17 Creating Corrective Bills

Learn how to update or correct a bill after it has been sent to a customer in Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management (BRM).

Topics in this document:

About Corrective Bills

Correcting a bill is necessary when a bill or invoice sent to a customer requires an update. Corrections can include:

  • Corrections to a bill resulting from changes that do not affect the amount owed by the customer. For example, a change to the invoice address on the customer's account or a correction to the language on the customer's profile.

  • Corrections to the charges on a bill resulting from adjustments, for example, settled disputes that require some item adjustment, catalog corrections such as retroactive tariff updates, and so on.

A corrective bill is a bill that is generated after corrections are made to a regular bill or a bill that was previously corrected. You ensure that the adjustments are appropriately allocated and then generate the corrective bill. When a corrective bill is generated, it is assigned a new due date based on the current payment setup for the account.

You can create a series of corrective bills for a bill. For example, you can generate a corrective bill for a regular bill, and then a corrective bill for the first corrective bill, and so on.

A corrected invoice is the invoice associated with a corrective bill and, based on your billing configuration, contains the entire bill information or only the corrections and adjustments. For information on corrected invoices, see "Corrective Invoicing" in BRM Designing and Generating Invoices.

You use Billing Care or Customer Center to generate corrective bills for an individual bill. When you have corrections for a set of bills or accounts, you use the pin_make_corrective_bills utility to create the corrective bills. See "Billing Accounts By Using the pin_make_corrective_bill Utility".

Note:

You cannot use the BRM billing scripts to run corrective billing.

BRM can generate corrective bills for the following:

  • Original bills.

  • Bills created by using Bill Now

  • On-purchase billing.

  • Parent and nonpaying child bills in a bill unit (/billinfo object) hierarchy.

  • A prior corrective bill. That is, you can correct a subsequent corrective bill to address the errors on a prior corrective bill.

After BRM generates a corrective bill for a prior bill, BRM accepts payments it receives for the regular bill, the corrective bill, or both, but it applies the payments to the latest (original or corrective) bill only. For example, BRM has a regular bill B1-124 for which it generates two corrective bills (CB1-28 and CB1-30) in one bill period. For BRM, CB1-30 is the last bill and B1-124 and CB1-28 are prior bills. By default, all payments that BRM receives for B1-124 or CB1-28 or CB1-30 will be applied against CB1-30.

When configuring how to correct bills, note how corrective billing works with the following features:

  • In-progress bills. BRM creates a corrective bill for a finalized bill only. If a bill is currently in progress, BRM does not permit a corrective bill to be generated for that bill.

  • Bill unit hierarchy. When charges are corrected for a bill in a bill unit hierarchy, a corrective bill is made for parent and child bill units. A paying parent bill unit includes the corrective bill for a nonpaying child bill unit. You cannot create a corrective bill for only a nonpaying child bill unit.

  • Rerating accounts that use open item accounting. If you rerate events in billing cycles other than the current billing cycle for accounts which have open item accounting, you should generate corrective bills for those previous bills. In such a scenario, it is recommended that you generate corrective bills and corrected invoices for all the previous bills that were affected by the rerating. When you generate corrected invoices for such corrective bills, the rerated events are displayed in the corrected invoices. They will not be displayed in the regular bill for the current cycle. If you do not create a corrective bill for the previous bill, these rerated events are included in the regular bill for the current cycle.

  • Discount and charge sharing. You must rerate accounts following updates to the discount and charge sharing for those accounts in a billed period. BRM includes the resulting adjustments in the corrective bills you generate for the billed period.

  • Collections. BRM does not initiate payment collection actions for bills that have been replaced by a corrective bill. See "Post-Processing Actions for Corrective Bills" for more information.

  • A/R actions. Disputes, settlements, and write-offs impact the content of a corrective bill. To prevent the generation of corrective bills for certain A/R actions, set up a custom validation policy for BRM to use when you generate the corrective bills. Such a validation could be used to prevent BRM from generating corrective bills when the prior bill is in dispute and a settlement has not been reached.

  • Adjustments created by rerating. BRM creates unallocated items for any adjustment items that are created as a result of rerating. If you require that corrective bills should contain the aggregation and allocation of automatic adjustments to the items on the original bill, you must enable the AllocateReratingAdjustments business parameter before you rerate the original bills.

Corrective Bills and Billing Cycles

You can have multiple corrections for a single bill. BRM generates corrective bills differently based on whether the corrections occur in the same cycle or in multiple cycles.

When there are multiple corrections in a single bill cycle, BRM corrects the most recent corrective bill for the cycle. BRM includes first-time corrections on the most recent corrective bill and also events or items that were previously corrected and billed on previous corrective bills.

When corrections span multiple billed cycles, BRM uses the accounting method specified in the account to determine the cycle for which to generate the corrective bill.

  • Balance forward. For accounts using the balance forward accounting method, BRM generates a single corrective bill for the last billed cycle.

  • Open item. For accounts using the open item accounting method, BRM creates corrective bills for each billed cycle which contains corrections.

    For example, an account has corrections in the October bill and the November bill. BRM generates two corrective bills, one for October and one for November. If the October bill was already paid, BRM includes the corrections for the October cycle to the next open bill, which in this case is the bill for December. The corrections for the November cycle are included in the November bill because that bill is still pending payment.

Configuring Corrective Billing

Complete the following to set up the corrective billing process in BRM. Some steps are optional.

Enabling Corrective Billing

To enable corrective billing, run the pin_bus_params utility to change the EnableCorrectiveInvoices business parameter. For information on this utility, see "pin_bus_params" in BRM Developer's Guide.

To enable corrective billing:

  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:

    <EnableCorrectiveInvoices>enabled</EnableCorrectiveInvoices>
  4. Save the file as bus_params_billing.xml.

  5. Load the file into the BRM database:

    pin_bus_params bus_params_billing.xml
  6. Stop and restart the CM.

Configuring Accounts and Bills for Corrective Billing

When you run the pin_make_corrective_bills utility, you can use the command line to specify the bill numbers and account numbers that need corrective bills. In addition, you can include account numbers and bill numbers in a file that the pin_make_corrective_bills utility reads.

The default file is pin_bill_run_control.xml in the BRM_home/apps/pin_billd directory. See "Managing Large Billing Runs" for a sample billing run configuration file.

To verify that the selected accounts or bills are eligible for corrective billing, run the following command:

pin_make_corrective_bills –validate_only

Restricting Corrective Billing Permissions

By default, BRM provides all CSRs with permission to create corrective bills.

To restrict the permission for CSR roles:

  1. In Permissioning Center, restrict the permissions for the required CSR roles. For more information on setting up permissions, see "Setting Up Permissions in BRM Applications" in BRM System Administrator's Guide.

  2. Stop and restart the CM.

Configuring Bill Numbers for Corrective Bills

Corrective billing uses a different bill number format. Regular bills use a bill number such as B1-189, but a corrective bill uses a number such as CB1-15. A corrective bill applied to a corrective bill uses the same prefix and the next available sequence; for example, CB1-207.

However, you can configure BRM to apply the regular billing number format to corrective bills. In this case, BRM retains the original bill's prefix and uses the next available sequence number in BRM. For example, for bill number B1-189, the corrective bill number could be B1-2007.

To apply the regular bill numbering format to corrective bills:

  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 file, set the <GenerateCorrectiveBillNo> element to disabled:

    <GenerateCorrectiveBillNo>disabled<GenerateCorrectiveBillNo>
  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.

Customizing Correction Reasons

You can specify correction reasons:

  • When you create a corrective bill from Billing Care or Customer Center. You can select a reason for the correction.

  • When you run the pin_make_corrective_bills utility. You provide the correction reason.

BRM provides the following default reasons for correcting a bill:

  • Update to the invoice address

  • Manual adjustment

  • Price correction

You can provide custom corrections reasons for bill correction by modifying an existing reason code or adding a custom reason code to the reasons.en_US file. BRM assigns the IDs of 1, 2, and 3 respectively to these reasons and uses 43 in the version field to specify the domain of the reason.

Here is an example code sample to add a reason code:

DOMAIN = "Reason Codes-Bill Correction Reasons";
STR
    ID = 25;
    VERSION = 43;
    STRING = "Corrective bill request for Error in Promotion ABC";
END

When you add or modify a reason code, ensure that ID is a number greater than 3 and the value for version is 43 (see the preceding example). These values are reserved by BRM.

Use the load_localized_strings utility to load the modified reasons.en_US file. For instructions on providing custom reason codes, see "String Manipulation Functions" in BRM Developer's Reference. For instructions on the load_localized_strings utility, see "load_localized_strings" in BRM Developer's Guide.

Specifying the Minimum Threshold Amount for Corrective Bills

You can specify a minimum amount that A/R actions for a bill should reach for BRM to generate a corrective bill. If the bill to be corrected belongs to a bill unit hierarchy, BRM checks that threshold against the sum of A/R actions for all bill units that had charges contributing to that bill.

To specify the minimum threshold amount for corrective bills:

  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.xm
  3. Set the <CorrectiveBillThreshold> element to the required value. For example:

    <CorrectiveBillThreshold>15</CorrectiveBillThreshold>

    The default is 0.

  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.

Rejecting Payments for Prior Bills

Corrections to bill charges and payments may not always be synchronized operations. That is, you may receive payments where the bill number associated with a payment does not match the last bill, or you may have received a partial or full payment for that original or corrective bill.

You can configure BRM to reject payments for prior bills, and thereby require them to be specific to the bill. To enable this feature, run the pin_bus_params utility to change the RejectPaymentsForPreviousBill business parameter. For information about this utility, see "pin_bus_params" in BRM Developer's Guide.

To reject payments for prior bills and require them to be specific to the bill:

  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.xm
  3. In the file, set the <RejectPaymentsForPreviousBill> element to enabled:

    <RejectPaymentsForPreviousBill>enabled</RejectPaymentsForPreviousBill>
  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.

Enabling BRM to Create Corrective Bills for Partially or Fully Paid Bills

If BRM receives a partial or full payment for a bill, it does not generate a corrective bill. Instead, BRM assigns all payments for that bill period to the next open bill.

To enable BRM to generate a corrective bill for a bill that has a full or partial payment, set the AllowCorrectivePaidBills parameter in the billing instance of the /config/business_params object to enabled. BRM then generates the corrective bill, and the balance on the corrective bill reflects the payment that was received against the prior bill. The corrective bill also displays the payment details for payments already processed against the prior bill.

To enable BRM to generate corrective bills for fully paid or partially paid bills:

  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.xm
  3. In the file, set the <AllowCorrectivePaidBills> element to enabled:

    <AllowCorrectivePaidBills>enabled</AllowCorrectivePaidBills>
  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.

Customizing Corrective Bills

You can customize corrective bills in the following ways:

  • Customize due dates. You can apply different due dates to corrective bills by customizing the bill due date calculations. Modify the PCM_OP_BILL_POL_CALC_PYMT_DUE_T policy opcode to retain the same due date as in the prior bill, or add a specific number of offset days.

  • Change the default invoice type. Use the PCM_OP_CUST_POL_PREP_PAYINFO policy opcode to override the default value (detailed replacement invoice).

  • Define custom validations. To define custom validations for corrective billing, modify the existing validations in the PCM_OP_BILL_POL_VALID_CORRECTIVE_BILL policy opcode or add custom validations.

For more information, see "Corrective Billing" in BRM Opcode Guide.

Billing Accounts By Using the pin_make_corrective_bill Utility

You can generate corrective bills in one of the following ways:

  • Allocate adjustments to a selected bill in Billing Care or Customer Center, and then submit the bill for corrective billing.

  • Run the pin_make_corrective_bills utility which generates the corrective bill.

The pin_make_corrective_bills utility calculates the balance due after allocating the adjustments and A/R actions for each account bill unit, and creates a corrective bill for the balance due. It creates corrective bills for bill units whose bills have corrections that fall within the period you specify.

The balance due amount is the amount requested as a payment by the pin_collect utility and the amount that is shown on the corrective invoice.

For information about the pin_make_corrective_bills utility syntax, see "pin_make_corrective_bills".

Run the pin_make_corrective_bills utility when you have allocated all adjustments to prior bills.

When you generate corrective bills for a bill unit hierarchy, you must run the pin_make_corrective_bills utility for the top-most parent bill unit.

You must run the pin_make_corrective_bills utility before you run pin_collect because pin_collect needs the balance due amount collected by the pin_make_corrective_bill utility.

After you begin the process of generating a corrective bill, you cannot cancel the process.

To generate a corrective bill using pin_make_corrective_bills:

  1. Go to BRM_home/apps/pin_billd.

  2. Run the pin_make_corrective_bills utility:

    pin_make_corrective_bills

    For example, you can:

    • Use the -corrective_inv_type parameter to specify the invoice type (replacement or invoice correction letter).

    • Use the -threshold_amount parameter to override the threshold amount for generating a corrective bill

    • Use the -account_no parameter to specify the accounts to create corrective bills for.

    • Use the -create_if_no_corrections parameter to generate a corrective bill when there are only simple changes such as invoice address changes. Use this parameter with the -corrective_inv_type R parameters

    See "pin_make_corrective_bills".

  3. Verify the contents of the corrective bills by using Billing Care or Customer Center.

Post-Processing Actions for Corrective Bills

After you generate corrective bills, you can do the following:

  • Generate corrective invoices by running the pin_inv_accts utility. You can generate summary or detailed corrective invoices for the corrective bills you generated. See "pin_inv_accts" in BRM Designing and Generating Invoices.

  • Export corrective invoices for use with custom programs, (such as DOC1) to generate and publish the corrective invoice documents. Use the pin_inv_export utility to export invoices to a format you can use with other programs, such as DOC1. See "pin_inv_export" in BRM Designing and Generating Invoices.

  • Collect any balance due for accounts that use credit card and direct debit payment methods by running the pin_collect utility. See "pin_collect" in BRM Configuring and Collecting Payments.

  • Check whether corrective billing affected the state of any prior bills that were in collections by running the pin_collections_process utility. For more information, see "pin_collections_process" in BRM Collections Manager.

Corrective Billing for Disputes, Settlements and Write-offs

Disputes, settlements, and write-offs impact the content of a corrective bill. If you must prevent the generation of corrective bills for certain A/R actions, set up a custom validation policy for BRM to use when you generate the corrective bills. Such a validation could be used to prevent BRM from generating corrective bills when the prior bill is in dispute and a settlement has not been reached.

Disputes

Corrective bills can be generated for a dispute entered at the bill level, item level or event level. When BRM generates the corrective bill for a prior bill in dispute, the corrective bill contains the details of the dispute, the disputed bill item under the corrected items, and the bill balance reduced by the disputed amount.

Settlements

Corrective bills can be generated for a dispute settled at the bill level, item level or event level. When BRM generates the corrective bill when a bill item on the prior bill is in settlement, the corrective bill contains the details of the settlement, the settled bill item under the corrected items, and the bill balance reduced or increased by the settlement.

A dispute may be settled for the full amount of the dispute in the customer's favor. If you submitted a corrective bill at the time of such a dispute, the corrective bill at settlement time may become a duplicate as there may not be any additional corrections to the second bill.

Write-Offs

You perform write-offs after the account is past due and considered delinquent in collections. When BRM generates the corrective bill for a write-off on a bill item on the prior bill, the corrective bill contains the details of the write-off, the written-off bill item under the corrected items, and the bill balance reduced by the write-off amount.