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About Accessing or Updating Billing Information in Siebel Energy

Siebel Energy allows end users to access the same invoice information through different views. By selecting one view or another, end users can find the information most relevant to them, according to the procedure they want to perform at that moment.

Most views allow end users to record interactions with a customer and to update the customer's information. The functionality available to end users depends on the end user access rights. From these views, end users can access information about billing, such as the account balance, invoice history, payment history, and adjustment history.

NOTE:  The procedures described in this chapter contain the most frequently used method for performing each task, including the view to access, but other methods might exist.

End-User Views

The end-user views follow:

• Billing Portal view (call center agent). The Billing Portal view summarizes the billing information that a call center agent most likely needs to review while talking to a customer. It also makes it easy for call center agents to handle the most common transactions associated with invoices.

  The Billing Portal view serves as a starting point for most customer inquiries. Among other tasks, the Billing Portal views allow call center agents to complete the following tasks:

  • Review the account status, such as the balance, delinquency information, and pending financial transactions (credit and debit) that have not yet been applied to the balance.
  • View the most recent invoices of a customer and access detailed information about an invoice.
  • View the history of payments and adjustments.

    This history is useful if customers claim that they have already made a payment and that the balance is not correct.

  • Access the usage history of different services that the customer has so that unexpected hikes can be explained to the customer.
  • Begin transactions, such as recording payments or adjusting balances.

    Table 16 describes the information available in the Billing Portal view.

    Table 16. Billing Portal View

    Views	Description
    Account	Displays account information that corresponds to the Accounts screen, More Info view. End users can edit this information.
    Account Balance	Displays balance information for the account. Retrieves this information from an external billing application. Information is read-only. Pay button. Navigates to the Invoices screen, Payments view, in which a payment has been created to settle the entire account balance. Refresh button. Updates the information with the most current data.
    Invoice History	Displays information from the Invoices screen. Information is read-only. Invoice # hyperlink. Navigates to the Invoices screen, Line Items view.
    Payment History	Displays the payment history for the account. Information is read-only. Payment # hyperlink. Navigates to the Invoices screen, Payments More Info view, Invoices subview, in which they record payments.
    Adjustment History	Displays a subset of the information from the Invoices screen, Adjustment Requests view. Information is read-only. Request # hyperlink. Navigates to the Adjustment Requests view, Line Items subview.
    Additional Info	Billing Profile hyperlink. Navigates to the Accounts screen, Profiles view, Billing Profile form. Usage Detail hyperlink. Navigates to the Accounts More Info form, Usage Detail view. Unbilled Charges hyperlink. Navigates to the Account More Info form, Unbilled Charges view.

• Invoices views (call center agent). The Invoices views allow call center agents to view all bill details. These views are generally accessed to reply to customer complaints regarding a specific charge on the bill. The Invoices views also allow call center agents to start transactions, such as adjusting an invoice, recording a payment against the invoice, requesting a bill duplicate.

Time Zones in Date-Time Fields

The search functions of the Billing Profile views include Start Date and End Date fields, which are used to search the billing information using date range criteria. In these fields, end users can select a date and time, and can also select the time zone.

The Start Date and End Date fields of the Billing Profile screen are of UTC Date Time type, and send the values selected by users in UTC format (ISO Standard). The UTCCanonical user property, when set to Y, enables the feature that converts the date and time values to UTC format.