program identifies a delinquent invoice as eligible for late charges, the penalty automatically applies, based on the rules in the late policy.
For more information, see the Define Late Charges Parameters, Oracle Lease and Finance Management Implementation Guide.
This concurrent program identifies past due invoices, calculates late charges, and generates bills for Oracle Receivables. See Concurrent Programs, B-1.
You must have created a late charges policy.
Financiers may want to charge for services or commodities that are not processed automatically. For example, suppose you receive a registration fee related to a contract. As you pay the appropriate vendor for this expense, you may also want to charge the lessee in order to recover your money.
The following table describes the Manual Billing process required to create a manual invoice and recover your expense:
| Step | Description | Application |
|---|---|---|
| Create Manual Invoice Header & Lines | Create a manual invoice with the required billing information. | Lease and Finance Management |
| Master Program - Receivables Invoice Transfer | This program is used to process and transfer Lease and Finance Management billing transactions to the Oracle Receivables Invoice Interface table. | Lease and Finance Management |
| AutoInvoice Master Program | This program imports the billing information into Oracle Receivables and creates an invoice with invoice lines. | Oracle Receivables |
To create a manual invoice header, perform the following steps in the Manual Invoices subtab of the Operations tab:
Navigate to Operations > Manual Invoices
Click Create Manual Invoice.
Select the Operating Unit.
Select the Contract Number for which you are billing ad hoc charges.
Enter the Transaction Number.
Enter the Invoice Date.
Enter the Invoice Amount.
In the Manual Invoice Lines region, enter assets (optional), fee type details, and the amount for each manual invoice line. You can enter multiple invoice lines for a manual invoice.
Select the Fee Type.
Select the Asset Number.
Optionally, enter a Description for the fee.
Enter the Amount for the asset on the invoice line.
If you want to create more manual invoice lines, click Add Another Row, and repeat the previous steps; repeat this for each required manual invoice line.
After you have entered all the manual invoice lines, click Recalculate. After you click the Recalculate button, the Line Amount is displayed in the Grand Total region. The Line Amount displays a total of all the invoice line amounts and must equal to the invoice amount entered on the Manual Invoice header.
Click Apply. After you click Apply, the Manual Invoice is created with the Transaction Number as the Manual Invoice Number.
Financiers often require deposits or payments from customers to cover fees and services before a contract is activated. You can improve customer service by creating advance receipts against contracts before activation or during the contract life. You create a manual receipt, select the Application Criteria, Advance, select the contract and run the Advance Billing concurrent program. When you run the billing programs, Lease and Finance Management automatically creates an invoice and applies the receipt.
Receive payment before a contract is activated.
The following table describes the advance billing process.
| Step | Description | Application |
|---|---|---|
| Create Manual Receipt Header & Application Criteria | Create a manual receipt and select the Application Criteria, Advance. | Lease and Finance Management |
| Advance Billing | Run the Advance Billing concurrent program to apply payments received before the contract is booked and create an invoice to which the payment can be applied. | Lease and Finance Management |
| Master Program - Receivables Invoice Transfer | This program is used to process and transfer Lease and Finance Management billing transactions to the Oracle Receivables Invoice Interface table. | Lease and Finance Management |
| AutoInvoice Master Program | This program imports the billing information into Oracle Receivables and creates an invoice with invoice lines. | Oracle Receivables |
When payments are received before a contract is activated, create a manual receipt in Receipts under the Operations tab. In the Application Criteria, select Advance from the pull-down menu in the Criteria field. Lease and Finance Management will display a field to enter the Contract Number. The contract can be active.
Run the Advance Billing and Master Program - Receivables Invoice Transfer concurrent programs to transfer the advance billing information to Oracle Receivables that creates an invoice and applies the receipt.
Financiers require the flexibility to continue billing contracts when the assets continue to be in service after the contract expires. The period after a contract expires without termination and the assets continue to be in service is the evergreen period. Since the contract has expired, contractual billing is discontinued. To continue billing, run Evergreen Billing.
The following table describes the Evergreen billing process.
| Step | Description | Application |
|---|---|---|
| Evergreen Billing | Run the Evergreen Billing concurrent process to apply payments received before the contract is booked and create an invoice to which the payment can be applied. | Lease and Finance Management |
| Master Program - Receivables Invoice Transfer | This program is used to process and transfer Lease and Finance Management billing transactions to the Oracle Receivables Invoice Interface table. | Lease and Finance Management |
| AutoInvoice Master Program | This program imports the billing information into Oracle Receivables and creates an invoice with invoice lines. | Oracle Receivables |
To process billing information, you must have contracts in Expired status that have not been terminated.
On a periodic basis, run the Evergreen Billing and Master Program - Receivables Invoice Transfer concurrent programs to transfer the evergreen billing information to Oracle Receivables that creates an invoice.
When financiers negotiate investor agreements, they define the amount of investment or investor stake. The financier may also want to bill the investor for fees incurred in creating the investor agreement. The investor stake amount and fees are defined in the investor agreement. To bill the investor, run the Investor Agreement concurrent program.
To process billing information, you must have an active investor agreement with a defined stake amount.
The following table describes the Investor Agreement Billing process.
| Step | Description | Application |
|---|---|---|
| Activate Investor Agreement | Author Investor Agreement with stake amount and any fees. | Lease and Finance Management |
| Master Program – Process Billable Streams – Investor Agreement | When an investor agreement is activated, bill the investor for their stake and fees defined in the agreement. | Lease and Finance Management |
| Master Program - Receivables Invoice Transfer | This program is used to process and transfer Lease and Finance Management billing transactions to the Oracle Receivables Invoice Interface table. | Lease and Finance Management |
| AutoInvoice Master Program | This program imports the billing information into Oracle Receivables and creates an invoice with invoice lines. | Oracle Receivables |
Create an Investor Agreement and add investors to the agreement with their stake amount. Add any fees to be charged to the investor. Activate the investor agreement. For more information on investor agreements in Lease and Finance Management, see Investor Agreements.
Run the Master Program – Process Billable Streams – Investor Agreement and Master Program - Receivables Invoice Transfer concurrent programs to transfer the evergreen billing information to Oracle Receivables that creates an invoice with invoice lines for the investor stake and fees to be billed to the investor.
Financiers are required to calculate, collect, and remit transaction-based taxes and meet leasing specific tax requirements within multiple applicable jurisdictions. Lease and Finance Management and Oracle eBTax are integrated to calculate taxes using lease-specific and common tax parameters.
This integration creates a common infrastructure for tax configuration for multiple legal entities, operating units, and tax jurisdictions and increases the flexibility of your infrastructure to define comprehensive sets of tax rules for tax determination requirements. You can reduce duplication of effort and errors using a common repository to maintain tax related records, and reduce clerical effort generating tax reports for reporting to tax authorities.
For information on processing taxes in Lease and Finance Management, see Taxes.
You can import billing items from a third-party finance company into Lease and Finance Management. You can import billing files containing charges incurred by the customer that you want to pass through, for example, property taxes, charges for non-sufficient funds, service, and maintenance. After you import billing files, you review them, correct errors, and download them into Lease and Finance Management tables.
To process billing information, you must have an active investor agreement with a defined stake amount.
You must include third-party billing data in a billing import file. You may include the following basic data fields in your data file:
Contact ID or Asset ID
Customer ID
Customer Address
Type of Charge
Amount
In addition, you can provide other fields, such as vendor, invoice, and source identifiers
To prepare a third-party billing import file, perform the following steps:
In all rows, set the value of the column TRX_STATUS_CODE to "SUBMITTED".
Create a SQL*Loader control file specific for the data file to be imported. This step should be done by a technical consultant with knowledge of SQL*Loader programming language. The control file describes the format of the data file to be imported. SQL*Loader does not validate data.
Run SQL*Loader to load the data file. Running SQL *Loader is a concurrent job that takes two arguments: name of data file and name of control file. This job produces an audit report.
Review the SQL*Loader audit reports. The report indicates the number of records which have been successfully or unsuccessfully loaded from data file into the Oracle interface table. Only data records with wrong format are rejected. That is, records with an invalid customer ID are accepted and loaded into the database. These records are rejected by a validation process in the next step.
Run the concurrent program Third Party Billing Import to pass all records from the billing import interface table to Oracle Lease and Finance Management transaction tables. he process validates data for referential integrity. For example, every record must have an amount, contract ID, and type of charge. Moreover, if optional data is supplied, it is validated. For example, if a vendor ID is provided, it should correspond to an active vendor. Note that all the records that passed the checks in the previous step are loaded into the database. f the data is loaded correctly, the column TRX_STATUS_CODE is set to "PROCESSED". If the concurrent program detects errors, the column TRX_STATUS_CODE is set to "ERROR".
Review the audit and exception reports that the concurrent program Third Party Billing Import generated. ll validated records are copied to Oracle Lease and Finance Management transaction tables. Rejected records remain in the interface table. The audit report shows the number of excepted and rejected records. The exception report displays rejected records and corresponding error messages.
If any records are rejected, then fix the invalid records until there are no error records.
Repeat these steps until all records are accepted.
You can drill down to the specific billing transaction lines to obtain more detailed information in Lease and Finance Management. Transaction summary information appears in three main areas:
Retrieve Transaction Summary Records - View contract number, customer name, invoice, currency, due date, amount, and balance.
View Transaction Line Results - View a breakdown of the lines of the invoice that shows how much was paid and how much is still due for each line of the invoice.
View Transaction Line Details Results - View a breakdown of the streams history within each line of the invoice that shows how much was paid and how much is still due for each stream of each line of the invoice.
The transaction summary process consists of the following steps:
Retrieve Transaction Summary Records
View Transaction Line Results
View Transaction Line Details Results
You can search and retrieve transaction summary records by specifying any or all of the following fields:
Consolidated Invoice Number
Contract Number
Customer Name
The initial results show you the following fields about an invoice:
Contract Number
Customer Name
Invoice - This field is hypertext linked, which allows you to access transaction line information.
Currency
Due Date
Amount
Balance
Details - This is an icon, which allows you access to stream details on each transaction line.
When you click on an invoice in the Transaction Summary results area, the Transaction Lines page appears. This page contains summary information about the invoice in the header, including the Invoice Amount and the Balance. In the Lines section, a breakdown of the lines of the invoice that shows how much was paid and how much is still due for each line of the invoice.
The fields that appear in the Lines region are as follows:
Line Number
Contract Number
Line Name
Invoice Amount - This is the amount for the current line on the invoice, not the total amount of the invoice, which appears in the header.
Tax
Amount Paid
Balance - This is the balance for the current lineon the invoice, not the balance of the invoice, which appears in the header.
When you click Details for an invoice in the Transaction Summary results region, the Transaction Line Details page appears. This page contains summary information about the invoice in the header, including the Invoice Amount and the Balance.
In the Streams region of the page is a breakdown of the streams history within each line of the invoice that shows how much was paid and how much is still due for each stream of each line of the invoice. The fields that appear in the Streams region are as follows:
Line Number
Line Name
Stream
AR Invoice
Invoice Amount - This is the amount for the current stream on the invoice line, not the total amount of the invoice, which appears in the header.
Tax
Amount Paid
Balance - This is the balance for the current line on the invoice, not the balance of the invoice, which appears in the header.
Check Number
Receipt Date
Once billing transactions are processed, the charges must be presented to the customer for payment in invoices or statements of account. When invoices clearly present charges, they are easy to understand to meet the needs of both the customer and the financer.
Customers often request clear presentment of billing to make their payable process easier to pay promptly and correctly. Financiers may want to minimize invoice volume while building better customer relationships and winning repeat business through management of their invoices. The following examples describe invoice options.
Invoice Format – display invoice information at the level of detail to meet customer requirements. For example, a customer may want invoice detail to match their purchase order or to be notified with an invoice message when certain events occur.
Invoice Format – display invoice information at the level of detail to meet customer requirements. For example, a customer may want invoice detail to match their purchase order or to be notified with an invoice message when certain events occur.
Invoice Grouping – group invoices or charges on invoices into the desired level of detail. For example, a customer may want charges to be grouped into one invoice line by customer cost center; a customer may have contracts with numerous assets and want rent charges to be grouped into one invoice line; a customer may want an invoice for each contract that lists each charge in detail.
Print Lead Days – the number of days before the due date the invoice should be submitted. Customers may want to receive invoices early in the month; others may want to receive invoices later in the month.
Invoice Format – merge charges and bill them as a single invoice line. For instance, a financier may want to present rent and service charges in one invoice line formatted as rent.
Invoice Format – merge charges and bill them as a single invoice line. For instance, a financier may want to present rent and service charges in one invoice line formatted as rent.
Invoice Grouping
Invoice Message
Creating invoices for lease and loan contracts includes the following tasks:
Determine the amount and date to send the invoice
Group charges into invoice lines on an invoice
Calculate taxes
Generate a receivable record in the system
Account for the billing transaction in the general ledger
Format and print invoice messages
Determine the media to dispatch the invoice
To complete these tasks, generate billing data through a combination of processes and concurrent programs in Lease and Finance Management and other Oracle applications.
The billing process also creates disbursements, when required, to passthrough billing charges from customers to vendors for services or from customers to investors for investment returns.
To create invoices, you must complete the following setups:
Set Up Billing in Oracle Receivables
Define Invoice Grouping Rules and Accounting
Run the Lease and Finance Management Pre-Billing Report
When you setup billing in Oracle Receivables for each customer that you want to invoice, you must enable consolidated billing for lease and loan contracts in Oracle Receivables. To setup billing in Oracle Receivables, see the Oracle Receivables Implementation Guide.
Oracle Receivables is seeded with the default OKL INVOICE grouping rule to group Lease and Finance Management billing transactions using the following parameters: Invoice Group Type, Private Label, OKL Billing Transaction Number, Contract ID, Source of Billing Transaction and Invoice Format Type. You can configure Invoice Groups in Lease and Finance Management if the seeded grouping rule in Oracle Receivables does not meet your requirements.
Before you run concurrent programs to generate billing data, run the Lease and Finance Management Pre-Billing Report to identify potential errors or incomplete and missing billing information that will prevent the billing programs from completing successfully. The Pre-Billing Report identifies errors in billing information that are difficult to correct once the billable streams are processed in Lease and Finance Management and transferred to Oracle Receivables. The Pre-Billing Report identifies the contracts for which errors can occur due to disabled bank accounts, disabled receipt methods, incorrect bill-to-site, inaccurate sales representative, and invalid GL code combinations.
Prerequisites to generate billing data are defined in the Billing Transactions prerequisites sections.
The objective of the Create Invoices process is to generate billing information in Lease and Finance Management and pass the information to Oracle Receivables in order to generate an invoice. There are two main stages in the process: the billing information preparation stage and the invoice generation stage. In the billing information preparation stage, you perform one or more of the following sets of billing tasks:
Billing Information Preparation
Invoice Generation
In the billing information preparation stage, you perform one or more of the following sets of billing tasks:
Enter billing charges manually in the Create Manual Invoice page to bill ad hoc charges
Run the program Pre-Billing Report to identify and correct incomplete or missing billing information that will prevent the billing processes from completing successfully
Run the program Master Program - Process Billable Streams - Contracts to process contractual billing information
Run the program Master Program - Process Billable Streams – Investor Agreement to process investor stake and fees
Run the program Create Receivables Variable Rate Invoice to process billing information for variable rate invoices
Run the program Advance Billing to process billing information for advance receipts
Run the program Evergreen Billing to process billing information for expired contracts that have not been terminated
Run the program Service Contracts Billing to process Oracle Service Contracts billing information for consolidated lease and service invoices
Enter counter readings in an Lease and Finance Management screen and run the program Usage Based Billing to process usage billing
Run the program Calculate Late Interest to process charges for late interest payments
Run the program Calculate Late Charges to process late charges
Import and correct Billing File using SQL*Loader, then run the program Third Party Billing Import
After the billing preparation stage, you must run the following programs in the invoice generation stage:
Master Program - Receivables Invoice Transfer
AutoInvoice Master Program (this is an Oracle Receivables program)
Print Consolidated Invoices (if you want the invoices to use the invoice formats setup in Lease and Finance Management)
If you require passthrough or syndication disbursements to vendors, investors, or suppliers, Lease and Finance Management sends the required data for invoice approval and payments to Oracle Payables. See Disbursements Overview.
Important: Passthrough billing for services created in Oracle Service Contracts is not possible. The receipt of payments process is a combination of Lease and Finance Management and Oracle Receivables procedures. When you receive payments and electronic transfers, receipts apply to invoices. Late payments and delinquent invoices result in billing items. The diagram, Procedures to Generate Receipts Data, in Receipt of Payments, Oracle Lease and Finance Management User's Guide, describes the concurrent programs and onscreen processes in Oracle Lease and Finance Management for generating receipts data.
The procedures to generate billing and disbursement data call the accounting engine for each transaction created, and automatically create the accounting entries defined in your accounting templates. Oracle Receivables accounts for the receipts procedures.
Financiers want to speed collections and customer inquiry response by presenting bills in formats that meet your business requirements and customer needs. You can create multi-line receivable invoices from Lease and Finance Management and use invoice grouping rules to present invoices that are clear to understand by your customers.
For example, if a customer wants to receive one invoice from your global operations, you have the flexibility to create billing charges from your multiple business units and consolidate charges for rent, fees, and services in one invoice.
To reduce the number of invoices processed, you can group invoices from multiple customer accounts into a single customer invoice.
And if a customer wants to track invoice details for each contract, you can list all charges as separate lines associated with the same contract. Then print and view individual or consolidated invoices in Lease and Finance Management.
Oracle Receivables is seeded with the default OKL INVOICE grouping rule to group Lease and Finance Management billing transactions using the following parameters:
Invoice Group Type
Private Label
Lease and Finance Management Billing Transaction Number
Contact ID
Source of Billing Transaction
Invoice Format Type
You can also configure Invoice Groups in Lease and Finance Management if the seeded grouping rule in Oracle Receivables does not meet your requirements.
If the seeded grouping rule in Oracle Receivables does not meet your requirements, you can define an Invoice Group in Lease and Finance Management by performing the following tasks:
Create Invoice Grouping Rule
Define Invoice Types
Define Invoice Line Types
Associate Stream Types to Invoice Line Type
To create an Invoice Group in Lease and Finance Management, go to Setups > Receivables > Invoice Groups. Give the Invoice Group a name and description and assign it to an Operating Unit.
If you want to group invoices billed on multiple contracts with the same billing terms, you can check the Multi-Contract Invoice box. In this example, do not check the Multi-Contract Invoice box because the scenario does not require invoice grouping across multiple contracts.
The Invoice Types define separate invoices. For example we can create two invoices, one for Rent and one for Fees. In this example, the Rent Invoice Type could include invoice lines for rent and property tax streams and the Fees Invoice Type could include invoice lines for installation, legal, and vendor fees.
Create an Invoice Line Type for each Invoice Type to define invoice lines. For example, create invoice lines for rent and property tax. At this point, we have named the invoice lines. To generate billing charges on the invoice line, click Streams (I) to associate streams with the Invoice Line Type.
After completing the previous steps, select the rent streams to be associated with the Invoice Line Type, for example, Rent. When this Invoice Group is associated with a contract and you run billing processes, the rent streams associated this Invoice Line Type, Asset Rent, will be added and the total displayed as an invoice line on the Rent invoice.
Not only are billing details important to customers, and third parties, including collection agents and vendors, but they are vital to internal departments responsible for accounting, customer service, cash management, collections, vendor relationships and investor relationships. Clear and accurate billing information provides critical information to help employees meet their responsibilities to:
Ascertain outstanding balances by customer, account, contract and charge
Respond to customer queries
Apply cash receipts
Initiate collection at the appropriate time and make quality decisions
Disburse dues to vendors accurately on time
Disburse dues to investors accurately on time
Waive dues with confidence
Reverse and write-off uncollectible amounts
Oracle Bill Presentment Architecture (BPA) enables you to view a copy of the invoice as presented to the customer.
You can view BPA invoices by navigating to Operations > Invoices, entering your search criteria, and selecting the invoice you want to view. Click Display Invoice after you have selected your invoice.
When configuring your BFA Template Assignment Rules in Oracle Bill Presentment Architecture, you can select Oracle Lease and Finance Management attributes to be evaluated in the automatic invoice template selection process. Then when you create your BFA Invoice Formats, you can select the same attributes to be displayed in the invoice.
The following OLFM attributes can be selected:
Invoice Grouping Rule
Invoice Type Name
Termination Quote Number
OKL Source Billing Transaction
Private Label
For more information on BFA setup, see the Oracle Bill Presentment Architecture User’s Guide.