Manually Billing an Account
Summary
This document describes the process by which one can bill an account independently of other accounts at any time.
The manual bill process allows direct account control over billing packages. For example if you don't want to run a system wide bill run just to get one customers package billed, you can use bill account from the Tools page.
Billing Rules
If you bill a parent account that has child accounts the child packages with the same package 'next bill date' will be billed as well. Similarly if a child account is billed for 10/1/2014, any other child account or parent account packages will also bill if their next bill date is 10/1/2014.
Note: Using bill account on an Owner will NOT bill parents or sub accounts - a bill run is required for this.
Note: if there is usage to bill on an account and you would like to bill the package and have usage calculated and added to the invoice, then the date entered in the date box and the package next bill dates need to be equal to the 'bill day' on the account. For example, if the bill day as shown on the left side menu is 1, usage will only be billed when billing runs for the 1st of the month. So if the packages you want to bill also have a date as of the 1st of the month, the bill account option on the tools page will calculate and apply usage. Otherwise, the bill account option will only bill the packages with next bill dates equaling the date you enter in bill account, and usage will only be billed when a bill run bills for the first of the month.
Manual Bill Process
Note: As of EngageIP 8.6.1 you can bill usage using the bill account option. To bill usage you will need to bill a user-package on the account with the billing date range encompassing both the user-package's next bill date and the Usage Billing Frequency's 'Usage Next Bill Date'.
In a parent / sub account scenario where the sub accounts have usage and the parent has no packages, using ‘bill account’ on the parent will not trigger usage to bill on the sub accounts as there are no packages on the parent. The User Package currently works to trigger usage billing and needs to be on the parent account in this case to manually bill out usage on all accounts (parent and any sub accounts)
Search for the account you need to bill
Make note of the next bill date on the overview tab for the account's packages (this next bill date will be entered on the Bill Account page)
As shown below, 'Package 02' is to be billed on 5/22/2007 and 'Package 15' has a next bill date of 3/22/2007Click on the Tools link
Under the heading Tools and Utilities select Bill Account
Select the dates between which billing will run. The dates will be used by the system to look for any packages that need to be billed on or between those date
Date and DateEnd reflect a range within which a next bill date should fall if you want a particular package to bill. They can be entered as the same date or a range to pick up multiple “Next Bill Dates”. For example, if you want to bill a user for a package that was added to an account 6/5/2014 and the bill date is the the 6/1/2014, you place 6/1/2014 in the Date field and whatever date you wish to end the billable period
KeepInvoiceOpen can be left checked to keep the invoice open or unchecked to close the invoice. If checked an invoice will be kept open until manually closed, if unchecked invoices will be closed based on the 'Invoice Close Type' setting under the Setup -> Bill Group configuration [more info]
Note: if an open invoice exists transactions will be added to it, if not a new invoice will be createdBill UserPackage: Allows you to select only to bill user packages or if unchecked, not to bill user packages were ‘Bill Usage’ is checked instead
Bill Usage: Allows you to select to bill usage when billing user packages or to bill usage by itself on an account
Close Open Credit Notes: During bill account execution, if this is selected, it will close any credit notes that are open at the time
Click the Save button and the bill process will start. Once billing has completed for that account you can confirm by looking at the Event Log or transactions on the Transactions tab. As illustrated below the transaction for Package 02 was added
The overview page will now show that the next bill date for Package 02 has advanced, while the other package has not been billedTo complete billing for the other packages simply repeat the process with the associated next bill date. If a package next bill date is greater then 1 month in the past, the system will not bill multiple months, it will bill one month at a time. In this case you need to go back to the Bill Account option and select the new next bill date and continue this process until all packages are billed and up to date.