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:

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.

In this topic:

Prerequisites

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

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:

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: "General"
    • 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 corporate currency.
  4. Click Save.

The empty report is now created. See the next section to learn how to add the dataset and the lens to the report.

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

Adding the Dataset and the Lens to the Report

After creating the report, you must the specify:

To do this:

  1. Open the Billing Contract Subledger report, if it's not already open.
  2. Click . The Select your dataset page of the table configuration window displays.
  3. For Dataset Name, select "Billing Contracts ([Name of Your Financial Analytics App])".
  4. Click Next. The Lens Configuration tab of the table configuration window displays.
  5. Click and then click Add Lens. A new row is added to the table.
  6. In the empty table row, define the following:
    • Alias: contractTotals
    • Lens/Calculation: "Billing Contracts - Value, Billed, Recognized, Deferred ([Name of Your Financial Analytics App])"
  7. [Optional] Open the Table Configuration tab and define a Table Name. For example, enter Billing Contracts (All Values in [Corporate Currency]), where [Corporate Currency] represent the ISO code of the Integration User's currency. This provides additional information to the report users and is automatically included when you export the report.
  8. Click Save.

The report now displays a table with the following columns:

See the next section to learn how to display the totals per billing contract and add more information.

For more information about adding datasets and lenses to a report, see the following in the Financial Report Builder Help:

Adding Dimension Columns to the Report

After specifying the dataset and lens, you must add dimension columns to display the values per billing contract and group the row by company, account, and currency.

To do this:

  1. Open the Billing Contract Subledger report, if it's not already open.
  2. Click and then click Dimension Columns.
  3. Click . A new row is added to the table.
  4. In the empty table row, define the following:
    • Dimension: "Company Name"
    • Custom Label: Company
  5. Repeat the previous two steps for the following dimensions:
    • "Account Name": Account
    • "Contract Currency ISO Code": Currency
    • "Contract Number": (leave blank)
    • "Contract End Date": End Date
  6. Click Save.

The report table now also displays the following columns:

See the next section to learn how to add drilling, so that users can view contract line item details for each contract.

For more information about adding dimension columns to a report, see Configuring Dimension Columns in the Financial Report Builder Help.

Adding a Drill to the Report

After configuring the dimension columns displayed in the report table, you can add drilling. This enables users to click a value at the contract level, for example Total Billed, and view how the value is calculated from the contract lines.

To do this:

  1. Open the Billing Contract Subledger report, if it's not already open.
  2. Click .
  3. For Dataset Name, select "Billing Contracts ([Name of Your Financial Analytics App])".
  4. Click Next. The Drill Configuration tab of the drill table configuration window displays. This contains the predefined drill mappings.
  5. Click next to each row except for the row where "Contract Number" is selected as both the source and target. This removes unused mappings.
  6. Open the Lens Configuration tab.
  7. Click and then click Add Lens. A new row is added to the table.
  8. In the empty table row, define the following:
    • Alias: contractLineTotals
    • Lens/Calculation: "Billing Contracts - Value, Billed, Recognized, Deferred ([Name of Your Financial Analytics App])"
  9. Open the Dimension Columns tab.
  10. Add the following dimensions with the appropriate custom labels:
    • "Contract Line Item Name": Contract Line
    • "Product Name": Product
    • "Contract Line Item Billing Term Name": Billing Term
    • "Contract Line Item End Date": End Date
  11. [Optional] Open the Table Configuration tab and define a Table Name. For example, enter Contract Line Details (All Values in [Corporate Currency]), where [Corporate Currency] represent the ISO code of the Integration User's currency.
  12. Click Save.

Your report is now ready to be used. You can optionally add filters and formatting to improve the user experience. The next two sections provide more information about these features.

For more information about adding a drill, see Configuring Drilling in Tables in the Financial Report Builder Help.

[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:

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 in the Financial Report Builder Help.

[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 in the Financial Report Builder Help: