Siebel Field Service Guide > Third-Party Invoicing Applications >

About Invoice Integration

Invoice integration applies to companies that rely on back-office billing and accounting applications to generate invoices for sold products and rendered services. In the business process for invoice retrieval, Siebel Field Service sends the billable source data (billable time, expenses, and materials) to a billing application for invoice processing.

After generating a final customer invoice, the third-party invoicing application can publish the invoice data as an XML file, and pass this file to Siebel Field Service. Siebel Field Service updates the Invoice business object, populates the base tables with the invoice data, and displays the invoice in the Invoices views.

This functionality assists users in answering inquiries from customers about invoices. A user can view a customer invoice in Siebel Field Service without accessing the third-party invoicing application.

To integrate Siebel Field Service with an invoicing application, you use the Siebel Invoice business service, of the Data Synchronization type, and the prebuilt Siebel Invoice Application Services Interface (ASI). For more information about how to configure, use, and modify integrations by using ASIs, see Siebel Application Services Interface Reference.

A bill is a detailing of accumulated charges over a defined period of time for one or more products or services. A customer receives these products or services and owes your company for them. An invoice is a document that shows the balance the customer owes to your company and to other involved parties, such as third-party shippers and government tax bureaus. An invoice includes billing information, taxes, and incidentals. It contains account balance information and shows transactions applicable to balance. It can be associated with one bill or multiple bills.