Bill Frequency - Bill Cycle vs Bill Segment Duration

An account's bill cycle defines when the system attempts to create bill segments for the account's service agreements. The word "attempt" is stressed because a service agreement may not have a bill segment on every bill created for its account.

Some examples will help make the point:

• An account may be on a monthly bill cycle (meaning we attempt to create a bill every month for the account) but contain only biannual service agreements. However, this is not sensible. Why? Because the system would attempt to create a bill every month for the account's service agreements, but only twice during the year would it succeed (because the service agreements have a biannual duration).
• An account may be on a biweekly bill cycle (meaning we attempt to create a bill every 2 weeks for the account) and contain a mixture of biweekly, monthly, and quarterly service agreements. In this scenario, every two weeks the system would create a bill that contains at least one bill segment (for the biweekly service agreement). However, 12 times a year, the bill will contain an additional bill segment for the monthly service agreement. And 4 times a year, the bill will contain one more bill segment (for a total of 3) for the quarterly service agreement.

In sum, the account's bill cycle controls when the system attempts to create a bill for the account's service agreements. Whether a service agreement contributes a bill segment to the bill is a complicated subject. The topics in this section describe how the system knows it's time to create a bill segment for a service agreement.