Billing Plans

In PeopleSoft Contracts, you assign billing schedules and rules to contract lines by creating billing plans. Billing plans are contract-specific. A billing plan stores the schedule of billing events (when to bill) and the corresponding bill lines (what to bill) for these events. Each contract line product is tied to a billing plan, and you can associate contract lines with similar billing requirements with the same billing plan. Each contract has at least one billing plan and may have more than one.

Before you define billing plans for a contract, you should first have established your contract header billing options. The information that you have entered at the contract header level migrates down to the billing plans created for the contract. Much of this information appears by default from the setup of the related Contract business unit.

When you are setting up your billing plans, you can either first define billing plans and then assign contract lines to them, or you can first assign your contract lines to undefined billing plans and then finish the billing plan definition.

You can optionally select billing plan templates to automate the creation of billing plans on your contract. You can associate events with your billing plan template depending on your plan method. In addition, you can create a billing plan detail template to override the billing defaults defined for a contracts billing business unit and contract header.

Regardless of which approach you take, you need to complete these high-level steps:

• Define a billing plan method when entering a billing plan.

• Define billing options for the billing plan.

• Create billing plan lines for Immediate, Milestone, and Percent Complete billing methods.

• Define billing plan events.

  Events are required for Milestone, Percent Complete, and Value-based billing plans; optional for As-incurred billing plans; not used for Immediate and Recurring billing plans.

• Create billing plan lines for Value-based billing methods.

To simplify your billing process, you might limit the number of billing plans that you create for a contract. These are the rules for defining when you need to create a new billing plan:

• At least one billing plan is defined for each contract.

• A new billing plan must be added if the nature of billing differs for some contract lines.

  For example, if some contract lines are managed as-incurred and others are to be billed in association with milestones, then a minimum of two billing plans are needed—one As-incurred plan and one Milestone plan.

  Also, amount-based contract lines cannot be assigned to Value-based billing plans. Rate-based contract lines cannot be assigned to Milestone, Percent Complete, or Immediate billing plans. And, recurring contract lines can be assigned only to Recurring billing plans.

The high-level step for linking contract lines to billing plans is to assign contract lines to billing plans.

When assigning contract lines to billing plans, assign lines with similar billing requirements to the same billing plan when possible. Contract lines must be put on different billing plans if one of these vary:

• Billing plan options.

• Bill to customer ID.

• Bill to address.

• Billing contact.

• Billing business unit.

• Bill type.

• Bill source.

• Bill currency option (for as-incurred).

• Bill by ID.

• Bill cycle.

• Billing specialist.

• Bill inquiry phone.

• Tax parameters (for as-incurred).

In addition, the contract lines must be put on different billing plans if any of the following apply:

• Billing the lines in association with a different set of milestones.

• Billing by amount versus percent.

• Billing a different percent for some lines than for others.

• Having a recurring price type.

  Recurring contract lines, even though they have the same price type, cannot share billing plans.

Billing Plan Templates

Two types of billing templates are available:

• Billing Plan template

• Billing Plan Detail template

You can optionally select billing plan templates to automate the creation of billing plans on your contract. You can also associate events with your billing plan template depending on your plan method. Create billing plan templates on the Billing/Revenue Plan Templates page.

You can also create a billing plan detail template to override the billing defaults defined for a contracts billing business unit and contract header. Create billing plan detail templates on the Billing Plan Detail Template page.

See Defining Revenue and Billing Plan Templates.

Discounts

See these topics for information about discounts: Pricing Contracts, Understanding Accounting Distributions, and Entering Accounting Distributions.

See Understanding Accounting Distributions.

See Understanding Pricing Contracts.

Retainages

A retainage is any amount that is not to be billed unless and until you release it. Retainages, always defined as percentages, can be specified on rate-based contract lines to apply to all billable project transactions that are tied to the contract line and passed to PeopleSoft Billing. Contract lines containing retainages can only be assigned to As-incurred billing plans.

Purchase Orders

You can have only one purchase order (PO) associated with a contract. However, for the appropriate billing plan method (percent complete, immediate, milestone, or value-based), you can have multiple POs on the billing plan.

The PO number is open and editable throughout the life of the billing plan, and you can override the default PO number at any time.

The PO number appears on varying pages of your contract, depending on the billing plan type:

• For As-incurred and Recurring billing plans, the PO number appears on the Billing Plan General page.

• For amount-based billing plans (Amount, Percent Complete, and Immediate), the PO number appears on the billing plan line.

• For Value-based billing plans, the PO number appears on the Value Based Billing Plan lines page.

• For prepaids, the PO number appears on the Prepaid Balances page.