New Features and Enhancements in Billing Central Summer 2023

The following new features have been introduced in the Summer 2023 release of Billing Central.

If you are upgrading from a previous version, see Upgrading to Billing Central Summer 2023. This provides a summary of the items that have been added for each feature and details of any required upgrade steps.

Before you upgrade to Summer 2023, we recommend you also check the new features and enhancements information for each incremental release. This information for the two most recent Billing Central releases can be found here:

• New Features and Enhancements in Billing Central Spring 2023
• New Features and Enhancements in Billing Central Winter 2023

FinancialForce is Now Certinia

We have made the following changes to align with our new Certinia brand:

• The publisher name has been updated to Certinia
• Package names no longer reference FinancialForce
• In most cases, text referring to FinancialForce has been replaced with Certinia

For more information about these updates and related text changes, see the Package Name Updates article in the Certinia Community and the Technical Documentation Pack.

To learn more about our rebrand, visit the Certinia Community for a message from our CEO, Scott Brown.

Note:

Major versions include updates to both package and publisher names. In service packs, only the package name has changed. Some elements, such as theming and logos, have not been updated and other references to FinancialForce might remain visible in your org.

Amend Prices on Contracts in Bulk

You can amend prices on up to 200 contracts at once from the billing contracts list view. Simply select the billing contracts that are due for price amendment, and click the Amend Prices button. Enter the percentage by which you want unit prices on the contracts to change, and the date from which the new prices are effective, then click Amend. Change requests are created for the price amendments. You must apply the change requests to the active contracts for the new prices to take effect.

The exact number of contracts that Billing Central can amend in bulk will vary depending on whether any customizations are implemented in your org, the size and complexity of your contracts, and platform limits.

For more information, and for advice about volumes, see Amending Prices on Contracts in Bulk.

Amend Prices on Contracts in Bulk via The ContractsAmendmentService

The ContractsAmendmentService.changeContractPricesByPercentageAsync method has been added to allow prices to be amended on contracts in bulk via the API. The method accepts a set of contract IDs, the percentage by which unit prices should be amended, and the date from which the new prices are effective.

The custom fields Amend Prices for Contracts: Queue Size and Amend Prices for Contracts: Scope Size (in the Background Process Settings custom setting) determine how Billing Central processes the work.

The method sends a notification when the background process is complete, and creates logs recording any errors that occur.

For more information, see the Billing Central API Developer Reference.

Apply Change Requests to Contracts in Bulk

You can apply change requests to up to 200 contracts at once from the billing contracts list view. Simply select the change requests that you want to apply, and click the Apply Change Requests button.

The exact number of change requests that Billing Central can apply in bulk will vary depending on whether any customizations are implemented in your org, the size and complexity of your contracts, and platform limits.

For more information, and for advice about volumes, see Applying Change Requests to Contracts.

Notes:

Applying a change request to a contract might result in a draft credit note being created if its contract lines are worth less than has been billed. If you do not want draft credit notes to be created in this way, see "Control Whether Credit Notes Are Created Automatically" below.

Applying a change request to a contract with an end date that is before today immediately sets the contract's status to "Expired". If you do not want a contract's status to be changed in this way, see "Control Whether Contract Status is Updated When Applying a Change Request" below.

Apply Change Requests in Bulk via The ChangeRequestsAsyncService

The ChangeRequestsAsyncService has been added to allow change requests to be applied in bulk via the API. The applyChangeRequestsAsync method accepts a set of change request IDs and applies them asynchronously.

In addition to supplying change request IDs to the method, optional input parameters let you specify:

• The number of months to generate billing schedules for when a change request is applied.
• Whether to disable automatically generating credit notes for a change request.

The custom fields Apply Change Request: Queue Size and Apply Change Request: Scope Size (in the Background Process Settings custom setting) determine how Billing Central processes the work.

The method sends a notification when the background process is complete, and creates logs recording any errors and information about any credit notes that are generated.

For more information, see the Billing Central API Developer Reference.

Invocable Action to Apply Change Requests via a Salesforce Flow

You can now apply change requests automatically by creating a Salesforce flow to call the Apply Change Requests invocable action.

When creating the flow, Salesforce allows you to specify conditions that must be true for the flow to run. For example, if you have an approval process for change requests, you can add a condition that the change request must be approved.

When configuring the Apply Change Requests action in the flow, you can pass an input parameter to specify whether a draft credit note should be created for the active contract if refunds are due when the change request is applied. The action returns the ID of the draft credit note if one is created.

For more information about using this action, see Custom Action to Apply Change Requests.

Note:

Due to platform restrictions, Certinia cannot include sample flows with Billing Central. For ideas about how you might design a Salesforce flow to apply change requests, see Sample Flow to Apply a Change Request on Approval. For information about how to create Salesforce flows, please refer to the Salesforce Help.

Control Whether Credit Notes Are Created Automatically

Since the Summer 2022 release of Billing Central, a draft credit note is created automatically if you apply a change request that results in the customer being entitled to a refund. You can now turn off this automatic credit note creation by selecting Disable Automatic Credit Note Creation in the Billing Central Settings custom setting.

For more information about how Billing Central creates draft credit notes, see Automatic Creation of Draft Credit Notes When Applying Change Requests.

Control Whether Contract Status is Updated to Expired When Applying a Change Request

Since the Summer 2022 release of Billing Central, applying a change request to a contract with an end date that is before today immediately sets the contract's status to "Expired". You can now disable this immediate change to the contract's status by selecting Change Requests Do Not Expire Contracts in the Billing Central Settings custom setting. The contracts will then be set to "Expired" when the background job to expire contracts next runs.

For more information about applying change requests, see Applying Change Requests to Contracts.

Sencha Pages are Deprecated

Since Spring 2021 Billing Central has been optimized for Lightning Experience, and Certinia has recommended all customers use Billing Central in Lightning Experience to take advantage of new functionality. No further development was done on the Enhanced View pages (otherwise known as Sencha), and as of Summer 2023 they are deprecated.

If you are upgrading and your org is still configured to use the Enhanced View pages for plans, billing contracts, and billing documents, see Upgrading to Billing Central Summer 2023 for details of how to switch to using the Lightning record pages instead.

Release Content

We want to help you find all of the information and help that you need to be productive with our products.

Certinia Trailhead

If you want to learn more about the new features in this release, see the ERP Cloud - Summer 2023 Release Highlights Trailhead module. This module will guide you through the new features in ERP Cloud.

In-App Guidance

Certinia In-App Guidance uses Salesforce user engagement features to deliver Certinia content, such as tutorials, and walkthroughs directly from our products.

In this release, we've updated several in-app guidance prompts. For a full list of the updates, see New Features and Enhancements in In-App Guidance Summer 2023.

If you are upgrading from a previous version, see Upgrading to In-App Guidance Summer 2023. This provides a summary of the items that have been added for each feature and details of any required upgrade steps.

Fixes

Fixes are listed on the Known Issues page of the Certinia Community. You can access this page from the Community Support Hub. For a brief description of the issues that have been fixed in this version of Billing Central, see the relevant section of the Known Issues page.