Creating Billing Central Contracts from Salesforce Orders
If you are using Salesforce CPQ and Billing Central you can add the Prepare Contract button to the Salesforce order page layout, so that you can create Billing Central contracts directly from the Salesforce order.
For example, this allows your sales consultants to raise orders and then create billing contracts. Your billing clerks can then review and activate the contracts in Billing Central.
Prerequisites
You must have completed the configuration steps as described in Setting up BC Order to Contract Integration
In order to create contracts the following criteria apply:
- You must have the following fields completed on your order:
- Account Name
- Opportunity Type
- Order Start Date
- If you upsell, replace or renew contracts, you must add the Original Contracted Order number to the new order. This field is used to retrieve contract details from Billing Central.
- You must have at least one product on your order.
- You must activate your order.
When you click Prepare Contract, the order information is validated and any errors are displayed.
New contracts are created in Draft status and must be activated in Billing Central.
To create a new Billing Central contract from a Salesforce order:
- Create a Salesforce order from on an Opportunity with the type 'New Customer' and activate it.
- Click Prepare Contract. A confirmation page displays.
- Click Continue to create the contract.
- When the contract is created a confirmation message displays. Click Continue to return to the order.
Your Billing Central users can now view and activate the contract that you have created.
For more information on creating opportunities and orders, see your Salesforce Online Help.
Upselling adds extra products or services to an existing active contract.
You can enter the following Billing Information on the order line items on your order:
- Billing Frequency
- Contract Billing Type, if you want to override the product's default
The Billing Frequency and Contract Billing Type fields are required when adding lines to an active contract in Billing Central.
If you leave the Contract Billing Type field blank, the default value for the product is used. You can specify a default value for this field when you create your products. If you have not set a default value on your product record, an error message displays when you try to prepare the contract and you must go back and enter the value on the order.
The following conditions must also be met:
- All items that you add to an upsell contract must be billed in the same currency as the contract that you are upselling.
- The order and line item dates must be within the start and end dates of the contract that you are upselling.
- You must enter the original contracted order number. This is used to link to the contract that you are upselling.
When you upsell a contract, the new items are added to the original contract. Additionally, a new contract based on the original contract is created with the status Superseded.
To upsell a contract:
- Create a Salesforce order and CPQ quote from an opportunity with the type 'Existing Customer - Upgrade'.
- In the Original Contracted Order field enter the order number. Click the lookup icon to search for the order number.
- For each product on the order, enter the billing frequency.
- [Optional] For each product on the order, enter the contract billing type.
- Save the order and activate it.
- Click Prepare Contract. A confirmation page displays.
- Click Continue to create the contract.
- When the contract is created a confirmation message displays. Click Continue to return to the order.
A copy of the original order's active contract is saved as a superseded contract. Products on the upsell order are added to the active contract. After the upsell process, the updated active contract retains the original contract number, and a link is created between this updated contract and the superseded contract. In addition:
- Billing schedules are generated for the new lines, as well as for the existing lines.
- Draft billing documents for the contract are deleted or discarded depending on the Allow Deletion of Draft Billing Document setting in the Billing Central Settings custom setting. See Allow Deletion of Draft Billing Document.
For more information on creating opportunities and orders see your Salesforce Help.
Renewal contracts are created in Draft status and must be activated in Billing Central. When renewing a contract, the original contract must have an end date and status of either Active or Expired.
To create a renewal contract:
- Create a Salesforce order and CPQ quote from an opportunity with the type Existing Customer - Renewal.
- In the Original Contracted Order field enter the order number. Click the lookup icon to search for the order number. This links the order to the contract that you want to renew.
- Save the order and activate it.
- Click Prepare Contract. A confirmation page displays.
- Click Continue to create the contract.
- When the contract is created a confirmation message displays. Click Continue to return to the order.
Your Billing Central users can now view and activate the contract that you have created. Your renewal contract is created, with the Major Version field incrementing by 1. The original contract retains its Major Version value.
For more information on creating opportunities and orders, see your Salesforce Online Help.
You can create a replacement for an existing contract. Creating a replacement ends the existing contract, setting the end date to the day before the replacement order date, and creates a new contract with a start date the same as the order date.
The order date must be between the start and end date of the original contract.
Replacement contracts are created in Draft status and must be activated in Billing Central.
To create a replacement contract:
- Create a Salesforce order and CPQ quote from an Opportunity with the type Existing Customer - Replacement.
- In the Original Contracted Order field enter the order number. Click the lookup icon to search for the order number. This creates a link to the contract that you want to replace.
- Save the order and activate it.
- Click Prepare Contract. A confirmation page displays.
- Click Continue to create the contract.
- When the contract is created a confirmation message displays. Click Continue to return to the order.
Your replacement contract is created, and the original contract will end the day before the new contract starts. For example, if the replacement contract starts on April 4, 2018, then the original contract end date changes to April 3, 2018.
When a contract is ended before its end date:
- If the new end date is before today, the status of the contract is set to Expired.
- If the new end date is today or later, the status of the contract remains Active until the end date is reached.
- The original end date of the contract is recorded in the Original End Date field. This enables you to renew the contract at a later date using the same duration of the contract before it was ended.
- Draft billing documents and billing schedules that have not yet been billed are deleted.
- Billing schedules are regenerated up to the new end date of the contract.
- Change requests with an Approval Status other than "Rejected" are deleted.
- Draft renewals associated with the contract are deleted.
For more information about the ending of contracts, see Ending Contracts.
For more information on creating opportunities and orders, see your Salesforce Online Help.