How Recurring Bill Plans Generate Invoices

Create a recurring bill plan to generate a set of invoices for a customer over a specified period of time.

The definition of a bill plan reflects the negotiated terms of a contract with the customer for goods delivered or services rendered. A bill plan includes details such as billing frequency, contract start and end dates, payment terms, and the items or memo lines to include on each invoice. After you create a recurring bill plan, you use AutoInvoice to generate invoices for a given billing period according to the bill plan definition.

Settings That Affect Recurring Bill Plans

These settings are important for creating bill plans and generating invoices automatically:

• Receipt Method: Create at least one receipt method for each customer for whom you intend to create a bill plan. The receipt method must be active as of the first transaction date of the bill plan.

• Create Recurring Bill Plan page: Important settings for creating a bill plan include:

  • Transaction Source field: Use the predefined transaction source ORA_RecurringBilling or enter an Imported transaction source defined for use with bill plans.

  • Transaction Type field: Use the predefined transaction type Invoice or enter an Invoice transaction type defined for use with bill plans.

  • Billing Frequency field: Select the billing frequency for the bill plan. Receivables generates invoices based on the billing frequency and the transaction and billing period dates.

  • Bill plan dates:

    • Contract date fields: Enter the start and end dates of the contract. The contract start date is the date of the first billing period. The contract end date indicates the end of the contract and therefore the bill plan. You can't generate invoices after the contract end date.

    • First Transaction Date field: Enter the date of the first transaction created by the bill plan. This date must be within the first billing period. Remaining transactions are generated and dated according to this date plus billing frequency, unless you use the Second Transaction Date and Second Billing Period Start Date fields.

    • Second Transaction Date field: If necessary, enter a date for the second and all subsequent transactions created by the bill plan. Remaining transactions are generated and dated according to this date plus billing frequency.

    • Second Billing Period Start Date field: If necessary, enter a date for the remaining billing periods in the bill plan. Remaining billing periods are dated according to this date plus billing frequency.

  • Customer tab: Enter the bill-to customer for the bill plan. If necessary, enter a different ship-to customer.

  • Payment tab:

    • Payment Terms field: Enter the payment terms for the bill plan, if not already populated when you selected the bill-to customer.

    • Receipt Method field: Enter the receipt method to use to apply receipts to invoices generated by the bill plan.

    • If the payment method is credit card or bank account transfer, complete the necessary fields for the payment instrument.

  • Miscellaneous tab:

    • Legal Entity field: If necessary, enter the legal entity for this bill plan.

    • Generate Bill option: Ensure that the Generate Bill option is enabled.

  • Lines section: Enter the invoice lines to appear on each invoice. You must enter at least one invoice line to save the bill plan.

How Invoices Are Generated for a Bill Plan

Complete these steps to generate invoices for a bill plan:

1. Create a bill plan that reflects the details of the contract with your customer.

2. Run the Generate Recurring Billing Data program. The program:

   1. Selects all bill plans that are active on the date of the program submission.

   2. Identifies bill plans eligible for invoicing based on the transaction date and billing frequency.

   3. Generates invoice lines for these bill plans according to the details of each bill plan.

   4. Uploads the invoice lines to the AutoInvoice lines interface table (RA_INTERFACE_LINES_ALL).

3. Run the Import AutoInvoice program. The program:

   1. Groups invoice lines into invoices per customer, bill plan name, and bill plan period.

   2. Groups the invoice lines that failed the AutoInvoice import process.

4. If necessary, correct the errors in the invoice lines and resubmit Import AutoInvoice.

   Note: Any updates to invoice lines apply to this invoice only. AutoInvoice doesn't apply these updates to the bill plan itself.

5. Run the Print Transactions program to print the bill plan invoice and send it to your customer.