In Billing Central, analysis items are optional fields on billing contracts and billing documents. You can use analysis items to represent any business concept or category that is important to you, such as Cost Center or Industry Type. You can then build reports on your analysis items to analyze your business data.
Analysis items are set up and managed within Foundations. There are four default categories or "record types" (Analysis 1-4). You must create the values available for each of these categories. If you require more than four categories, you can create additional record types and their values for custom usage.
You can control which analysis items are available on an object by setting up analysis mappings. For example, if you use Analysis 1 to represent Sales Executive, you can set up an analysis mapping to include the Analysis Item 1 field on both the Billing Contract and Billing Document objects. When you create a billing contract or billing document, you can then identify the relevant sales executive in the Analysis Item 1 field. If you create billing documents directly from the contract, Billing Central will automatically copy the sales executive from the Analysis Item 1 field on the contract to the Analysis Item 1 field on the billing document. See the Analysis Mappings Example below for more information.
Analysis Mappings Example
One benefit of using analysis mappings is that when you create billing documents from a contract, the values in analysis item fields on the contract are automatically copied to the analysis item fields on the billing documents (at header and line level). The values are copied in accordance with the analysis mappings in your org.
For example, your org has three analysis mappings set up: two for default record types (Analysis 1 and Analysis 2) and one for a record type that has been created on your org (Industry Type). The analysis mappings define which fields on the Billing Contract and Billing Document objects store the analysis items for these record types.
| Record Type | Billing Contract Field | Billing Document Field |
|---|---|---|
| Analysis 1 | Analysis Item 1 | Analysis Item 1 |
| Analysis 2 | Analysis Item 2 | Analysis Item 4 |
| Industry Type | Industry (custom field) | Industry (custom field) |
With these analysis mappings in place, when you create billing documents directly from a contract the analysis items are copied as follows:
- The value in the Analysis Item 1 field on the contract header is copied to the Analysis Item 1 field on the billing document header.
- The value in the Analysis Item 2 field on the contract header is copied to the Analysis Item 4 field on the billing document header.
- The value in the Industry field on the contract header is copied to the Industry field on the billing document header.
You can edit the values on billing documents if your permissions allow.
Permissions Required to Bill when using Analysis Mappings
When analysis mappings are configured, you must have the following permissions if you need the ability to create billing documents from contracts:
- Read access to the analysis item fields on Billing Contract and Billing Contract Line Item.
- Write access to the analysis item fields on Billing Document and Billing Document Line Item.
Completing Analysis Item Fields
If you are using Lightning Experience, analysis items are displayed by the Analysis Items Lightning component on the Billing Contract, Billing Contract Line Item, Billing Document, and Billing Document Line Item Lightning record pages. When analysis mappings exist for the current object, the relevant analysis item fields are displayed in the component and you can select from the values available for each field. If this component is empty it means that there are no analysis mappings configured for the current object.
If you know that analysis mappings are set up for the current object but you cannot see any analysis item fields on the object's Lightning record page, contact your administrator because they might have cloned the page and removed the Analysis Items Lightning component.
Using Salesforce Classic
If you are using Salesforce Classic rather than Lightning Experience, you must manually add the analysis item fields to the page layouts for the relevant objects (Billing Contract, Billing Contract Line Item, Billing Document, Billing Document Line Item).
We recommend that you create lookup filters on the analysis item fields so that each field only lists values for the relevant record type. For example, you might want Analysis Item 1 to only list values for the Analysis 1 record type, Analysis Item 2 to only list values for the Analysis 2 record type, and so on.