Overview
This article is to guide users on the processes and tasks that need to be undertaken to prepare your organisation for your bill run and ensure it goes smoothly.
Most Emersion subscribers send invoices on a monthly billing cycle, either covering a calendar month, or on the customer's anniversary date. Regardless of how frequently the customer receives their invoice, the same procedures need to be followed to prepare the system for the bill run and to ensure all charges that need to appear on the customer's invoices are present and accounted for.
All service providers must ensure these procedures are followed during a typical month before you start to send invoices. More specifically, it must be undertaken before the end date of your customer's current account invoice period arrives. If your supplier delivers usage late frequently, this may present a challenge. In this case, we recommend enabling the system to allow you to approve (and close) the periods manually.
Once the customer's account invoice period is closed, users will be unable to cleanse usage from quarantine in order for it to be billed. Once it is rated, usage will only ever fall into the current open period.
The Account Invoice Period
Only charges that are generated within the current invoice period can be billed after the period has been closed, either automatically by the system or manually by the user. Once a period is closed, a new one is immediately opened and becomes the current invoice period. This means new charges that are generated will be included in the next bill run.
Users can find the current account invoice period for a customer on the Customer > Dashboard under the Billing Information heading.
The terms Start Of and End Of refers to the start and the end of the invoice period. In Emersion's system, automated activity is triggered by both the start of the period and end of the period. The processes and procedures in this article focus on the steps essential for the end of the period.
End of Period Processes
The steps are:
- Add Services
- Check usage has been mediating
- Manage quarantine
- Approve the billing periods
- Assign cardlines to invoices
- Approve and send.
Add Services
Before any charges related to services can be presented on a customer's invoice, the customer account and service subscriptions must be entered into Emersion. Therefore, the first step is to add any missing services in Cumulus.
This is done by placing an order for the package plan, submitting the order and then activating the service in the usual manner.
Start Dates
Be careful to choose the correct account start date and service start date when activating services
Services can be back-billed up to the account start date or no more than 6 months, which ever is shorter.
No service can be back dated prior to the account start date. Any usage received prior to the account start date must be written off and cannot be invoiced.
If you have a customer with a subscription to a service that started before one of the above dates, you cannot select the correct date in Cumulus. Please raise a ticket with our service desk for assistance.
The Non-Existent Services Quarantine page assists users to complete this task. It is covered further under the Manage Quarantine section below.
Check Usage Mediation
Check to ensure usage has been received and mediating in accordance with your expectations. Different suppliers and carriers provide usage information at different times (daily, weekly, monthly, etc). It is also common for service providers to receive different types of usage, depending on the service type. Contact your supplier if you are not sure how frequently they will send their files.
For each type of usage files received, Emersion sets up a connector in our Batch Mediation System ('BMS'). This connector monitors for usage and processes the usage files on your behalf. If the connector does not exist, or is inactive for any reason, usage cannot be mediated.
Emersion provides a report for users to view the connector information.
Go to Report > List > BMS
Run the BMS Connector Status Report
Connectors are only relevant for usage received via a direct relationship with a supplier. If you purchase services via an Wholesale Service Provider who uses Emersion, no connector will exist for this usage.
This report will show your connectors and the last usage file from the relevant supplier it tried to process. In the Last File Processed column it will list the file name. Frequently, the carrier includes the date of the file in the file name itself. There is also a Date File Processed column.
If the last files were received some time ago (days), check with your supplier on how frequently these should be received. If there is a problem with receiving usage in a time;y manner you may wish to hold open the periods so it can be received, mediated and the rated charges can be included in the bill run.
Manage Quarantine
In a perfect world, Quarantine should be emptied each day. However this may not be practical or required, particularly if the service supplier or carrier sends usage less frequently.
This has several sub tasks:
- Check non-existing services
- Check rating quarantine
- Check service feature quarantine
- Check usage rated
Check Non-Existent Service Quarantine
Go to Billing > Non Existent Service
All services and service identifiers must be present and active in Emersion prior to mediating usage. This page displays quarantined usage records grouped by service that can not be identified. The view aims to assist users quickly identify which services and service identifiers need to be entered into the system in order for the usage to be processed.
Check all sub tabs and ensure all records are cleansed. For detailed assistance on this page, please refer to this article.
The following pages also display all usage that cannot be identified. The difference with these pages is that users are looking at the raw usage records.
Billing > Quarantine
The first 3 tabs contain usage that cannot be identified.
- Telephony BMS
- Data BMS
- Misc BMS
Add all relevant services and activate them taking care of the start date and back dating as required. Once the service is active, cleanse the records from quarantine.
Telephony BMS displays usage for calls (telephony) records.
Data BMS displays usage for internet, broadband and Ethernet-type services.
Misc BMS displays charges for a service feature, access fees, contract fees, installation charges and any data that does not fall into the above two categories.
Check Rating Quarantine
Once all services can be identified, the mediation system next checks to ensure they can be rated. Rating is a different process and will have it's own errors. Usage that falls into rating quarantine ends up here because the system can find a price to charge for the record. Records that can not be rated are found in:
Billing > Quarantine
The 3 rating tabs contain usage that cannot be rated.
- Telephony Rating
- Data Rating
- Misc Rating
Check to see if Emersion have created any new tariffs for the service supplier. To do this, run the New Tariffs Created in last 1,7,30 Days report under Reports > List > Quarantine. If new tariffs have been created, you will need to check them to see if you need to enter a price.
Once you have correct all errors, cleanse the usage from quarantine.
Check Service Feature Quarantine
The service feature quarantine page will report on service feature subscriptions which are currently unable to be billed because:
- a price cannot be found; or
- a product rate card is not assigned to the service plan related to the service feature or the service feature subscription period.
Unlike BMS and MISC usage where Emersion can use programmatic ways to flag issues with usage records, service feature subscriptions are different in that they are recurring subscriptions versus an individual usage record. This means that processing of the records is fundamentally different.
To access this screen go to Billing > Quarantine > Service Feature
For detailed assistance on this page, please refer to this article.
Correct all errors and cleanse the usage from quarantine.
Check the Rated Usage
Once usage has cleared quarantine, it can be seen on the View Usage and View Service and Equipment usage pages. These are found under Customer > Service Subscription.
Open the service by clicking the Service ID.
Usage will be grouped into the periods in which it fell.
Approve or Write Off Quarantine Records in Bulk
Restrictions prevent users from attempting to process too many records at one time using the Cumulus user interface. These restrictions are in place for performance reasons. For users needing to cleanse or write off thousands of records in bulk, use this bulk tool.
Approve the Billing Periods
If manual period approval is enabled, the subscription periods need to be approved. See the help on Period Approval feature articles for assistance with period management. If periods are automatically approved by the system, this step does not apply.
Once the periods are approved, they are closed. StartOf activity will open a new period. An invoice covering the closed period will be generated.
Cardlines can take up to several hours to be generated. Invoices will only be generated 2 days from the end of the account invoice period.
Review the Invoice
If your organisation has not configured the system to automatically approve invoices once they are generated, you will need to do this manually. If invoices are automatically approved by the system upon creation, this step does not apply.
Cardlines will be automatically assigned to a pending invoice if the cardline was created before the creation of the invoice.
- Review each invoice for accuracy. We suggest utilising the Pre Invoice report. (Report > List > Billing > Pre Invoice Report - #792)
- Allocate and de-allocate cardlines to and from the invoice as needed. See Cardline Management Import
- Make other adjustments as needed.
- When the invoice is ready, it can be approved.
Approve and Send
There are several ways to approve invoices.
- Individually via the Customer > Invoice > Manage Invoice screen.
- In bulk via the Finance > Accounts Receivable > Invoice list screen.
- Bulk approval via our Invoice Approval bulk tool.