Billing Cycles

Use billing cycles to control how often and on which dates you want to bill your projects and generate invoices.

How Billing Cycles are Applied to Bill Plans

The eligibility of a bill plan for invoicing depends on:

• Single contract or range of contracts in the current run of the Generate Invoice process.

• Bill through date specified as a parameter for the current run of the Generate Invoice process. If this parameter isn't specified, then the application uses the system date as the bill through date.

• Next billing date calculated by the application.

On a Single Contract

When you run the Generate Invoice process for a single contract, the application considers the bill plan always eligible for invoicing, regardless of the billing cycle value.

On a Range of Contracts

When you run the Generate Invoice process for a range of contracts, the application:

1. Calculates the next billing date based on the latest bill through date stored on the invoice distributions for the bill plan and the billing cycle value, converted into days.

2. Considers the bill plan ineligible for invoicing where the calculated next billing date is after the user-specified bill through date. Result is no transactions are invoiced.

3. Generates invoices for those transactions where the calculated next billing date is on or before the user-specified bill through date.

4. Stores the user-specified bill through date process parameter value on the invoice distribution table for all invoice distributions created in the current run. This date becomes the latest bill through date for use in calculating the next billing date, the next time you run the Generate Invoice process.

Let's look at this table to understand the different scenarios.

Number of Contracts	Defined Billing Cycle	Latest Bill Through Date	User-specified Bill Through Date	Next Billing Date = Latest Bill Through Date + Defined Billing Cycle Value	Next Billing Date is After or On or Before User-specified Bill Through Date	Bill Plan Considered Eligible for Invoicing	Explanation
Single contract	30 days	Any date	Any date	Skipped	Skipped	Always	Billing cycle eligibility check is skipped. Bill plan is always eligible for invoicing for a single contract, irrespective of the billing cycle value.
Range of contracts	30 days	April 15	May 1	April 15 + 30 days = May 15	May 15 is after May 1	No	Calculated next billing date is after the user-specified bill through date.
Range of contracts	30 days	April 15	May 20	April 15 + 30 days = May 15	May 15 is before May 20	Yes	Calculated next billing date is on or before the user-specified bill through date.
Range of contracts	Always eligible	Any date	Any date	Skipped	Skipped	Always	Billing cycle eligibility check is skipped. Bill plan is always eligible for invoicing.