Business Context

The Draft state in Conga Billing's usage rating workflow is the mechanism that provides a controlled environment. A usage input in Draft state has been entered into the system but has not yet been rated — it carries no Rated Amount and has no effect on the Billing Schedule Record (BSR) or Billing Header (BH) until it is explicitly rated. This allows billing analysts to manage large volumes of usage data with confidence, correcting errors and validating estimates before committing amounts to the billing lifecycle.

Requirement

A Billing Analyst needs to enter usage data for a customer's cloud infrastructure subscription, validate the expected rated amounts before committing to a final rating and then rate the validated usage inputs. The generated billing schedule must reflect accurate, validated usage amounts before invoice generation is triggered.

Scenario

A Billing Analyst needs to enter usage data for a customer's cloud infrastructure subscription, validate the expected rated amounts before committing to a final rating and then rate the validated usage inputs.

Enter the quantity through Usage Input: Create usage inputs to capture the usage data. For more information, see Creating Usage Inputs.

(Draft) Process the usage inputs: The draft usage rating enables you to see the forecasted billable amount for the submitted usage inputs before you actually rate them.

This helps you to

• Edit the quantity, add more inputs, etc., before you perform the actual rating.
• Use this amount as a source for your Revenue Forecast requirements.

Once you are comfortable with the draft computed data, you can process them to get the rated amount.

Rate the Usage Inputs: After reviewing the (Draft) Rated Amount, the Billing Analyst selects all three usage inputs and initiates the Rate action. The billing engine populates the Rated Amount field on each usage input record.

Initiate Billing and Invoicing: Once the billing analyst has reviewed and validated the usage input data, they initiate the billing process. The system generates billing schedules that accurately reflect the approved usage amounts. When invoicing is subsequently initiated, the invoicing engine uses these billing schedules to generate accurate invoices based on the validated usage data.