10 Billing Hierarchies

You can manage your customers' billing hierarchies by using Oracle Communications Billing Care.

To work with billing hierarchies, see the following topics:

• About Billing Hierarchies

• Creating a Billing Hierarchy

• Adding Nonpaying Children to a Parent's Bill Unit

• Removing Nonpaying Children from a Billing Hierarchy

• Adding a Paying Parent for a Child's Bill Unit

• Changing a Bill Unit's Parent Account

• Returning a Bill Unit to an Account's Own Payment Method

• Viewing Who Pays for a Bill

About Billing Hierarchies

Billing hierarchies allow one account to be financially responsible for another account's bills, such as when a parent pays for a child's bill or a company pays for its employees' bills. You create a billing hierarchy by associating bill units in a parent – child relationship.

For more information, see "Managing Account and Bill Unit Hierarchies" in BRM Managing Customers.

Creating a Billing Hierarchy

Creating a billing hierarchy involves these general steps:

1. Create the account that will be the parent in the hierarchy and the bill unit that will be responsible for paying the group's bills. For example, create one account and bill unit for a corporate account.

2. Create an account and bill units for each child in the hierarchy. For example, create an account and a bill unit for each employee within a company.

3. Associate each child's bill unit with the parent's bill unit. For example, associate an employee's bill unit with the corporate bill unit.

   You don't explicitly identify a bill unit as a parent or child. Instead, they become parent or child bill units when you associate them.

Adding Nonpaying Children to a Parent's Bill Unit

You add a child's bill unit to a billing hierarchy by associating the bill unit with the hierarchy's parent.

To add nonpaying children to a parent's bill unit:

1. Open the parent account that will be financially responsible for all child bill units in the billing hierarchy.

2. From the Actions menu, select Hierarchy and then select Hierarchy.

   The account's Hierarchy page appears.

3. Click the Bill Units tab.

4. Click Add children.

   The Add to Billing Hierarchy page appears.

5. Next to Find account, click the search icon.

   The Search dialog box appears. See "Search Dialog Box" for more information.

6. Enter your search criteria, such as the account's company name, and then click Search.

   Billing Care lists the accounts that meet your criteria.

7. Click the icon next to each account that you want to add as nonpaying children.

   Each account that you select and its bill units are moved to the Add these selected bill units to the hierarchy column on the right.

8. In the Add these selected bill units to the hierarchy column, select the bill units that the parent account will pay for.

   Billing Care will alert you if a bill unit has any pending charges. Specify who will pay for the pending charges: the parent account or the child account.

9. Select Roll Up Credit Limit to add the child bill unit's credit limit to the parent's bill unit.

   Note:

   This option appears only when the parent account owns a payment responsible real-time credit exposure (PR_RTCE) balance monitoring group. See "About Balance Monitoring Groups" in BRM Managing Customers for more information.

10. Click Add to Hierarchy at the top right.

    The selected child bill units are added to the billing hierarchy. The parent account will be financially responsible for all child bill units in the billing hierarchy going forward.

11. Click Close.

Removing Nonpaying Children from a Billing Hierarchy

To remove nonpaying child accounts from a billing hierarchy:

1. Open the parent account in the billing hierarchy.

2. From the Actions menu, select Hierarchy and then select Hierarchy.

   The account's Hierarchy page appears.

3. Click the Bill Units tab.

4. Click Remove children.

5. Under the list of Nonpaying children, click the icon next to a bill unit that you want to remove from the billing hierarchy.

   Billing Care will alert you if a bill unit has any pending charges. Specify who will pay for the pending charges: the parent account or the child account.

   The Remove from hierarchy dialog box appears.

6. In the Select the new payment method for this bill unit list, select a payment method on file for the child account or create a new payment method.

7. Click Remove.

   You are returned to the Hierarchy page.

8. After you have deleted all children that you want to remove from the billing hierarchy, click Done at the top right.

9. Click Close.

Adding a Paying Parent for a Child's Bill Unit

To specify that a customer's bill is paid by another account, you associate the customer's bill unit with a paying parent.

To add a paying parent for a child's bill unit:

1. Open the child account.

2. From the Actions menu, select Hierarchy and then select Hierarchy.

   The account's Hierarchy page appears.

3. Click the Bill Units tab.

4. Click Associate with Parent.

   The Select Parent page appears.

5. Next to Find account, click the search icon.

   The Search dialog box appears. See "Search Dialog Box" for more information.

6. Enter your search criteria, such as the account's company name, and then click Search.

   Billing Care lists the accounts that meet your criteria.

7. Select the account that will be the parent and then select the bill unit that will be responsible for payment.

8. Select Roll up credit limit to this parent to add the child bill unit's credit limit to this parent's bill unit.

   Note:

   This option appears only when the parent account owns a payment responsible real-time credit exposure (PR_RTCE) balance monitoring group. See "About Balance Monitoring Groups" in BRM Managing Customers for more information.

9. Click Select Parent at the top right.

   The parent account is now financially responsible for the child account's bill.

10. Click Close.

Changing a Bill Unit's Parent Account

To change the parent account responsible for a child account's bill unit:

1. Open the child account.

2. From the Actions menu, select Hierarchy and then select Hierarchy.

   The account's Hierarchy page appears.

3. Click the Bill Units tab.

4. Click Change Parent on the top right.

5. Next to Find account, click the search icon.

   The Search dialog box appears. See "Search Dialog Box" for more information.

6. Enter your search criteria, such as the account's company name, and then click Search.

   Billing Care lists the accounts that meet your criteria.

7. Select the new paying parent account and then click Select Parent.

   The child account is moved to the new paying parent's billing hierarchy.

8. Click Close.

Returning a Bill Unit to an Account's Own Payment Method

You make an account responsible for its own bills again by removing its bill unit from a billing hierarchy.

To return a bill unit to an account's own payment method:

1. From the Actions menu, select Hierarchy and then select Hierarchy.

   The Hierarchy page appears.

2. Click the Bill Units tab.

   The Bill Units tab displays the bill unit's location in the billing hierarchy and the paying parent is shown on the right.

3. Click Change to Standalone.

   Billing Care will alert you if a bill unit has any pending charges. Specify who will pay for the pending charges: the parent account or the child account.

   The Remove from hierarchy dialog box appears.

4. In the Select the new payment method for this bill unit list, select a payment method on file for the child account or create a new payment method.

5. Click Remove.

   The account is responsible for paying its own bill going forward.

6. Click Close.

Viewing Who Pays for a Bill

You can view who is responsible for paying a bill in one of these ways:

• Click the Bills tab for an account.

  If it is a parent account, the Bills tab displays the parent icon and lists the bills that it is responsible for paying. The bill total is broken down into the amount generated by the parent and the amount generated by all children in the billing hierarchy.

  If it is a child account, the Bills tab displays the child icon and the account number that is responsible for paying the bill.

  
  Description of the illustration ccohl_bill_hier.gif

• From the Actions menu, select Hierarchy, select Hierarchy, and then click the Bill Units tab.

  Billing Care shows a graphical display of the account's position in the billing hierarchy. For parent accounts, it lists all child bills that they are responsible for paying. For child accounts, it lists the paying parent account.

  For example, this shows a parent account that is financially responsible for one child bill.

  
  
  
  Description of the illustration ccohl_payingparent.gif
  
  

• Look at an account's Billing Care banner, which displays whether the account is responsible for paying any child bills. For example, this shows an account that is financially responsible for one child bill:

  

  If you click the Edit link, Billing Care displays the entire billing hierarchy that is associated with the account.