Enabling Agile Billing I - Charge Term

This Feature Console page configures the use of charge terms within Billing Central. Charge terms are enabled by default on new installations, therefore you only need to enable this feature if you are upgrading.

Warning:

You must enable the Foundations Sales Tax Enhancements feature before enabling this feature.

Charge terms allow you to charge "Recurring Fixed" contract line items at different intervals from when they are billed. For example, you might want to charge a contract line item monthly but bill it quarterly. If no charge term is set on a contract line item, the line is both charged and billed at the frequency defined by its billing term. This means that after upgrading, your existing contract line items will be both charged and billed at the frequency defined by their billing term. For more information about charge terms, see Charge and Bill Contracts at Different Intervals.

To enable this feature, work through the steps in the order shown.

  • For each automatic step, click Perform. When the step has completed, the Status changes from "Not Done" to "Done".
  • For each manual step, follow the instructions on screen then click Mark As Done when the step is complete. More information about performing the manual steps is provided below.

When you have completed all the steps, use the Status slider in the Feature section to enable the feature.

Note:

If you revert the automatic step to update page layouts, check the affected page layouts because some fields such as custom fields might not return to their original position.

Manually Updating Custom Page Layouts

If you use custom page layouts for Billing Contract Line Item and Billing Document Line Item, you must update them manually to include the Charge Term field.

The automatic feature step to update the standard page layouts also applies some changes to rearrange fields on the Contract Line Item and Billing Document Line Item layouts, and changes the related lists for these objects on the Contract and Billing Document layouts respectively. If you want to apply the same changes to your custom page layouts, refer to the feature step details on screen and to the updated standard page layouts in your org to see the changes.

Check Any Custom Code that uses the ffbc.ContractsService APIs

If you have custom code that uses the ffbc.ContractsService APIs, you must check whether it needs updating to include the Charge Term. The following API request objects accept the Charge Term as a parameter:

  • ffbc.ContractsService.CalculateFieldsWithoutSaveLineRequest - has new fields for ChargeTerm and ChargeTermDefinition.
  • ffbc.ContractsService.ContractLineItem - has a new field for ChargeTerm.

If the 'ChargeTerm' field is not set on these requests, the services will behave as though they have been given a line that has a Billing Term but no Charge Term. This might result in incorrect calculations of the Total Contract Line Value, or the 'save' method might update existing lines to remove charge terms that have been set.

The 'ChargeTermDefinition' field is optional - if this is set, it will be used instead of querying to find the associated charge term.

For more information about the Billing Central APIs, see the Billing Central API Developer Reference at: http://developer.financialforce.com/technical-reference/