About billing forecasting

This approach uses a Billing Calendar to forecast and process lease billing. Rather than the user filling in a set of billing parameters to initiate the billing run, this method uses the contract detail records to forecast the billings date and then lead the user through the initiation of one or more billing runs to perform the billing. The values that determine the billing cycle are defined in the contract itself and the billing control function uses those values to determine when the billing jobs should be run.

The user’s interaction with this billing engine is to review the billing calendar’s forecasted billings and select the ones to be billed by grouping them to form a billing control group. The billing engine then looks back to the billing control to determine what is to be billed in the group. It still references the contract details but only to determine the value of the charges.

The Billing Calendar is based on forecasted billings calculated using the contract details, corporate/customer calendars, and previous billing history. The forecast itself is performed by a ‘batch’ job that should be scheduled to run nightly. It is also possible to run the ‘batch’ job on demand.

The billing forecast job can be performed even if other contract billing jobs are in process. Contract billing jobs may prevent each other from being initiated, but the forecast is independent of them. This is because the forecast is considered an estimate.

If, during the forecast process, one or more billing jobs are in progress, the contract details from the in-progress billing jobs are excluded from the forecast. The forecast detail is marked to indicate that the estimate is ‘unavailable’. The summary view of the billing calendar shows ‘unavailable’ if any of the details making up the summary are unavailable. The user can use the zoom option to investigate. This could occur if the forecast job is rerun during the day, or if a billing job was submitted for overnight but not posted.

When the forecast process is performed, any forecast details where the user has already placed the detail on the billing control will be retained. Forecast details where the detail is not on a billing control will be re-forecasted.

The de-selection of a section from the billing, during billing edit, will remove the section from the billing control. Likewise, the cancellation of a billing job will remove all the contract sections for that billing job from the billing control.

The billing forecast job may be broken down into three steps:

1. Calculate Billing Date - this step is similar to the first ‘half’ of the standard billing engine, except instead of determining WHAT is to be billed given the user’s selection criteria (contract type, date, etc.) this determines WHEN each section is to be billed given the contract details and billing history.
2. Estimate the value of each contract/section. Given WHEN a section is to be billed this is like the second ‘half’ of the standard billing engine that calculates the charges. Instead of creating the contract billing records, this updates the estimate file. The accuracy of the estimate will depend on the currency of the contract details and reading values.
3. Sum the values and produce counts by billing date. The Billing Calendar screens start at a summary level and allow drill-down to the detail. This requires sums and counts of the detail so the user may consider what further action to take.

When running the billing forecast, the system will make sure all sections on Active and Closed contracts have a billing cycle before forecasting. If any are blank, an error will be displayed.

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