Understanding BI Publisher Invoice Structure

BI Publisher is part of the Oracle technology stack. It enables you to create and customize reports using templates. These templates are maintainable using standard desktop applications such as Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and Adobe Acrobat. It is fairly simple to create and maintain these templates because these applications are familiar tools. The BI Publisher engine takes XML data as input, combines it with the report template, and translates it to produce the report output. The report output can be HTML, PDF, RTF, or XLS.

BI Publisher invoices do not use the invoice Form ID to determine where to place data on the page. For example, when determining where to print header notes. With BI Publisher invoices, this type of information is determined by the BI Publisher report definition or template. BI Publisher invoices receive data from the extract tables. A BI Publisher invoice had four elements associated to it: a data source, a report definition, a report template, and a file layout.

Sample templates are delivered with PeopleSoft Billing for printing invoices using BI Publisher. These templates are RTF templates that were created using Microsoft Word and the BI Publisher Template Builder, which is a plug-in to Microsoft Word. You can use the delivered templates, create new templates, or modify the existing templates. The sample templates include special processing to handle invoices with this type of data:

• VAT and sales tax information.

• Forward balance amount.

• Paid amount.

• Credit card payment.

• Deposit invoice (from a sales order).

The sample invoices do not support Acceptgiro invoices, PeopleSoft Grants invoices, or installment invoices. If there is a need to print these types of invoices, then a new report must be created or the sample reports can be modified.

See the product documentation for PeopleTools: BI Publisher for PeopleSoft