New Features

The following features are new to Conga Billing in this release.

Supporting billing of legacy assets

Conga Billing now supports the billing of legacy assets in Conga. A legacy asset is defined as follows: 

  • The asset line items that are created by the Conga CPQ and Conga CLM products are not getting billed using Conga Billing.
  • The asset line items that are created outside Conga are being migrated into Conga to get billed by Conga Billing.

All types of billing (Recurring, Custom, Usage-Based, One-Time, and Evergreen Billing) are in scope to support the billing of legacy assets in Conga.

In summary, an Asset Line Item must have the following fields populated:

  • The Is Legacy for Billing checkbox is set to TRUE.
  • The Remaining Billable Amount field is populated with the value "How much of the Asset Line’s TCV is left to be billed in Conga?"
  • The First Billing Date is populated with "The day from when you want this Asset Line to be billed in Conga."

Once populated, the Asset Line Item must be initiated for billing by populating the “Ready for Billing Date” on its Order or Order Line Item.

On the Billing System Properties, a new field called “Creation of legacy BS records” has been created. The correct value for this new field is “Single Record.” No other values are supported at present.

Billing the legacy assets in Conga supports the following functionalities:

Supporting the recurring billing of the legacy assets

Conga billing now supports the recurring billing of legacy assets that have been defined as “Recurring” on its Price List Item (PLI). 

Once the required data is populated and the Asset Line is initiated for billing, Conga Billing creates a waterfall of the billing schedules for the remaining contract term (from the Asset Line’s First Billing Date to the End Date) and the “Remaining Billable Amount.”

Top-level highlights of this functionality
  • The first record is an “Informational” billing schedule and contains the ‘Fee Amount’ equal to what has been billed already. Therefore, the schedule is marked as “Invoiced” by Conga Billing.
  • Before generating the actual schedules for invoicing purposes, Conga Billing checks if the Asset Line has been billed consistently or not in the legacy system. If the engine determines that it has been consistent, it creates the actual invoiceable recurring schedules for the remainder term.

  • If the engine determines the legacy Asset Line is not billed consistently, the engine creates an invoiceable schedule with an amount in such a way that the sum of the first schedule and this new schedule will equal to what must have been actually billed as on date. With this schedule, the Asset Line will now be enabled to get billed consistently and will have a Fee Amount in alignment with the Asset Line’s “Net Unit Price.”

    The second schedule can be a credit/debit depending upon whether the Asset Line has overbilled/underbilled in the legacy engine. This schedule must exist and be marked as Invoiced depending on where you want to perform this one-time adjustment to align the legacy Asset Line as per its definition and its Net Unit Price.

  • Once done, the subsequent billing schedules are created as per the “recurring” logic that is known today. These schedules have a Type value of “Contracted” and their Status is “Pending Billing”.

Supporting amendment of recurring legacy assets

Once the legacy asset lines are created in Conga and are billed by Conga Billing, they can be subjected to future amendments. Conga Billing adjusts the billing schedules (similar to how it does today for the regular asset lines) but the caveat is that the amendments must be performed on or after the “First Billing Date.”

Top-level highlights of this functionality
  • Billing supports the amendment operations on the legacy asset lines. Similar to the regular asset lines, the uninvoiced billing schedules are superseded and new schedules are created post a “Change” operation.
  • As a part of the "Change" process, you must populate the new start with a date on or after the “First Billing Date”.
  • Use only the "Change" option on the CPQ Cart or explicitly call the API to perform an amendment. The Change:Quantity and Change:Configuration functionalities are not supported for the amendment of recurring legacy assets. If you attempt to perform any of these functions, they tend to cancel the ongoing amendment process and create a new asset line item. This new asset line item is not treated as a legacy asset by the system and hence it goes out of the scope of this functionality.
  • Considering the restriction with respect to the “First Billing Date,” you should never change the populated “First Billing Date” manually or through database updates for subsequent operations, else it’ll have serious data corruption and will impact the billing data integrity.

Renewing the Legacy Assets

Legacy assets can be renewed on the same lines as regular assets. Renewal action can be extended to all the legacy assets except the One-Time legacy assets. The "Renew" button on the ABO cart or the renewal automation framework should be used to renew legacy assets.

Top-level highlights of this functionality
  • After the renewal of the asset, the Remaining Billable Amount reflects the renewal amount as a balance.
  • An amendment operation to extend the dates is not considered a renewal for this functionality. You must use the CPQ operation “Renew” for the same.
  • In alignment with the best practices of CPQ, the “One Time” asset lines are not meant for the renewals so Conga Billing doesn’t support the renewing of the “One Time” legacy asset billing.

Billing the Evergreen Legacy Assets

The Billing engine now supports the billing of Evergreen Legacy Assets. Evergreen is a concept where the subscriptions do not end automatically. Like normal evergreen assets, the subscriptions for legacy evergreen assets are also ongoing unless they are explicitly canceled.

Supporting the Credit and Rebill Operation for Legacy Assets

Conga Billing now supports the Credit and rebill functionality where you can credit the entire amount or a part of it as contained in the Billing Schedules to the customer and again bill them for the same amount. 

Supporting Full Term Cancellation of Legacy Assets

Full-term cancellation is a scenario where you cancel the asset on the Original Start Date and Conga Billing refunds you the entire amount for which you are invoiced. For this functionality, Conga Billing uses the AND logical operator to validate two scenarios “if it is a cancellation & if the end date is equal to the original start date”. If both the validation scenarios are true, then it proceeds with cancellation, else it displays an error message on the asset line record page. Once terminated, Conga Billing updates the Remaining Billable Amount to $0.00 on the asset line item since there is nothing to be billed in the future.

Top-level highlights of this functionality
  • You must use the “Terminate” operation to fully cancel the legacy asset lines. If you use the “Change” operation and modify the “End Date,”  it is not considered a cancellation but an amendment operation.
  • On the "Confirm Termination” prompt, you must enter the ‘Termination Date’ equal to “Original Start Date” or “Original Start Date-1” depending upon whether the CPQ setting “Same Day Cancellation” is enabled or not.
  • Once validated, the billing metrics API returns the refund amount on the CPQ cart. Upon further processing, Conga Billing creates a full refund of the asset line.

Supporting Partial Cancellation of Legacy Assets

Conga Billing supports the partial cancellation of a legacy asset line with one caveat. Similar to the ‘amendments,’ the termination date must be on or after the “First Billing Date". Once terminated, Conga Billing updates the Remaining Billable Amount to $0.00 on the asset line item since there is nothing to be billed in the future.

Billing the Usage-Based Legacy Assets

Billing now supports the billing and amendment of usage-based legacy assets.

Amendment of the Usage-Based Legacy Assets

it is possible that usage-based products can be subjected to the amendment operations such as “Change” or “Cancel” in Conga. The same caveats mentioned for the amendment/cancellation operation for recuring asset lines will apply to the usage asset lines.

Billing of One-Time Legacy Assets

For the legacy “One Time” asset lines (ALI), Conga assumes only two possibilities. The ALI must have been invoiced in the legacy engine hence nothing to bill it in Conga again, or it has not been billed in the legacy system hence Conga bills it for its full amount now.

Top-level highlights of this functionality
  • The asset is either invoiced for the full amount in the legacy system or not billed at all.
  • Partial billing is not supported for One-Time products.

Amendment of One-Time Legacy Assets

It is possible that “One Time” products can be subjected to the amendment operations such as “Change” or “Cancel” in Conga.

Supporting billing of legacy assets associated with a billing plan

Conga Billing supports the billing of a legacy asset line when it is accompanied by a billing plan at the time of initiating billing.

Top-level highlights of this functionality
  • Conga Billing recommends you create the billing plan with a start date greater than or equal to the “First Billing Date” in Conga for the initial create and amendment scenarios.
  • Conga Billing cannot restrict you from creating the plan with a starting date before the “First Billing Date” but doesn’t recommend it or support future billing issues arising from such situations.
  • If you are already using Conga CPQ and the ALI is already created then it is not possible to create a new billing plan however, you might add a billing plan to that ALI in a custom fashion.

  • If the legacy asset is migrating to Conga for the first time, then you can define a billing plan of your own.

    In alignment with the regular functionality, the “Billing Plan” can’t be used for “Usage” products so the same must be kept in mind for the legacy asset lines as well.

Supporting the forecast billing for legacy assets

Conga billing provides support for forecast billing of legacy assets for different types of billing. Using forecast billing schedules, you know how much and when your customer will be invoiced for the purchase. Conga Billing supports the forecasting of legacy assets from their “First Billing Date” to the “End Date.” Conga can’t create a forecast for the period before its “First Billing Date.” To use the forecasting, one must use the CPQ functionality “Forecast Billing.”

Supporting implementation of batch job to calculate and update the remaining billable amount

Conga Billing now supports the implementation of the batch job to calculate and update the new field "Remaining Billable Amount" introduced by the June'23 managed package on the asset line record. For the legacy asset lines, you must populate this field. For non-legacy assets in active status, the batch job calculates the total fee amount from the billing schedules with a “Pending Billing” status and auto-updates this field based on the invoicing activity. The new field should not be null for any asset, else the administrator has to run the batch job manually for such asset lines.

Enhancements

The following section describes the existing features that are changed (or are no longer supported) in this release.

New proration method to bill round-offs

Conga Billing now supports a new proration method to bill round-offs. It supports an ability to advance the billing of decimals in the first billing schedule as opposed to the last billing schedule.

Current behavior

The current behavior of Billing is to round off the balances to the last billing schedule. For example, for billing an asset line of TCV $100.00 over three billing periods, Conga Billing generates three schedules with fee amounts of $33.33, $33.33, and $33.34 respectively. Note that the last schedule has an amount of $33.34 to account for the decimals.

New behavior

For the same example above, Conga Billing can now generate three schedules with fee amounts of $33.34, $33.33, and $33.33 respectively. Note that the amount containing $33.34 is billed in the very first schedule.

Key criteria to use the new functionality

  • Upgrading to the current release.
  • You must enable the managed package field setting "Bill Prorated Balance In First Schedule" in your org.
  • There is no billing plan associated with the asset line item.
  • The asset for which you want to enable this functionality is a new asset.

Advanced wallet drawdowns

Conga Billing now supports advanced wallet drawdown, in which the wallet drawdown does not reserve a wallet balance ahead of time, but deducts the invoiced amount from available funds when the linked asset line item is invoiced.

Current behavior

The current behavior of a wallet drawdown is to reserve the wallet balance in advance for the linked asset's upcoming billing schedules. This implies that the wallet balance is updated as soon as the billing schedules are created or the status of the billing schedules gets updated for the asset line item. In the current behavior, when a real asset line is linked to a wallet and is initiated for billing, the wallet’s balance is withdrawn to account for the real asset line’s TCV. In other words, the amount from the wallet is blocked and can’t be used for other real asset lines.

New behavior

In the new method, the wallet drawdown does not reserve the wallet balance ahead of time. Only when the real asset line is subjected to an invoicing event, if the asset line has a wallet linked to it, and if the wallet has a balance, only then the wallet balance is withdrawn to pay off the invoice balance fully or partially (subjected to the funds available in the wallet).

Key criteria to use the new functionality

  • Upgrading to the current release.
  • Enabling the setting "Consume Wallet During Invoicing?" in your org.
  • The asset line item that needs to be invoiced must be associated with a wallet asset line item.
  • The wallet must be “Active”, and its “Available Balance” must be greater than $0.00.

Invoice run metrics preview

Conga Billing provides a Summary button to preview matrices on the UI before submitting an invoice run.

After you have populated the required fields on the Invoice Run screen, use the “Summary” button to preview the metrics before you submit the actual run. This will help you to validate if your run has picked the ‘count’ of the invoices it is going to generate post the actual run. If you detect a discrepancy with the expected count versus the summary count, you can go back to the Invoice Run screen to recheck the entered fields (especially in the Filter Criteria) and repeat the process. Only when you think that the summary count is equal to (or closer to) your expected count, you can submit for the actual “Run.”

For the “Summary,” you can see the below metrics on the UI:

  • The total accounts selected.

  • The total number of orders selected.
  • The total number of billing schedules selected.
  • The total number of invoices to be generated.
  • The total number of credit memos to be generated.

Approve button disabled during invoice approval

This is a case where one can click on the “Approve” button the second time while an invoice record is in the process of getting approved. The second click can cause unintended issues with the invoice record. To prevent the same, some adjustments have been made.

Current behavior

If you click Approve twice, the system toggles the status from Pending Approved to Approved and then reverses the status to Pending Approved. As a result, the Invoice header remains in Pending Approved status, but the Invoice line items get approved.

Again, if you try to Approve the Invoice then it will not get approved because the line item is already in the Approved status.

New behavior

In the new behavior, upon clicking "Approve", the button is greyed out, representing that the approval process is in progress. Hence the system doesn’t allow you to click Approve multiple times thereby solving the problem of status reversal.