Billing Evergreen Products

Evergreen subscriptions do not end automatically. Unlike normal products or services, subscriptions for evergreen products or services are persistent unless explicitly canceled. 

Depending on the origin of the order creation either from CPQ  or an external system, an evergreen product is defined as:

Evergreen orders can originate from various sources, like Conga CPQ, CLM, or eternal systems. Apart from this, the existing CPQ customers can create evergreen ALIs. Irrespective of their origin, evergreen OLIs or ALIs are billed more or less in the same way. Conga Billing provides you the flexibility to select the pricing source as OLI or ALI. Based on the pricing source chosen in the Billing Settings, the pricing information can be fetched either from the OLI or ALI. If the pricing source is ALI, during the creation of the BH, Billing fetches the pricing information from the ALI and the remaining data from the OLI. For more details, see Managing Pricing Source.

For more on how Billing works on the Conga Platform, see  Understanding the Billing Architecture on Conga Platform.

Evergreen-Billed Order and Asset Lines

If an OLI has a set of fields populated with the following values:

• PriceType is Recurring
• AutoRenewal Type setup is Evergreen
• AutoRenewalTerm is either a user-entered value or a derived term but can not be null.

When billing is initiated by calling the Initiate Billing API, the Price Type field on the billing header (BH) for this product is updated to Evergreen. The billing header of an evergreen product is activated like normal products and it fetches the details like start date, end date, quantity, current unbilled amount, net unit price, etc. from the OLI. 

If any of the fields AutoRenewal Type or AutoRenewalTerm does not have a valid value or the value is missing, then the Price Type field on the billing header is marked as "Recurring".

Based on the pricing source chosen in the Billing Settings, the pricing information is fetched from the Order Line Item (OLI) or Asset Line Item (ALI). When the pricing source is set to OLI, Billing fetches all the information, including the pricing information from the OLI. If the pricing source is set to ALI, Billing fetches the pricing information from the ALI. For more details on pricing sources, see Managing Pricing Source.

Suppose the order line item for a standalone product has the following details:

When Billing is initiated, the resulting Billing Header will contain the Price Type as Evergreen instead of Recurring. The billing header shows:

Auto-Renewal

As the BSRs are marked as Invoiced (using the API or using the other out-of-the-box methods), additional BSRs are auto-created based on the setting value defined in Billing Settings. The setting Evergreen Billing Schedule Records Creation Option cannot be kept null simultaneously at the Billing Settings and Billing Preference level. The following table captures the business purpose of each setting value.

If you have entered the value for Evergreen Billing Schedule Records Creation Option both at the Billing Settings and Billing Preference level, then precedence is given to the value provided at the Billing Settings level.

From the above example, when billing is initiated, two BSRs are generated in pending billing status. (BSD is not shown here to keep the example simple. It is assumed that the BSD is approved and the fee amount is rolled up to the BSR.)

You called the Update Invoice API to change the status of BSR-1. The status of BSR-1 is changed to "Invoiced".

The setting is set to Ahead of Time: You want to generate renewed BSRs ahead of time, therefore at the Billing Settings or Billing Preference level, you have selected "Ahead of Time" for the setting Evergreen Billing Schedule Records Creation Option. When the Evergreen Billing API is invoked, it creates one more BSR. This happens because the setting value is Ahead of Time, so the API creates additional BSR(s) as soon as the existing BSR(s) are marked as Invoiced. The creation of the number of additional BSRs is determined based on the field Auto Renewal Term with respect to the number of existing BSRs that are in Pending status. 

In this example, the Auto-Renewal Term is 02 (refer to the Billing Header) whereas the number of Pending BSRs dropped to 01 so the engine creates the additional BSR so that the count of the Pending BSRs matches with 02 (i.e., Auto-Renewal Term).

The date and amount fields on the BH are updated as:

The setting is set to Only When Needed: If you want to create BSRs when you need them, you must select "Only When Needed" at the Billing Settings or Billing Preference level, for the setting Evergreen Billing Schedule Records Creation Option. When the Evergreen Billing API is invoked, it creates BSRs according to the Auto-Renewal Term populated on the OLI.

Considering the above example, say you have invoiced both the BSRs and then invoked the Evergreen API, it creates two more BSRs. This happens because the setting value is Only When Needed, so the API creates additional BSR(s) only when all the existing BSR(s) are marked as Invoiced. The creation of the number of additional BSRs is determined based on the field Auto Renewal Term.

In this example, the Auto-Renewal Term is 02 (refer to the Billing Header) so the engine creates two more BSRs when the evergreen API is invoked after all the BSRs are invoiced. 

If you set the setting to Only When Needed at the Billing settings level and invoke the evergreen API when there are one or more BSRs in Pending Billing status, the API won't execute the request and throws an error message.

After the new BSRs are created, the TCV field on the BH is updated to reflect the fee amount along with the TCV from previous sales. For more information, see Updating the Fields on Billing Header for Evergreen Products.

Updating the Total Contract Value Field

The Total Contract Value (TCV) (Sales) field on the Billing Header (BH) stores the contract value of an asset from the new sale. For evergreen Order Line Items (OLI), this field is dynamic and keeps updating as new BSRs are added as part of the renewal process. The number of new BSRs created depends on the value populated in the Renewal Term field. The BSRs contain the fee amount rolled up from the respective BSDs. Therefore, the TCV (Sales) is updated to reflect the total amount from the new sale plus the sum of the amounts of the newly created BSRs.

Consider the following example:

An Evergreen service is billed for USD 1,200.00 every quarter. The TCV (Sales) field on the BH has a value of USD 1,200.00. Billing is initiated, and four BSRs (BSR-1, BSR-2, BSR-3, and BSR-4) are created with a fee amount of USD 300.00 and invoiced. 

The auto-renewal term is set to 2, hence two new BSRs are created because of auto-renewal functionality.

Now the value in the TCV (Sales) field is revised to reflect the fee amount of the newly created BSRs (updated in the Billable Amount For The Current Order Line field on the BH) along with the previous sale TCV (Sales). 

Hence the new TCV (Sales) = USD 1,800.00 (USD 1,200.00 + USD 600.00).