Billing Documents

Clicking the Billing Documents tab displays the Billing Documents home page.
  • In the View section, select an appropriate list view from the drop-down list to go directly to that list page, or click Create New View to define your own custom list view. List views let you display a list of records that match specific criteria.
  • In the Recent section, select an item from the drop-down list on the right to display a brief list of the top records matching that criteria. The choices are listed in the table that follows.
  • From the list, you can click any Billing Document Name to go directly to its detail.
  • Click New to create a new billing document.
  • To change the owner of one or more records, select the records you want to change from the list view then click Change Owner.
  • To change the value of an editable field shown in the list double-click it, enter the value you want and click Save.

Recent Choice

Description

Recently Viewed

The last 10 or 25 records you viewed, with the most recently viewed item listed first. This list is derived from your recent items and includes records owned by you and other users.

Recently Created

The last 10 or 25 records you created, with the most recently created item listed first. This list only includes records owned by you.

Recently Modified

The last 10 or 25 records you updated, with the most recently updated item listed first. This list only includes records owned by you.
Note:

When you view the detail of a billing document, the Salesforce or enhanced detail page is displayed depending on which page your administrator has chosen. Some features of Billing Central are not yet available on the enhanced page. To access these features, you must use the Salesforce Billing Document Detail page. See Switching between Enhanced and Salesforce Detail Pages and Setting up Default Detail Pages.

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 FinancialForce Foundations. Other FinancialForce applications use this object and add fields, buttons, and functionality to it.

You can generate billing documents that contain lines for:

You can print billing documents and save them as PDFClosedPortable Document Format files.

You can roll back complete billing documents generated during a billing run. To achieve this, you can convert billing documents of type Invoice to credit notes. This creates a new billing document of type Credit Note to match the invoice. You can choose whether to allow billing schedules for that invoice to be rebilled at a later date.

If analysis items have been created in Foundations, they can be populated on billing document headers and lines and posted through to FinancialForce 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.

Status Description
Draft

The initial status of the billing document is "Draft". You can edit and delete 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.

Complete

You cannot delete 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

You can also edit custom fields that have been added to the Enhanced Billing Document Additional Fields field sets.
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

You can also edit custom fields that have been added to the Enhanced Billing Document Additional Fields field sets.
Superseded

A billing document that is "Superseded" does not contain any line items because they were moved to a consolidated billing document.

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

  • Customer Reference
  • Description
  • Footer Text
  • Header Text

You can also edit custom fields that have been added to the Enhanced Billing Document Additional Fields field sets.

Analyzing Contract Revenue

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

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.

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