Trial Billing

Oracle Revenue Management and Billing facilitates you to generate trial bills before actual bill is generated for an account. This helps to review the trial bill and make the required corrections before the actual bill is generated. The Trial Billing feature is currently designed and developed for open item accounting and not for balance forward accounting.

The process of trial and actual billing is identical. The only difference is that you cannot freeze and complete the trial bills. Also, during trial billing, the account balance is not updated. It is updated when the actual bill is generated. You can generate trial bill only in case of regular billing, and not in case of adhoc billing. The trial bills can be generated only through the batch process. To generate trial bills, you need to execute the following batches in the specified order:

1. Pending Bill Generation (C1-PNDBL) - This batch is used to generate pending trial or actual bills for accounts that meet the criteria.

2. Bill Segment Generation (C1-BLGEN) - This batch is used to generate bill segments for pending trial or actual bills.

3. Bill Completion (C1-BLPPR) - This batch is used to generate post-processing bill segments in the pending trial or actual bills during the bill completion process. The adjustments, if any, created on the accounts are swept onto the pending trial or actual bills. In addition, the bill routing information and bill messages are stamped on the pending trial or actual bills. If the adjustment currency is different from the account's invoice currency, the transfer adjustment is created on the pending actual bill. However, in case of pending trial bill, the currency conversion for adjustments is done, but the transfer adjustments are not created. Finally, the status of the actual bill is set to Complete, whereas the status of the trial bill remains as Pending.

The Trial Bill check box is added in the Main tab of the Account screen. If you leave the Process All or Selected Accounts parameter blank while executing the above batches, all accounts (that meet the criteria) irrespective of whether the Trial Bill check box is selected or not are considered for generating the trial bills. However, if the Process All or Selected Accounts parameter is set to Y, then only those accounts that meet the criteria and where the Trial Bill check box is selected are considered for generating the trial bills.

You can create an actual bill using a trial bill. While creating actual bills using trial bills, you need to specify the trial billing batch run number whose trial bills you want to convert to the actual bills. To create actual bills using trial bills, you need to execute the following batches in the specified order:

1. Pending Bill Generation (C1-PNDBL) - This batch generates pending actual bill for accounts that meet the criteria.

2. Bill Segment Generation (C1-BLGEN) - This batch copies regular bill segments which are generated for the trial bill and stamps them onto the pending actual bill. It also copies the corresponding financial transactions (FTs).

3. Bill Completion (C1-BLPPR) - This batch copies post-processing bill segments which are generated for the trial bill and stamps them onto the pending actual bill. The bill routing information and bill messages are copied from the trial bill to the pending actual bill. The adjustment, if any, created on the account are swept onto the pending actual bill. They are not copied from the respective trial bill. If the adjustment currency is different from the account's invoice currency, the transfer adjustment is created on the pending actual bill. Finally, the status of the actual bill is set to Complete.

The actual bill ID, bill segment ID and FT ID are different from the trial bill ID, bill segment ID and FT ID, respectively. If an actual bill is created using a trial bill, the system will stamp the trial bill ID on the actual bill. This helps you to track the trial bill of an actual bill.

The system allows you to view a trial bill through a user interface. It also allows you to print the trial bill in the PDF format. You can print a trial bill when Oracle Documaker is integrated with Oracle Revenue Management and Billing. For more information about the batches, see Oracle Revenue Management and Billing Batch Guide.

Related Topics

Parent Topic: Oracle Revenue Management and Billing Generic Business Processes