Understand Invoicing Triggers and Requirements
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Understand the triggers that cause Salesforce Billing to evaluate an order for invoicing.
- Describe the basic requirements for invoicing an order product.
Introduction
The invoicing process begins when Salesforce Billing evaluates an order product for invoicing. If the order product is invoiceable, Salesforce Billing looks at a collection of order and order product fields to determine when and how to invoice it. Admins define each of these fields on the Product record. When a user orders a quote, the order products inherit the values in those billing fields from each of their parent products. Admins can also override these field values in certain circumstances.
Let’s start by reviewing the invoicing process to get some context for how your product billing fields affect invoicing.
Billing Triggers
Salesforce Billing evaluates orders for invoicing in response to one of two actions.
- A user or process selects Bill Now on the order.
- An invoice scheduler evaluates the order and its order products for invoicing. (The invoice scheduler is an automated process that evaluates orders based on a user-defined schedule. Users can set up invoice schedulers to run once or based on a recurring schedule.)
Most billing admins use invoice schedulers to automate the billing process. Bill Now is typically used for testing or for quickly invoicing small orders that fall outside the standard billing schedule for the customer.
Invoicing Requirements
When a billing process evaluates an order product for invoicing, it first evaluates the order product’s Billing Rule for an active Generate Invoice field. (You learn about the Billing Rule and other types of rules later in this module.)
Next, the billing process checks the order product against these requirements.
- The order product is activated.
- The order product’s Hold Billing field is No or null.
- The order product has a non-null billable unit price.
- The order product has a start date.
- The order product’s pending billing amount is greater than 0.
- The order product has a non-null next billing date.
- The order product’s Invoice Run Processing Status field is Pending Billing.
If the order product meets the initial invoicing requirements and the billing rule’s Generate Invoice Field has a value of Yes, Salesforce Billing evaluates the order product’s Next Billing Date. When a user, workflow, or invoice scheduler invoices an order, active order products with a next billing date on or before the invoice’s target date are included on the invoice.
Salesforce Billing uses several billing time fields to calculate the order product’s next billing date.
- The Billing Type field indicates whether the first invoice for an order product is created before or after the order product’s start date.
- The Billing Frequency field controls how often Salesforce Billing creates invoice records for recurring order products.
- The Charge Type field defines whether customers pay for your order product one time or several times (as a subscription or timed service.)
When you configure your product records for Salesforce Billing, define their billing time fields carefully. Ensure that Salesforce Billing invoices your order products based on the needs of your company and your product catalog. In the next unit, you learn how Salesforce Billing calculates an order product’s next billing date based on your time fields’ values.