Billing the Usage Legacy Assets

The usage-based billing is a billing model where the system bills the customers for how much of a service they use.

Prerequisites

• The custom setting Creation of legacy BS record is set to Single Record.

• The object and fields required to support legacy billing for legacy asset line items (ALI) are configured. For more information, see Understanding Billing Schedules and Billing System Properties.
• The following minimum criteria are met: 
  • The Is Legacy for Billing checkbox is set to True.
  • The Price Type is set to Usage.
  • The remaining billable amount is USD 0.00.
  • The First Billing Date is "not blank" and is greater than the ALI start date.

• For the usage-based billing of the legacy assets, the usage quantity is not pre-determined, rather it is derived from the Usage Inputs.
• In simpler words, you can say that Billing supports only the postpaid type of usage-based consumption.
• The usage rating determines the billable amount and the system ignores any TCV which is populated for the asset line item. 
• The remaining billable amount is always $0.00.

Concept to bill usage-based legacy asset

The Start Date and First Billing Date are of much importance when it comes to the billing of legacy assets. You are not allowed to create and rate a "Usage Input" within the period of the asset start date and the first billing date, typically known as the legacy period. Since Billing supports only postpaid type of usage consumption, the Remaining Billable Amount is always $0.00. Other features for usage-based billing for legacy assets are on the same lines as usage-based billing for normal assets. For more insights, refer to Understanding Usage-based Billing.

To bill a usage-based legacy asset

To bill a usage-based legacy asset follow the procedure:

1. Define an asset as per the guidelines given for "Usage" products by CPQ. For more information, see Creating Price List Items.

2. Perform the CPQ flow to generate Asset Line Item, Order, and Order Line Item.

   

   Make sure to disable all the functionalities associated with the auto-activation of the Order in your org. This ensures that the Order is not auto-activated once you accept the Proposal.

3. Make sure that the following data points are populated in the asset line item record:
   
   • Remaining Billable Amount = 0
   • Is Legacy for Billing?
   • First Billing Date.
4. Activate the order manually. If the Initiate Billing on Order Activation custom setting is set to True, you must initiate billing by populating the Ready for Billing Date field on the corresponding order line item or order.
5. Billing creates the billing schedules, even if the Remaining Billable Amount is $0.00. The first billing schedule is for the legacy period,  with the Type field set to "Informational" and the Status field set to "Invoiced". On subsequent normal billing schedules, the Type field is set to "Contracted" and the Status field to "Pending Billing".
6. Create a new Usage Input for the asset you want to process. For more information on how to create a new Usage Input, see Usage Input.
7. Process the Usage Inputs for a particular period and Billing will reflect it in the corresponding billing schedule and Asset Usage Price Tiers get created for each processing. For more information on how to process usage inputs, see Usage Input.
   After processing the usage input, and invoicing the billing schedules, the remaining billable amount stays at $0.00.

Example

Suppose you are a billing administrator of a company selling computer hardware 'Internet Plans’ and you have already invoiced the customer. The details are summarized in the following table:

Billing will generate the billing schedules as follows:

You processed the Usage Input for a date say 11/20/2022, 11/21/2022, and 11/25/2022 which is in the range for period start date 11/20/2022 and period end date 12/19/2022, for a fee amount of $400, Billing will update the respective billing schedule accordingly, here it is BS-002.

After processing the billing schedules for usage-based assets, the remaining billable amount remains at $0.00.

Usage Schedules are automatically generated to record the quantity consumed for each Billing Schedule.