Setting Up Bill Cycles
An account references a bill cycle. The bill cycle defines when the account is billed and when the account's debt is checked to determine if it's overdue. To define a bill cycle and its bill cycle schedule, open
Description of Page
Enter a unique Bill Cycle and Description for every bill cycle.
If your implementation requires restricting bill cycles to accounts by CIS Division, specify a CIS Division on the bill cycle.
Use the Bill Cycle Schedule collection to define when bills are produced for the accounts in a given bill cycle. The following fields are required for each instance:
Window Start Date Specify the date on which the system should start trying to create bills for accounts in the cycle.
Window End Date Specify the last day on which the system will create bills for accounts in the cycle. This should be the last possible date on which a meter read could be loaded into the system for the account.
Accounting Date Specify the financial date associated with the bills' financial transaction. The accounting date defines the financial period(s) to which the bills will be booked in your general ledger.
Estimate Date The date on which the system is allowed to start estimating consumption if a real read cannot be found. Leave this date blank to inhibit consumption estimation. When specified, this date is typically on or shortly before the window end date.
The system will only estimate a service agreement's consumption if: 1) the bill cycle schedule allows estimation, and 2) the service agreement allows estimation.
Freeze and Complete Turn on this switch if the system should freeze and complete any bill that is created without errors. If this switch is turned off, all bills created by the billing process will be left in the unfinished state. You would only turn this switch off if you want to verify an entire bill run prior to freezing it (e.g., if you are introducing a new version of a rate). If you turn this off, you will need to return to this page after verifying a bill run and turn it back on for the customers to receive bills. When the system next runs, it deletes all unfrozen bills and recreates them as per the instructions on the bill cycle schedule.
The batch bill creation process uses this schedule to define the bill cycles for which it should create bills.
Don't forget. After you set up the bill cycles that correspond with service cycles, go to Setting Up Service Cycle Schedules and update the service cycles accordingly.