Establishing Default Levels for PeopleSoft Billing Options

PeopleSoft Billing uses extensive defaults to automatically populate bill information. During online bill entry, as you enter certain fields, the system automatically populates other fields on the bill header based on the defaults that you set up. Automatic field population also occurs during the Billing Interface process (BIIF0001) when a field that has possible default information is left blank.

It is important to understand which fields appear by default, as well as the hierarchy by which this occurs. Before you begin setting up PeopleSoft Billing tables, you must consider which values are related to other values.

For example, consider these payment terms, which vary by bill type. Your consulting invoices use net 30, and your hardware products and maintenance use two percent, 10 days, net 30. However, if you negotiate a payment term of net 60 for a particular customer regardless of bill type, you would additionally set up net 60 on the customer record. When you enter any type of bill for that customer, net 60 always appears by default because customer information overrides bill type information.

The following diagram shows the billing defaults and the overrides hierarchy.

The following table is another way of illustrating the default relationships and the hierarchical default levels for billing fields. In order of hierarchy, columns to the left override columns to the right. Thus if you set a default invoice ID for both the bill type and bill source of an invoice, the system will use the ID from the bill source. Likewise, defaults that you set at the customer level, bill source, or bill type, override defaults that you set at a business unit or system level. During online bill entry, you can always override any of these defaults by entering a new value.

Before you begin assigning default levels, you must have a clear idea of the proposed structure of the business units, the different bill types and bill sources that you plan to define, and who the bill-to customers are. Consider the different values that you want to set up for the rules and tables that are listed in the first row going down the grid. Decide which rules and values are most often used at each level. Whenever possible, for ease of data maintenance, define defaults at the highest level possible. In this example, the highest levels are the right-most columns in the table.

Setting up defaults at the highest possible level makes it easy for you to maintain data. If a change is required, you do not have to change every instance individually. Rather, you make the change at the highest level possible, and it appears by default down through the data hierarchy.

The columns in the chart marked with XX indicate levels at which you can set up a default value for the corresponding field value referenced in the first column of the table. Columns marked with NA indicate that you cannot set up a default value at the corresponding level.