Discounts, Surcharges, and Retainages

You can establish discounts and surcharges for fixed-amount contract lines and rate-based contract lines. Discounts and surcharges do not apply to recurring contract lines. How the discount and surcharge information flows to PeopleSoft Billing depends upon the price type of the contract line.

Fixed-Amount Contract Lines: Discounts and Surcharges

The Contracts Billing Interface process handles discounts and surcharges for fixed-amount contract lines in this manner:

  • The system creates one row for each discount or surcharge corresponding to a bill line on the billing plan.

    This may include discounts or surcharges for more than one contract line if the billing plan contains multiple contract lines and is summarizing them on a single bill line.

  • The system maps CA_LN_REDUCTS.DISC_SUR_ID to INTFC_BI_AEDS.DISC_SUR_ID.

  • The system maps CA_LN_REDUCTS.DESCR to INTFC_BI_AEDS.DESCR as the description for the discount.

  • All fixed-amount activities for discount or surcharge rows are created as discount or surcharge amounts in PeopleSoft Billing, even if they were originally defined by percentage.

  • All discount or surcharge rows that are created for fixed-amount activities are created as level-one discounts for the bill line in PeopleSoft Billing.

  • The discount or surcharge accounting distribution that is sent to PeopleSoft Billing depends upon the revenue recognition method that is defined for the contract line to which the reduction corresponds.

    If the revenue recognition method is Billing Manages Revenue, the accounting distribution comes from the discount table: CA_DETAIL_REDUC. For all other revenue recognition methods, the accounting distribution comes from the Contract Asset table for the related contract line: CA_DETAIL_UAR.

  • PeopleSoft Billing writes the discount or surcharge back to PeopleSoft Project Costing with a DSC analysis type.

Note:

You can establish discounts and surcharges at the header level. Header discounts or surcharges must be allocated down to individual contract lines.

See Discounts and Surcharges.

See Accounting Distributions for Discounts and Surcharges.

Rate-Based Contract Lines: Discounts and Retainages

The Contracts Billing Interface process handles discounts and retainages for rate-based contract lines in this manner:

  • Discount rows are created as Discount Surcharge Level 1, and retainage rows are created as Discount Surcharge Level 2.

    When PeopleSoft Billing calculates the discount and retainage amounts, the discount is applied against the gross amount of the line. The retainage is then applied to the discounted line amount.

  • The system maps discounts DISCOUNT_ID to DISC_SUR_ID and retainages RETAINAGE_ID to DISC_SUR_ID.

  • Discounts and retainages are stored as percentages, not amounts.

  • The accounting distribution for discounts and retainages always comes from the CA_DETAIL_UAR table for the corresponding contract line.

    The accounting distribution for discounts and retainages for rate-based rows comes from the accounting rules. The system uses the same accounting rule that was selected for the billable (BIL) row to apply as the accounting rule for the discount and retainage row.

  • PeopleSoft Billing distinguishes between discounts and retainages according to a flag (RETAINAGE_FLG) in the BI_DISC_SUR table.

    If the flag is marked Y (yes), the system writes the DS row back to projects as a retainage with a BRT analysis type. If the flag is marked N (no), the system writes the DS row back to projects as a discount with a DSC analysis type.

Note:

Rate-based contract lines containing discounts and retainages cannot be associated with value-based billing plans.

See Understanding the Relationship Between PeopleSoft Contracts and PeopleSoft Project Costing.

Rate Based Retainage Rows

For the as-incurred billing method, you can choose to withhold a portion of the billable amount for each transaction; this is referred to as a retainage. When the billing for these transactions is finalized, these new items (portion of the original) are written back to projects as BRT (analysis type) rows and may be handled in one of three ways, depending on the selection that you make for the Items previously held as Retainage option on the Billing Plan - Billing Plan General page:

  • Hold the items in PeopleSoft Project Costing.

  • Bill the items at a later date.

  • Write the items off at a later date.

If you choose to hold the items, the Contracts Billing Interface process ignores these rows.

If you choose to write off the items, the Contracts Billing Interface process sends the rows to PeopleSoft Billing with an analysis type of WTO.

If you choose to bill for the items, the items may or may not be applied against limits. How the system handles this is based on the setting that you define for the Apply Released Retainage field on the Installation Options - Contracts page. If you do not select the Apply Released Retainage field, then all rows are sent to PeopleSoft Billing with an analysis type of BIL. If you selected the Apply Released Retainage field, then each row is checked against the limit. If the row falls under the limit, the row is sent to PeopleSoft Billing as RRT; otherwise, the row is sent as over-the-limit (OLT).

Note:

No discounts or additional retainages are applied to retainage rows.