Setting up the Billing Contract Subledger Report

If you use Billing Central and Revenue Management, you can leverage existing Financial Analytics datasets and lenses to create the Billing Contract Subledger report using Financial Report Builder. The report enables your users to view the following values for each active billing contract and drill-down to the relevant line item:

  • Total Value
  • Total Billed
  • Total Recognized
  • Deferred Revenue

The report can be used alongside the Deferred Revenue Waterfall dashboard which provides a forecast of subscription billing and revenue. For more information, see Using the Deferred Revenue Waterfall Dashboard.

Prerequisites

Before creating the Financial Analytics app, you must ensure that:

  • Revenue recognition is properly set up for billing contracts and billing contract line items. For more information, see Setting up Revenue Management.
  • Both you and the Integration User are assigned the following permission sets:
    • Billing Central Analytics Read Access
    • RevMan Analytics
  • You are assigned the Financial Report Builder permission set.
  • The Integration User has read access to the field specified in the Recognized To Date Value field on the Revenue Management settings record for the Billing Contract Line Item object.
Warning:

If you set up Revenue Management to use multiple-element arrangements and you recognize revenue against performance obligations, the recognized to date value is not automatically updated on a billing contract line item. This means that the Total Recognized amount in the report is always set to zero and that the Deferred Value amount is set to the Total Billed amount. In this case, you must manually create a process that updates the recognized to date value on a billing contract line item when revenue is recognized for the related performance obligation.

While creating the Financial Analytics app, you must answer "Yes" to the following questions in the configuration wizard:

After creating the Financial Analytics app, ensure that:

  • The app is shared with users who will be using Billing Contract Subledger report.
  • The users who will be using the Billing Contract Subledger are assigned the CRM Analytics Platform User and Financial Report Builder permission sets.
  • You have a basic understanding of Financial Report Builder. To get started, see About Financial Report Builder.

Once you have created the Financial Analytics app, you can use the following assets in the report:

Note:

By default, the Billing Contracts dataset has a security predicate which ensures that users can only view data for the Accounting companies that they have access to. You must ensure that each user of the report has the appropriate user company records defined for them in Accounting. Alternatively, you can remove the security predicate for the dataset.

Creating the Report

This section and the following sections provide the steps required to create an example of the report. If this is your first time creating a report using Financial Report Builder, we recommend that you follow the steps carefully. Once you have configured the report, you can customize it further using standard Analytics and Financial Report Builder functionality. If you are already familiar with Financial Report Builder and do not want to follow the step-by-step process, see Billing Contract Subledger Report Configuration Reference for an overview of the recommended setup.

To create the report using Financial Report Builder:

  1. Navigate to the Financial Reports tab.
  2. Click New.
  3. Define the following:
    • Report Type: "Billing Contract Subledger"
    • Report Name: Billing Contract Subledger
    • Number of Table Configurations: "1"
    • Number of Filter Configurations: "None". You can optionally add filters later.
    • [Optional] Description: View the total value, total billed, total revenue recognized, and deferred revenue for each billing contract and billing contract line item. All the values are displayed in the dual currency.
  4. Click Save.

The report is now created.

For more information about creating a report using Financial Report Builder, see Creating Reports and Statements.

[Optional] Adding Company and Account Filters

You might want to enable your users to filter the report by a specific company or a particular account. You can do this by adding report filters.

Note:

To create a filter in Financial Report Builder, you must first create a lens in Financial Analytics that feeds in the data. In this example, we assume that you have created two compare table lenses:

  • Billing Contracts - Companies: contains a single column Unique of Company Name, grouped by Company Name.
  • Billing Contracts - Accounts: contains a single column Unique of Account Name, grouped by Account Name.

To create the filters:

  1. Open the Billing Contract Subledger report, if it's not already open.
  2. Click Edit.
  3. For Number of Filter Configurations, select "2".
  4. Click Save. Two new filter sections display to the right of the table.
  5. In the first filter section, click . The Filter Configuration 1 window displays.
  6. Define the following:
    • Filter Name: Company
    • Lens: "Billing Contracts - Companies ([Name of the App])"
    • Dimension: "Company Name"
    • Filter Logic: "Equals"
  7. Click Save. The Company filter is now defined.
  8. In the second filter section, click . The Filter Configuration 2 window displays.
  9. Define the following:
    • Filter Name: Account
    • Lens: "Billing Contracts - Accounts ([Name of the App])"
    • Dimension: "Account Name"
    • Filter Logic: "Equals"
  10. Click Save. The Account filter is now defined.

For more information about adding filters, see Configuring Filters in Financial Reports.

[Optional] Formatting the Report

Once you have configured the report, you can optionally format specific parts of the report and add subtotals. For example, you might want to display negative values in red to easily spot the contracts where the total recognized is greater that the total billed. You might also want to display the totals per company or per account.

To format the report:

  1. Open the Billing Contract Subledger report, if it's not already open.
  2. Click .
  3. Define the following:
    • Show Grid: Total and Subtotal Rows
    • Decimal Precision: Two Decimal Places
    • Negative Number Color: Red
    • Negative Number Format: Brackets
  4. Click Save. The formatting is now applied.
  5. Click and then click Subtotal Columns.
  6. Add subtotal rows for companies:
    1. Select the Company Name row.
    2. For the Custom Label, enter Total for {value}. In the report, {value} is dynamically replaced by the company name.
    3. Use the formatting toolbar to style the total rows. For example, you can italicize the row.
  7. Add subtotal rows for accounts:
    1. Select the Account Name row.
    2. For the Custom Label, enter Total for {value}. In the report, {value} is dynamically replaced by the account name.
    3. Use the formatting bar to style the total rows. For example, you can apply a single underline.
  8. Click Save. The subtotal rows now display for each company and each account.

For more information on how to configure these options, see the following: