Work-in-Progress by Billing Status Analysis Using OTBI

Use measures in the Project Billing - Bill Transactions Real Time subject area in OTBI, enabling you to more easily report unbilled amounts, also known as work in progress, or WIP, for new or updated bill transactions. In conjunction, a billing status attribute has also been introduced, providing a clearer picture of where WIP is within the billing lifecycle, both within and across projects. For example, how much WIP is on hold, versus how much WIP is associated with a draft invoice, versus how much has been accepted in Receivables. To report WIP in real-time, and therefore take advantage of the new WIP measures and status attribute, opt into the Bill Transaction Creation on Cost Import feature from update 23C. That feature was previously under Controlled Availability, but has been made available to all customers from this release.

Billing Status

A new attribute which indicates where every bill transaction is within the billing lifecycle. Billing statuses use simple, unambiguous language and have universal applicability.

The attribute is located in the following presentation folder of the Project Billing - Bill Transactions Real Time subject area: Bill Transaction > Invoice Processing*.

The following table lists the different billing statuses of a bill transaction:

Status	Meaning	Additional Information
Ready	The transaction is ready to bill
On Hold	The transaction needs to be temporarily held back from billing
In Progress	The transaction has been added to an invoice or credit memo which is not yet complete	Bill transactions will remain 'In Progress' until the corresponding invoice or credit memo is in an 'Accepted' status. This includes invoices which are in any of the following statuses; 'Draft', 'Submitted', 'Approved', 'Rejected', 'Released', 'Transferred', 'Transfer rejected'
Non-billable	The transaction does not need to be billed	Bill transactions are currently only created for eligible (billable) source transactions. However, if a source transaction is subsequently adjusted and becomes non-billable, then the bill transaction status is updated to 'Non-billable' instead of being deleted
Insufficient Funds	The transaction cannot be billed as a contract hard limit has been reached
Action Pending	An action has been performed on this transaction which is not yet complete	This is a transient status. Some actions, such as processing credits, require scheduled process to be run in order for the action to be completed. In a future release, adjusting actions which are subject to approval will also be reported with this status.
Billed	The transaction has been billed	This status reflects transactions that have been included on an invoice, the invoice has been interfaced to Receivables, and the Confirm Invoice Acceptance Status in Receivables process has been successfully run
Error	The transaction has one or more exceptions which prevent billing	Billing exceptions can be reported using the Projects - Billing and Revenue Exceptions Real Time subject area
*Blank*	The transaction was created prior to 24B and opting into the Bill Transaction Creation on Cost Import feature

Amount to Bill

Three new measures which report the amount to bill, denominated in invoice, contract and transaction currencies, scaled by the contribution percentage of the contract. When a bill transaction reaches 'Billed' status (or 'Non-billable'), the amount to bill is updated to zero. For bill transactions in a 'Ready' status, the amount to bill reflects the amount that will be added to draft invoices when they are created by the Generate Invoice process.

Amounts in contract and invoice currency are derived from the transaction currency amount using the exchange rate setups on the contract and bill plan.

The new measures are located in the following presentation folders of the Project Billing - Bill Transactions Real Time subject area:

Measures - Bill Transaction > Invoice Measures > Invoice Measures in Invoice Currency*
Measures - Bill Transaction > Invoice Measures > Invoice Measures in Contract Currency*
Measures - Bill Transaction > Invoice Measures > Invoice Measures in Transaction Currency*

* These attributes and measures may be moved to parent folders in a future release to improve discoverability. Such changes will be documented in the Service Excellence Continued Investments section of What's New readiness materials. In the meantime, any analyses created using these attributes and measures should continue to function without needing to be modified.

Example Dashboard

The following dashboard was built using the Project Billing - Bill Transactions Real Time subject area, leveraging the Bill Transaction Creation on Cost Import feature and the new billing status attribute and amount to bill measures described above. The sample dashboard will be made available in an upcoming post in the Project Management forum on Customer Connect.

The dashboard also showcases capabilities that will be added to a Redwood-themed Project Management user experience in a future release.

An example of a dashboard built using the Project Billing - Bill Transactions Real Time subject area in OTBI

An example of a dashboard built using the Billing - Bill Transactions Real Time subject area in OTBI, showcasing the Amount to Bill measure and Billing Status attribute.

Key design features of the example dashboard:

Radio buttons are used to switch the denomination of the unit price and amount to bill currency. This reduces the need to have multiple currency columns or view switchers.

Deep links enable the user to contextually drill from the Transaction ID to the source project cost or billing event.

The new billing status attribute has conditional formatting applied to highlight exceptions.

A page prompt enables users to include/exclude transactions in specific statuses. For example, in the screenshot, transactions that are in a 'Billed' status have been excluded.

Summary analyses on the right-hand side provide totals of bill transactions by:
- Status, with a subtotal of all transactions that can be billed immediately (status is 'Ready' or 'In Progress')
- Status and month, visualized using a heat matrix to highlight periods and statuses with the highest transaction count or amount to bill

The business benefits are:

Reduce the complexity of building easy-to-use unbilled (WIP) reports

Gain insight at a glance as to where every bill transaction is within the billing lifecycle.

Easily distinguish between transactions which have been added to a draft invoice ('In Progress'), and those which have been accepted by Receivables ('Billed').
- This directly addresses challenges experienced today when users attempt to identify billed transactions from the Manage Project Costs page.

Bill transactions relating to project costs which have undergone a net-zero adjustment can now be reported with a status of 'Non-billable', thus removing any risk of overstating the amount to bill.

Gain visibility into which transactions are pending deferred processing, ensuring that invoicing and reporting are up-to-date.

Steps to Enable

You don't need to do anything to enable this feature.

Tips And Considerations

From this release, when the Bill Transaction Creation on Cost Import opt-in is enabled, partial billing will no longer be supported. The billing status of any transaction which exceeds a hard limit, in whole or in part, will be set to 'Insufficient Funds'.
- The ability to bill a portion of a bill transaction will be replaced with a new, more intuitive feature in a future release, subject to customer demand.

The Billing Status attribute and Amount to Bill measures will not be automatically populated for existing transactions. After enabling the Bill Transaction Creation on Cost Import opt-in, these new attributes and measures will only be populated for new or adjusted bill transactions.
- As a workaround for unbilled transactions, you can force an update by making a trivial adjustment to the source project costs or billing events, as appropriate. Note that any adjustments of billed transactions may result in undesirable credit-rebills.

Key Resources

This feature leverages the Bill Transaction and Exception Analysis Using Oracle Transactional Business Intelligence feature in 23B.

This feature depends on the Bill Transaction Creation on Cost Import feature in 23C.
- The above feature was enhanced in 23D to include Bill Transaction Creation on Billing Event Creation
- The above feature was further enhanced in 24A to include Bill Transaction Synchronization on Billing Event Update or Delete (as reported in the Service Excellence Continuing Investments section of the 24A What's New).

Access Requirements

You'll need the Project Contract Bill Transaction Analysis Duty (FBI_PROJECT_CONTRACT_BILL_TRANSACTION_ANALYSIS_DUTY) privilege to access the Project Billing - Bill Transactions Real Time subject area in OTBI.

Data access can be secured using one of the predefined Data Security Policies (DSPs) on database resource PJB_BILL_TRXS, else a custom DSP can be created based on specific requirements.