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 contracts. The word "attempt" is stressed because a contract 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 contracts. However, this is not sensible. Why? Because the system would attempt to create a bill every month for the account's contracts, but only twice during the year would it succeed (because the contracts 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 contracts. In this scenario, every two weeks the system would create a bill that contains at least one bill segment (for the biweekly contract). However, 12 times a year, the bill will contain an additional bill segment for the monthly contract. And 4 times a year, the bill will contain one more bill segment (for a total of 3) for the quarterly contract.
In sum, the account's bill cycle controls when the system attempts to create a bill for the account's contracts. Whether a contract 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 contract.
Note:
Important! An account's bill cycle should attempt
to create bill segments at least as often as the shortest contract
duration. For example, if an account has both monthly and quarterly
contracts, the account should be placed on a monthly bill cycle. Refer
to How Does An Account Get Its Bill Cycle? for more information.
Fastpath: For more information about bill cycles, refer
to Defining Bill Cycles.
Related Topics:
Parent Topic: The Big Picture of Billing