Billing Documents

Clicking the Billing Documents tab displays the Billing Documents home page where you can view a list of billing documents matching specific criteria, and perform actions such as creating and completing billing documents.
  • Click to open the List View drop-down menu, then select the list view you want.
  • Use to manage your list views.
  • From the list, click a record's name to go to its detail.
  • To edit a value, hover over the field until appears, then click the field. Press Enter to apply your edit, then click Save (shown below the list view).

What is a Billing Document?

A billing document contains an invoice or a credit note to enable you to bill or credit a customer. Each billing document must contain one or more billing document line items that contain the detail of an invoice or a credit note.

The Billing Document and Billing Document Line Item objects are core components of Foundations. Other Certinia applications use this object and add fields, buttons, and functionality to it.

You can create billing documents from active contracts to bill contract line items for:

  • One-off charges
  • Recurring charges at a fixed rate
  • Recurring charges that vary based on customer usage records associated with contract line items

You can print billing documents and save them as PDF files.

If analysis items have been created in Foundations, they can be populated on billing document headers and lines and posted through to Accounting transaction headers and lines. For more information, see Using Analysis Items in Billing Central.

Status

The actions that you can carry out on a billing document are determined by its status.

Warning:

You must never change a billing document's status manually. The status is changed automatically by processes in Foundations and Billing Central. This ensures that associated processes, such as system messaging and validations, are triggered correctly. We recommend that your administrator sets field-level security on the Document Status field to make it read-only to all profiles except System Administrator.

Status Description
Draft

The initial status of the billing document is "Draft". You can edit, delete or discard the billing document and its line items while its status is "Draft". A draft watermark is displayed on the billing document when you print it. You can calculate tax for a "Draft" billing document.
Ready for Review

This status only applies to credit notes created by the Convert to Credit Note process when the Convert to Credit Note Allows Review field in the Billing Central Settings custom setting is enabled. You might want credit notes to be created as "Ready for Review" if your business requires credit notes to be approved, or if you need to commit tax to Avalara AvaTax. In addition to calculating tax and committing tax to Avalara AvaTax, you can complete, delete or discard credit notes with this status. A draft watermark is displayed on the billing document if you print it. When a credit note is "Ready for Review", you can edit the same fields that are editable on a "Complete" billing document.

Complete

You cannot delete or discard a billing document that is "Complete", nor change its record type. When a billing document is "Complete", you can only edit these billing document fields:

  • Document Due Date
  • Customer Reference
  • Description fields (including the billing document line item description)
  • Footer Text
  • Header Text
  • Custom fields
Discarded

You cannot delete a billing document that is "Discarded", nor change its record type. When a billing document is "Discarded", you can only edit these billing document fields:

  • Customer Reference
  • Description
  • Footer Text
  • Header Text
  • Custom fields
Superseded

A billing document that is "Superseded" does not contain any line items because they were moved to a consolidated billing document. You can delete or discard a billing document that is "Superseded" if it is not linked to a consolidated billing document (for example, because the consolidated billing document has been deleted).

When a billing document is "Superseded", you can only edit these billing document fields:

  • Customer Reference
  • Description
  • Footer Text
  • Header Text
  • Custom fields

Analyzing Contract Revenue

When you set a billing document to "Complete", the Total Billed field on related contract line items is updated:

  • If the billing document is of type "Invoice", the value of the related billing document line item is added
  • If the billing document is of type "Credit Note", the value of the related billing document line item is subtracted

This enables you to create reports to analyze the revenue on each contract.

Example

You are billing a contract with three lines:

Line Value
A $100
B $200
C $300

A billing document is created with separate billing document line items for lines A, B, and C. When you complete the billing document, contract line item A is populated with the value of billing document line A, contract line item B is populated with the value of billing document line B and so on. In this scenario, Total Billed for contract line item A is $100, B is $200, and C is $300. In the second month, line C is excluded because it has reached its end. This results in a billing document for the second month with two lines A and B, for the values $100 and $200 respectively.

When you complete this second billing document, the Total Billed field for contract line item A is $200, B is $400, and C is $300.

You then create a credit note billing document with a billing document line of $50 for contract line item B, and set it to complete. The Total Billed field for contract line item B is now $350. Lines A and C remain unchanged.