Summary
This article describes how to configure bill groups. A bill group comprises a collection of customers that will be billed alike. For example, you may have credit card customers that you want to all bill together, in this scenario you could create a bill group called 'Credit Card Customers', assign that bill group to the credit card customers accounts and then you would have control over their invoice templates, bill cycle, etc. that might be specific or required for that set of customers.
Bill Group Inheritance and Restrictions
As of EngageIP 8.6.0 changes have been made to prevent invalid configurations and billing issues, these are detailed below:
Accounts must be in the same bill group as their invoicer and usage invoicer. For more information on invoicers see the Account Invoicer Configuration article
If the owner is configured with a 'Owner Parent Account Billing Type' > 'Bill Owner.../Bill Branded Owner...' option then new accounts under the owner will be setup to use the owner account's bill group. See the Configuring Branded and Unbranded Owners article for more information on configuring owners
Adding Bill Groups
Click the Setup tab
Click Bill Groups
Click the Add button on the far right (to edit an existing bill group instead of adding a new one
simply click the name of the bill group under the 'Name' column)Populate the fields displayed as outlined below
Name - enter a descriptive name for the bill group
Advance Invoice Days - setting this value (numeric) will tell the billing service to bill user accounts in advance of their billing date according to the value specified. Alternatively services can also be configured for advance billing by setting the 'Billing Period Type' drop-down (Setup -> Services -> Add/Edit). A bill range of 8/1 to 9/1 with advance bill days of 30 would effectively make this range catch user packages with a dates between 8/1 and 10/30 (notice the 30 days is added onto the last date in the range)
Warning: 'Advance Invoice Days' should not be confused with the 'Advanced-Billed' billing period type. These two options should not be used togetherSort Order - defines the sort order when bill group is defined in lists throughout EngageIP. The highest numbered item will appear at the top of the pick list. Entering a zero represents that this value will be the default (i.e. setting the bill group sort order to zero will result in the bill group being automatically selected in the 'Bill Group' field when creating a new account)
Bill Day - defines the default Bill Day for new accounts created under the Bill Group. If this field is left empty the customer’s Bill Day will be the day their account is created. The Bill Day can be set to a value between 1 to 28
Auto Pay - introduced in EngageIP 8.5.27.0, this feature determines if automatic payment processing should be enabled or disabled for accounts that are added to the bill group. Automatic payment processing means executing payment processing during a bill run, as opposed to manual payment processing done through Tools > Make Payment. Disabling Auto Pay on a bill group may be desirable if you have a small collection of accounts that always require review prior to billing, for instance a 'top tier customers' bill group that you manually process payments for. If you want to disable automatic payment collection for all new accounts added to a bill group you would disable this setting, however existing users in the bill group will maintain their existing auto pay settings (configured under Tools > Auto Pay). The auto pay configuration at the account level determines if automated payment processing is enabled and when payment should be collected, the bill group auto pay setting exists only to define the default auto pay configuration for new accounts added to the bill group
Requirements for Automated Payment Processing to occur:'Auto Pay' must be enabled on the Account
The Account must have a default payment method which supports payment processing (eCheck/Credit Card, not 'Cash')
The bill run configuration must be configured to process the Account's default payment type (e.g if the default payment type on the account is a Credit Card, the bill run must have the 'Credit Card' option enabled)
A bill run must be setup, connected to the bill group and then scheduled to run routinely in order to trigger payment processing for accounts which have reached/passed their 'Payment Day'
Payment Day - this setting defines the day that automatic payment processing will occur on. You can set this to a specific day of the month (e.g. entering '15' would result in payment processing occurring on the 15th of each month) or you can enter a negative value which will collect payment a set number of days before the invoice due date (e.g. if an invoice due date is Oct 28th and Payment Day is set to -5 the payment processing day would be Oct 23rd). Using -0 in this field will result in payment processing occurring when billing occurs for the account (i.e. payment processing will happen at the same time billing is triggered during a bill run, which is the same billing/payment processing behavior which existed prior to EngageIP 8.5.27.0). The Payment Day setting, like the Auto Pay setting above, defines the payment day for all new accounts added to the bill group, the actual day that a payment is processed is dictated by the Auto Pay > 'Payment Day' configured at an account level (found under Tools > Auto Pay). For payment processing to occur on the desired day both Auto Pay settings and the bill run that is associated with the bill group must be configured properly, see the Bill Run Configuration article for details
Invoice Close Type - this defines the method with which the system closes invoices, how to close them and when
See How to Configure How Invoices are Closed During Bill Runs for more information
Invoice Close Threshold Amount - when a dollar amount is entered, the bill run will not close an invoice unless the total charges on the invoice are equal to or greater than this value. i.e. if you have $100 set, the bill run will not close an invoice if only $50 in charges have been added to the invoice
Invoice Date Process Type - this option allows you control the invoice date:
As Is - the invoice date will be the invoice create/open date. For example, if the invoice create date was 1/27/2018, the invoice date would be 1/27/2018 as well
Invoice Closed Date - the invoice date will be set to the date that the invoice is closed
User Bill Day (current month) - if the bill group is setup with User Bill Day (current month), the Invoice Date will be October 01, 2018 (if the current month is October)
User Bill Day (next month) - the invoice date will be November 01, 2018 if the current User Bill Day is October 01, 2018
User Bill Day (previous month) - the invoice date will be September 01, 2018 if the current User Bill Day is October 01, 2018
Usage Billing Frequency - allows you to bill usage separate from your bill run and on a set day or on a recurring frequency. See the Usage Billing Configuration article for a full explanation of how usage can be billed
Invoice Due Date Type - this determines how to set the due date on an invoice
Invoice Closed Date - uses the closed date of the invoice (the day on which it's closed) to calculate the due date along with the terms specified in credit ratings for that account
Invoice Date - calculates the due date from the invoice date. For example, if today is June 24th, 2017 and you set the invoice date manually to January 15th, 2017 with credit rating terms of '+30', then this 'Invoice Date' configuration would result in a due date of February 14, 2017 (Jan 15 + 30 days). If the 'Invoice Closed Date' configuration was used, the invoice due date would be July 24th (invoice close date of June 24th plus 30 days due to credit rating)
Invoice Configuration - this field will allow you to specify which invoice configuration to use. See the Invoice Configuration article for more information
Click Save or Save/New to save the bill group and create another group
When billing runs, it will now bill all the bill groups in the system. In the example below, the bill schedule set previous in the configuration will pick up both of these bill groups and execute the billing process on each