Billing Evergreen Products

Evergreen subscriptions do not end automatically. Unlike normal order line items (OLI), subscriptions for evergreen OLI are persistent unless explicitly canceled. 

To know how Billing works on the Conga Platform, it is recommended to familiarize yourself with its architecture mentioned in Understanding the Billing Architecture on Conga Platform.

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

Evergreen-Billed Order 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".

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.