The Bill Ready Calculation Method
If a customer uses a We Bill For Them - Bill Ready service provider, the service provider calculates their own charges and interfaces them to the system. We then present their charges on our bill; we don't actually calculate anything (sometimes this is referred to as "pass through" billing).
The sub SA linked to a We Bill For Them - Bill Ready must be a billable charge SA. Why? Because billable charge SAs exist to hold bill lines until such time as a bill is created for the customer's account. Refer to Setting Up Billable Charge Templates for more information.
Please be aware of the following characteristics of Bill Ready bill segments:
- Unlike Rate Ready bill segments, Bill Ready bill segments can span different time periods than the master SA. This is because you cannot predict when a service provider will interface their billable charges to you. In fact, a given bill could contain billable charges that span different periods and these charges could have been interfaced from historic and existing service providers.
- Unlike Rate Ready bill segments, Bill Ready bill segments can be created and deleted independently from the master bill segment.
- Unlike Rate Ready bill segments, Bill Ready bill segments can be cancelled independently from the master bill segment.
Sending Consumption And Waiting For The Charges
Uploading Consumption (Rather Than Uploading Calculated Charges)
Sending Consumption And Waiting For The Charges
If your organization supports We Bill For Them - Bill Ready service providers AND you are the source of consumption used by these service provider to calculate their charges, you need to be aware of the following:
- We do NOT recommend sending raw meter reads to service providers. Rather, we recommend sending these service providers the same consumption that you use on your bill segments. Remember, the system maintains a snapshot of billed consumption on bill segments associated with service agreements that are linked to service points.
- But to implement our recommendation (of only interfacing billed
consumption to service providers), we need to create a bill segment
for the master SA and then wait until the service provider returns
the billable charge before sending out the bill. The following points
describe how this works:
- Early in the bill cycle, the system creates a bill segment for the master SA (remember, the system maintains a snapshot of billed consumption on bill segments linked to service points). When the master bill segment is frozen, the system interfaces the snapshot consumption to all service providers associated with the master service agreement who need consumption (this is defined on the service provider). Refer to We Can Send Billed Consumption To Any Service Provider for more information about interfacing consumption to service providers.
- The bill associated with the bill segment will not be completed. Why? Because the bill segments associated with the We Bill For Them - Bill Ready service providers will be in Error. This only happens if you use the Billable Charge bill segment creation algorithm (this algorithm is plugged in on the sub SA's SA type). On the algorithm, make sure to specify a value of Y for the parameter Wait For The Last Day Of The Bill Cycle. By doing this, a bill segment in the Error state will exist for the sub SA until the last night of the bill cycle's window.
- On the last night of the bill cycle window, when the system attempts to create a bill segment for the billable charge SA associated with the We Bill For Them - Bill Ready, it will either find recently interfaced billable charges or it won't. If it finds unbilled, billable charges, a bill segment will be created for the sub SA and the billable charges will be swept onto it. If it doesn't find unbilled billable charges, the bill will be completed (i.e., sent out) without the service provider's charges.
Bottom line. If a customer's account uses We Bill For Them - Bill Ready service providers, the bill will not be completed (i.e., sent out) until the last night of the bill cycle (if you use the appropriate algorithm). Why? Because we wait until the last night of the bill cycle before trying to sweep on recently interfaced billable charges. If no billable charges have been interfaced from the service provider by the last night of the bill cycle, the bill will be sent out without the service provider's charges.
Batch versus Online Bill Creation. If you create a bill online, the system will NOT create an Error bill segment for the We Bill For Them - Bill Ready service provider. Why? Because if you want to create an online bill, either the service provider has interfaced their charges or they haven't. If they have, they should be swept on the bill (via the creation of a bill segment). If they haven't, it shouldn't prevent you from completing the bill.
Uploading Consumption (Rather Than Uploading Calculated Charges)
We understand this is confusing, but it is quite possible to set up the system so that the We Bill For Them - Bill Ready service provider passes in CONSUMPTION rather than the calculated bill lines. They would only do this if they are not able to calculate the charges in their system and have therefore provided you with their rates. To do this, you would set up everything as described above. In addition, when you upload the billable charges, you must specify the consumption to be rated in the billable charge's service quantity (SQ) collection.
Calculating Taxes On Uploaded Charges
It is possible to set up the system to calculate taxes for billable charges. You would do this if the service providers are passing through the charges and want you to calculate the taxes.
If you want taxes calculated on top of billable charges:
- Create a service quantity (SQ) on the billable charge that contains the total monetary amount that taxes will be calculated on. Note, you would not have to do this if you have a pre-processing calculation group in your rate that calculates the total monetary amount to which taxes should be applied.
- Specify a rate on the billable charge service agreement. This rate will contain calculation rules that calculate taxes. Note, the calculation rules will be simple SQ calculation rules that apply a percentage to the value of the SQ that represents the monetary amount on which taxes should be calculated.
When the system creates the bill segment for the billable charge, it will call the rate and the rate will calculate the taxes and add additional lines (actually, bill calculation headers) to the bill segment.