Streamlined Retroactive Budget Enrollment

A new process flow makes it easier for you to enroll a customer account in a budget billing plan and include the most recent (current) bill in the budget calculation. You can initiate a process flow from the new Retroactively Enroll on Budget button located on the Account – Budget tab page. This button is displayed and enabled provided the following conditions are met:

  • Account is not an open-item account.
  • Account has at least one service agreement eligible for budget.

The initiated process flow guides you step by step through enrolling a customer account in a budget billing plan, making it easy to include the account’s most recent bill in the budget amount. The supporting capabilities include:

  • Confirming that the customer’s account and most recent bill are eligible to be included in a budget billing plan.
  • Providing recommended budget amounts for eligible service agreements, with the option to manually adjust these amounts if needed.
  • Comparing the most recent billing charges to the simulated charges under the budget billing plan.
  • Enrolling the customer’s account in a budget billing plan.
  • Cancelling/rebilling bill segments, for eligible service agreements, from the most recent bill based on specified budget amounts.  These bill segment details can be included in the most recent bill, by reopening if allowed, or be included in the next bill generated for the customer’s account.

The Enroll Customer on Budget Request Type customer service request type lets you configure options for how the process flow enrolls a customer’s account in a budget billing plan. 

The following administration records provide the means to support the above:

  • Enroll Customer on Budget (C1-ENROLLCUSTOMERBUDGET) process flow type: Defines and manages the behavior of a process flow to be initiated and includes the sequence of steps, panels, and rules associated with each step and more.
  • Enroll Customer on Budget Request Type (C1-EnrollCustBudgetRequestType) business object: Defines and manages the Enroll Customer on Budget Request Type customer service request type to capture configurable options used by a process flow to enroll a customer on to a budget billing plan.
  • Enroll Customer on Budget Action Method (C1-EnrollCustBudgtActionMethod) business object: Defines and manages the Action Method used to specify the type of process flow to initiate and customer service request type to associate with the process flow.

This feature improves user efficiency by automating many steps for enrolling a customer in a budget billing plan.

Steps to Enable

To enable and configure this feature, refer to the Product Fix Design document for patch/bug 37984986. Additionally, system administrators should review and determine which user groups should be granted access to one or more of these application services: 

  • Enroll Customer on Budget Action Method business object (C1-ENCUSBUDACTMETHBO)
  • Enroll Customer on Budget Action Processing (C1-ENCUSBUDACTPROC)
  • Enroll Customer on Budget Request Type business object (C1-ENRLCUSTBUDRQSTMG)

Tips And Considerations

This feature was made available through Maintenance Pack 5.1.0 (patch/bug 37984986).