Setting up the Automation of Billing Central Processes

The Billing Central Automation Feature Console feature allows you to enable and configure the automation of Billing Central processes.

This feature has three required steps. You must perform them in the indicated order.

To configure and enable the feature:

1. On feature step 1, click Perform. This creates the required publications and subscriptions. The step's Status changes to "Done".
2. On feature step 2, click Perform. This adds the "Completed with Errors" status to the Background Process object. The step's Status changes to "Done".
   Note:

   If you are upgrading from a version earlier than Spring 2020, you must also manually add the value to the "Calculate Tax with Avalara" record type. For more information, see Manually Adding the Completed with Errors Status to the Calculate Tax with Avalara Record Type.

3. On feature step 3, click Launch. The Configure Billing Automation dialog displays.
4. Use the slider next to an item to enable it. More information on each item is listed in the table after these steps. For automation examples, see Billing Central Automation Overview.
   Note:

   The settings are applied across your entire org.

5. Click Save & Enable. The step's Status changes to "Done" and the Status slider in the Feature section moves to enabled.

Note:

Once you enable the feature, you cannot disable it. You can disable an active automation by clicking Edit on the feature step and disabling the relevant item.

Billing Process Stages That You Can Automate

Item	Description
Automatically Activate Billing Contracts	After billing contracts are created from opportunities, they are automatically activated. This also creates billing schedules for generating billing documents. For information on manually activating contracts, see Activating Contracts. Notes: Before you can enable this, you must first enable the BC Opportunity to Contract Integration feature. For more information, see Setting up the Opportunity To Contract Feature. Automatically activating billing contracts from CPQ orders is currently not supported.
Automatically Create Due Billing Documents from Contracts	After billing contracts are activated, billing schedules are created. Once the process finishes, billing documents due for billing Billing documents that have the Billing Date field set to today's date or before today's date. are automatically created. For more information, see Automatically Creating Due Billing Documents from a Contract.
Automatically Calculate Tax	After a billing contract is activated and billing documents are created, tax is calculated automatically on the documents. If you are using Avalara AvaTax, you can choose one of the following: Always calculate tax automatically using FinancialForce Always calculate tax automatically using Avalara AvaTax Calculate tax automatically using the default tax engine on each billing document's company. If you choose to use the default tax engine, you must ensure that each company in the org has a default tax engine set on its Company Tax Information. If any companies do not have a default tax engine, a message is displayed warning you that tax will not be calculated for billing documents from those companies. For more information, see What is Company Tax Information?. If you are not using Avalara AvaTax, tax is always calculated automatically using FinancialForce. For more information on setting up tax calculation, see Setting up Tax. Note: Billing documents of type Credit Note are ignored by the automatic tax calculation process.
Automatically Complete Billing Documents	After tax is successfully calculated for a billing document, the billing document is automatically completed. If the Automatically Calculate Tax stage is enabled to use either Avalara AvaTax or the default tax engine, the Commit Tax to Avalara AvaTax while calculating checkbox is available. Select this checkbox if you want tax to be committed to Avalara AvaTax as part of the automatic completion process. Warning: If you enable automatic tax calculation and automatic completion but do not select this checkbox, billing documents will be completed without their tax values being committed to Avalara AvaTax. You cannot manually commit tax to Avalara AvaTax once a billing document's status is "Complete". For information on manually completing billing documents, see Completing Billing Documents. If you are using the Billing Document to Transaction integration, the billing document can also be posted to Accounting as a transaction. For more information, see Posting Billing Documents to Accounting and Billing Document to Transaction. If you are using the Billing Document to Sales Invoice or Credit Note integration, a sales invoice can also be created from the billing document. For more information, see Billing Document to Sales Invoice or Credit Note Integration and Setting up Automatic Creation of Sales Documents from Billing Documents. Note: Billing documents of type Credit Note with the status "Ready for Review" are ignored by the automatic completion process.

Manually Adding the Completed with Errors Status to the Calculate Tax with Avalara Record Type

Note:

You only need to do this if you are upgrading from a version earlier than Spring 2020 and you use Avalara AvaTax to calculate tax.

Complete the following steps:

1. From Setup, click Object Manager | Background Process | Record Types.
2. Click Calculate Tax with Avalara.
3. Under Picklists Available for Editing, next to Status, click Edit.
4. In the Available Values list, select "Completed with Errors" and add it to the Selected Values list.
5. Click Save.

Assign Permissions to Users Who Will Trigger the Automation

Users who will trigger the automation must be assigned the required permission sets for the processes that will run automatically.

For example, if the Automatically Activate Billing Contracts stage is enabled, users of the BC Opportunity to Contract Integration must be assigned the Billing Central - Contract - Activate Contract permission set.

And if the Automatically Create Due Billing Documents from Contracts stage is enabled, users who activate contracts must be assigned the "Billing Central - Contract - Create Billing Document" permission set.

For more information about permission sets, see Permission Sets.