Invoicing

Overview

Invoicing is at the very heart of the Emersion billing system. All core features and functions are designed around the purpose of invoice creation and distribution. Without invoicing, there is no billing.

This area is designed as a landing page for all invoicing related topics, including:

• Customising your invoice templates
• Global and customer-level settings
• Activities that happen when the billing period closes.
• Options for mid-cycle invoice generation.
• Options for managing invoices.
• Approving invoices and getting them out to your customers.
  

and more.....

While Emersion's system is designed to automate as many billing and invoicing functions with the objective of freeing up your staff to perform more important activities, the billing of customers isn't 100% hands-off. There are activities and tasks your company needs to do in each bill cycle to ensure accurate and efficient billing. For a comprehensive run down on the regular activities for a bill run, read the The Billing Cheat Sheet article. All the articles and help in this section aims to provide you with generic advice and help on how you can achieve smooth and efficient bill runs that help secure your revenue and support you in your goals of expansion and growth.

Managing Invoice Template and Configuration Invoice Setup and Configuration Invoice Layouts Invoice Designs Invoice Delivery and Approval Settings Ledger Management and Ledger Codes Event Notifications for Invoices

Managing Invoices Invoice Auditing Accounts Receivable Invoice Management Invoice Cardlines Cardline Allocation Rules Approving Invoices Rejecting Invoices Rerender Invoices Rerate Invoices

Related Functions Disputing an Invoice Raise a credit Write off charges Raise a refund

The Billing Cheat Sheet Rating, Billing and Invoice Process Payments Receive a payment Take a Payment Ledger Journal view of Allocation of Payments to Invoices Payment Extensions

While invoices are the primary output of Emersion's billing system, there are several important inputs that users need to be familiar with. We refer to these in articles pertaining to invoicing and billing.

Account Invoice Period

All accounts are set up with an Account Invoice Period. This is a frequency-based period of time that determines the overall billing cycle for the account. Invoices are generated after the current account invoice period is closed. Read more about the Account Invoice Period.

Billing Objects

If invoices are the output, the inputs are the billing objects. These are the objects where your pricing and billing business rules are contained. If billing objects are incorrectly configured, incorrect charges on invoices will be the result. Learn more about the billing objects in Emersion.

Subscription Periods

Like the account invoice period, periods are also created by the system for billing objects. While it is common to align a package subscription or service subscription period to the account invoice period, there are plenty of cases where they should not be aligned. Subscription periods are created for Packages, services, service features, bolt-ons and bolt-on add-ons.

Service Types

An object represents a single type of service that can be sold to an customer. Or in other words, it is something that a customer can subscribe to. Read more about Service Types here.

Batch Mediation System (BMS)

The BMS is a special sub-system in the Emersion ecosystem. It's purpose is to receive usage files from external parties, and to generate usage files. It is the entry point of the Emersion system for all manner of usage that is provided in regular 'batch' files. It does not process usage in 'real-time'. Usage files are unpacked by BMS and the contents are translated before it is sent to the Emersion rating engine.

Rating

The Rating engine takes usage that has been prepared by BMS and determines what the charge should be. This is calculated using the rates and profiles defined in your rate cards and product rate cards.

Quarantine

There may be various reasons why usage cannot be identified, rated or billed. This usage is placed into 'Quarantine' so it can be managed.

Invoice Statuses

The following statuses apply to invoices.

Invoice Statuses

Data field	Description
PENDING	The invoice has been generated and ready for review and/or approval. Only one pending invoice can exist at any time for an account. Users must approve a pending invoice before the next one can be generated.
APPROVED	The invoice has been approved and sent to the customer.
APPROVED - DO NOT SEND	The invoice has been approved but has not been sent to the customer.
REJECTED	The invoice has a problem of some kind (usually related to accuracy) and cannot be sent out yet. Read more on rejected invoices.
RENDERING	The invoice PDF is currently been re-generated by the system. The invoice is not available for view or download while it is being re-rendered.
RERATING	Charges on the invoice are currently being recalculated by the rating engine. The invoice is not available for view or download while it is being rated.

Immediate Invoices

In addition to the invoices automatically created by the system for the regular bill run, immediate invoices can be created at any time. Immediate invoices are generated at any time outside the normal billing cycle. It is common to generate an immediate invoice for an outright purchase of a physical product. Users can add any pending cardlines to an immediate invoice if they choose.

Invoice Approval

Service providers have two options when it comes to invoice approval.

• Manual Approval - Invoices will be generated in a Pending status and will remain so until approved by a user. This is strongly recommended for any service provider who wants to review invoices before sending it to the customer.
• Automated Approval - Invoiced are generated and then approved by the system automatically. Recommended when service providers are confident that no adjustments need to be made against plans rate cards, etc and that invoices are generating with accurate charges.