Bill Frequency - Bill Cycle vs Bill Segment Duration

An account's bill cycle defines when the system attempts to create bill segments for the account's billable obligations. The word "attempt" is stressed because an obligation may not have a bill segment on every bill created for its account.

Some examples will help make the point:

• An account may be on a monthly bill cycle (meaning we attempt to create a bill every month for the account) but contain only biannual obligations. However, this is not sensible. Why? Because the system would attempt to create a bill every month for the account's obligations, but only twice during the year would it succeed (because the obligations have a biannual duration).

• An account may be on a biweekly bill cycle (meaning we attempt to create a bill every 2 weeks for the account) and contain a mixture of biweekly, monthly, and quarterly obligations. In this scenario, every two weeks the system would create a bill that contains at least one bill segment (for the biweekly obligation). However, 12 times a year, the bill will contain an additional bill segment for the monthly obligation. And 4 times a year, the bill will contain one more bill segment (for a total of 3) for the quarterly obligation.

In sum, the account's bill cycle controls when the system attempts to create a bill for the account's obligations. Whether an obligation contributes a bill segment to the bill is a complicated subject. The topics in this section describe how the system knows it's time to create a bill segment for an obligation.

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