6 Configuring Bill Now

Learn how to use Bill Now to create a bill at any time in Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management (BRM).

Topics in this document:

• About Bill Now

• Providing Discounts to Closed Accounts When Using Bill Now

• Prorating Cycle Arrears and Cycle Forward Arrears for Bill Now

• Running Bill Now to Create Two Bills during the Delayed Billing Period

• Customizing Bill Now

About Bill Now

To create a bill at any time, use the Bill Now feature in Billing Care or Customer Center. Bill Now generates a bill that includes all pending items for a bill unit. Bill Now adds the previous total amount to the current total. For example, for an account that has a previous total of $20, and a current total of $10, when Bill Now is run, the account is billed for $30. Bill Now works with both open item and balance forward accounting types.

• When an account has multiple bill units, only one parent bill unit can be processed at a time. If you run Bill Now on a parent bill unit, a bill is created that contains a total of the items from both the parent and any nonpaying bill unit objects.

• If you run Bill Now on a nonpaying bill unit, a bill is created for the parent bill unit that includes only the nonpaying bill unit items.

• You can choose to bill all pending items or select specific items. When a bill is generated for specific items, it does not include the cycle arrears and cycle forward arrears fees.

• Bill Now ignores the cycle_tax_interval entry in the CM configuration file, which specifies whether deferred taxes are calculated separately for the parent and each nonpaying child bill unit or are consolidated into a single item for the parent. When you run Bill Now on a parent bill unit that includes nonpaying child bill units, rolls activities for each nonpaying child bill unit into the parent bill unit and calculates taxes for the parent only. The single tax item for the parent includes taxes from both the parent and the nonpaying child bill units.

Providing Discounts to Closed Accounts When Using Bill Now

To apply discounts with Bill Now to closed accounts, you must ensure that BRM does not delete canceled discounts. For information about deleting canceled discounts, see "Deleting Canceled Discount Offers" in BRM Managing Customers.

1. Open the CM configuration file (BRM_home/sys/cm/pin.conf) in a text editor.

2. Set the keep_cancelled_products_or_discounts entry to 1:

   - fm_subscription_pol keep_cancelled_products_or_discounts 1
   

   If this entry is not present, add it.

3. Save the file.

4. Stop and restart the CM.

Prorating Cycle Arrears and Cycle Forward Arrears for Bill Now

By default, when you use Bill Now, cycle arrears charges and cycle forward arrears charges are not prorated.

You can specify to prorate cycle arrears charges and cycle forward arrears charges for Bill Now by running the pin_bus_params utility to change the ApplyCycleFeeForBillNow business parameter. For information about this utility, see BRM Developer's Guide.

Note:

When you use Bill Now, you can enable proration for cycle arrears and cycle forward arrears charges; however, cycle forward fees are not prorated.

To prorate cycle forward arrears charges when you use Bill Now:

1. Go to BRM_home/sys/data/config.

2. Create an XML file from the /config/business_params object:

   pin_bus_params -r BusParamsBilling bus_params_billing.xml 
   

3. In the XML file, change disabled to enabled:

   <ApplyCycleFeeForBillNow>enabled</ApplyCycleFeeForBillNow>
   

4. Save the file as bus_params_billing.xml.

5. Load the XML file into the BRM database:

   pin_bus_params bus_params_billing.xml
   

6. Stop and restart the CM.

7. (Multischema systems only) Run the pin_multidb script with the -R CONFIG parameter. For more information, see BRM System Administrator's Guide.

Running Bill Now to Create Two Bills during the Delayed Billing Period

By default, generating two bills with Bill Now during the delayed billing period is disabled in BRM.

To enable this feature, run the pin_bus_params utility to change the CreateTwoBillNowBillsInDelay business parameter. For information about this utility, see BRM Developer's Guide.

Delayed billing must already be set up before enabling this feature. If you have not already set up delayed billing, see "Setting Up Delayed Billing".

To enable Bill Now during the delayed period:

1. Go to BRM_home/sys/data/config.

2. Create an XML file from the /config/business_params object:

   pin_bus_params -r BusParamsBilling bus_params_billing.xml
   

3. In the XML file, change disabled to enabled:

   <CreateTwoBillNowBillsInDelay>enabled</CreateTwoBillNowBillsInDelay>
   

4. Save the file as bus_params_billing.xml.

5. Load the XML file into the BRM database:

   pin_bus_paramsbus_params_billing.xml
   

6. Stop and restart the CM.

7. (Multischema systems only) Run the pin_multidb script with the -R CONFIG parameter. For more information, see BRM System Administrator's Guide.

Customizing Bill Now

You can customize the following:

• The due date for a bill created with Bill Now is calculated as the billing cycle length minus one day after Bill Now is run. To change the Bill Now due date, customize the PCM_OP_BILL_POL_CALC_PYMT_DUE_T policy opcode.

• Bill Now generates a bill that includes all pending items. To change the default behavior, edit the search criteria in the PCM_OP_BILL_POL_GET_PENDING_ITEMS policy opcode.

• To apply discounts or folds when using Bill Now, use the PCM_OP_BILL_MAKE_BILL_NOW opcode.

• To generate a Bill Now type of bill for a specific service, use PCM_OP_BILL_MAKE_BILL_NOW, PCM_OP_BILL_CREATE_SPONSORED_ITEMS, and PCM_OP_BILL_POL_GET_PENDING_ITEMS.

See BRM Opcode Guide.