Third-Party Invoicing Applications

This chapter describes how to set up Siebel Field Service to obtain invoice information from a third-party invoicing application that your company uses. It includes the following topics:

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.

Process of Configuring Invoice Integration

The following list shows the tasks that administrators typically perform to configure invoice integration. Your company might follow a different process according to its business requirements.

To configure invoice integration, administrators perform the following tasks:

Configuring the Web Service

You use Web services to direct the inbound messages from the third-party invoicing application. Make sure that you correctly configure and activate the Web services. For more information about configuring Web services, see Siebel Application Services Interface Reference.

This task is a step in Process of Configuring Invoice Integration.

To configure the Web service

Navigate to the Administration - Web Services screen, then the Inbound Web Services view.

For the selected record, make sure that the values for the Namespace, Name, and Status fields match the values in the following table.

Namespace	Name	Status
http://siebel.com/asi/	Siebel Invoice	Active

In the Comments field, enter the type of protocol to call the Siebel Application Interface, and then enter the location of the Siebel Application Interface and the user who is authorized to call the Web service.

Extending the Data Set

You might want to extend the data set by adding more fields to the relevant integration objects. The Siebel data model must support the fields. For more information about how to extend the data that Siebel Field Service receives from the third-party inventory management application, see Siebel Application Services Interface Reference.

This task is a step in Process of Configuring Invoice Integration.

Disabling Invoicing

You might want to disable the third-party invoicing function if, for example, your company does not use a third-party billing application. In this case, do not publish the ASI. For more information about publishing ASIs, see Siebel Application Services Interface Reference.

This task is a step in Process of Configuring Invoice Integration.

Customizing Invoicing

You might want to customize the third-party invoicing function to add special functions or additional business processes. For more information about extending the data that Siebel Field Service receives from the third-party invoicing application, see Siebel Application Services Interface Reference.

This task is a step in Process of Configuring Invoice Integration.

Defining Service Ports

You might want to define service ports different from, or in addition to, the ports in Siebel Field Service. For more information about defining customized service ports, see Siebel Application Services Interface Reference.

Creating Workflow Processes

You might want to define workflow processes to automate certain functions associated with third-party invoicing. For more information about creating workflow processes, see Siebel Business Process Framework: Workflow Guide.