Defining Billing Cycles and Calendars

Overview

Administrators are able to define and configure agency wide billing cycles and billing calendars. This article contains information on how to effectively define and use Billing Cycles.

Billing Cycle

The billing cycle defines at what interval the agency will be generating an invoice to be sent to their customers. The billing cycle by itself is a text identifier, such as Monthly, Semi-Monthly, etc., that can be assigned to the billable charge and bill master records to help identify at what interval charges are invoiced.

  • It does not drive any automated system behavior at this time.

Examples of billing cycles are:

  • Monthly
  • Monthly - Calendar Starts on 1st
  • Monthly - Calendar Starts on 16th
  • Semi-Monthly
  • Bi-Weekly
  • Weekly
  • 4-4-5
  • 4-5-4

Billing Calendar

The billing calendar is used solely in conjunction with the billing cycle, and cannot be used by itself. Billing calendars provide further refinement in the ability to invoice customers and allows billing users to identify the exact transactions to be billed, based on when the transaction occurred in relationship to the billing calendar.

Here is a sample billing calendar that is tied to "Monthly - Calendar Starts on 1st":

  • 10/01/2020 - 10/31/2020
  • 11/01/2020 - 11/30/2020
  • 12/01/2020 - 12/31/2020
  • 01/01/2021 - 01/31/2021
  • 02/01/2021 - 02/28/2021
  • and so on

The default Pay Bill Cycles that use calendars that come preloaded in the system include:

  • Semi-Monthly
  • Monthly - Calendar Starts on 1st
  • Monthly - Calendar Starts on 16th

The rest pay bill cycles do not use Billing Calendars.

Example of a Billing Cycle Using a Calendar

Use Case: ACME Agency has a customer Bob's Inc that expects to receive invoices beginning of the month, for any time contractors worked the prior month starting exactly from the 1st of the month and ending the last day of the month.

  • In this case, ACME Agency will be using a "Monthly - Calendar Starts on 1st" pay bill cycle that is tied to a monthly calendar. If the customer is receiving an invoice for the month of November, that invoice will only include time records for days worked in November, even if a timesheet (such as for the last week of November) spans over two separate months (end of November, beginning of December).

Example of a Billing Cycle not Using a Calendar

Use Case 1: ACME Agency has a customer Corey's Inc that expects to receive invoices once per month on Wednesdays and receive all ready and approved timesheets since the last time they got an invoice for the previous month, regardless of when the time on these timesheets was worked.

  • In this case, ACME Agency will be using a "Monthly" pay bill cycle that is not tied to a calendar.

Use Case 2: ACME Agency has a customer Dora's Inc that expects to receive invoices on a weekly basis for the prior week.

  • In this instance, ACME Agency will be using a "Weekly" pay bill cycle that is not tied to a calendar. Since timesheets are also entered on a weekly basis and that coincides with how the customer expects to be billed for worked time, there is no need for a calendar to be assigned.

Additional Information

Billing Cycles, and by association Billing Calendars, will be assigned to an Invoice Terms records. This will allow the system to assign further down stream the Billing Cycle and Billing Calendar to each Billable Change and Bill Master.