Understanding Recurring Bill Generation

PeopleSoft Billing enables you to reproduce bills or portions of bills and generate invoices by using templates. By associating a recurring template with a predefined schedule, you control when and how often recurring bills are generated. The schedules automate and control the generation of recurring bills. You can generate bills daily, weekly, monthly, or annually. You can also configure schedules for rent or utilities.

The schedule assigns the bill-from dates in recurring bills. To determine the bill-to date, subtract one day from the next bill-from date. For example, if the bill-from date is the 15th of the month, the bill-to date is the 14th of the next month.

The billing cycle plays an important role in generating recurring bills. It:

  • Links the schedule to the recurring bill template.

  • Defines when the recurring bill is to be generated.

  • Defines the number of days before the bill generation date that you can generate a recurring bill.

  • Establishes the invoice date that appears by default on the Recurring Bill Schedule page.

Use a recurring bill template to create the recurring invoices. From the template, generate a recurring bill schedule to define the start and end dates of the period during which the recurring bills will be generated.

If you use charge codes, discounts, and surcharges from the delivered PeopleSoft Billing tables to construct the template bill, you have two options when setting price options for recurring bills. You can:

  • Guarantee constant pricing.

  • Let the system assign the current effective-dated discount or charge amount.

To specify a pricing option, use the Standard Billing - Line - Info 2 page. To enable the system to assign the current effective-dated discount or charge amount, select Use Effective Dated Price on Recurring Bills. To guarantee constant pricing, do not select this field. The Use Effective Dated Price on Recurring Bills check box is not available for generated invoices.

To update the description for recurring and copied bills, select the Use Effective Dated Identifier Description for Generating Recurring Bills and Copied Bills check box on the Installation Options - Billing - General Options page.

Note: When running the Pre-process and Finalization process (BIIVC000) and the Currency Conversion process (BICURCNV) on a recurring basis, ensure that you use a run control ID that is distinct from the run control ID that you use to run these processes individually. If you run these processes individually using the same run control as you use to run them on a recurring basis, you deactivate the recurring process. For instance, suppose that you have scheduled run control XYZ to run the Currency Conversion process once daily at 6 p.m. Each day when the recurring process runs, the AE_REQUEST.PROCESS_FREQUENCY value remains set to A (always). Later, you run the Currency Conversion process individually from the same run control ID (XYZ) using a run control page. The process updates the AE_REQUEST row to PROCESS_FREQUENCY value N (do not run). Effectively, this deactivates the recurring process. To avoid this scenario, use run control ID XYZ for the recurring activity only.

Creating Recurring Templates and Associated Schedules

To create a recurring template and associated schedules:

  1. Establish the schedule.

    Define the recurring bill schedule on the Recurring Bill Schedule page.

    Note: When you generate a recurring bill schedule, select the SetID to use for the recurring bills.

  2. Link the schedule to a billing cycle.

    1. Link the schedule to a bill cycle on the Bill Cycle page.

    2. Establish the number of available cycles and indicate their names.

  3. Create a Recurring Bill template.

    Use the Standard Billing - Header - Info 1 page to create a new bill and define it as a Recurring Bill template.

    1. Enter a new bill and verify that the billing cycle ID has a recurring schedule.

    2. Change the Frequency field value to Recurring and save the bill.

    3. Click the Go To Recurring Bill Schedule button next to the Frequency field to navigate to the Recurring Bill Schedule page.

  4. Generate the recurring bill schedule on the Recurring Bill Schedule page.