Use Rules to Configure Order Products

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

• Explain how rules relate to products.
• Determine which rule setups meet the billing and invoicing needs of your products.

Most Salesforce Billing users have large product catalogs with many different billing requirements. Some products can require splitting invoice lines for order products that bill before their order start date. Others can be taxable, tax exempt, or have separate tax engines from the rest of the product catalog. Certain products can require revenue schedules that account for 60% of the product’s revenue.

Defining these settings on every individual product in your catalog is inefficient, so to make things easier, we’ve provided three rules. A rule is a Salesforce Billing object that defines what happens before and during product invoicing. You associate rules with your products, and when a sales rep orders a quote, Salesforce Billing passes the rules to the resulting order products.

Let’s take a quick look at these rules.

Billing Rule Defines whether and how Salesforce Billing produces an invoice line during an invoicing process. Tax Rule Defines whether and how Salesforce Billing applies tax to an invoice line. Revenue Recognition Rule Defines whether Salesforce Billing creates a revenue schedule for an invoice line.

You can assign one rule to many products. For example, suppose that your company sells mobile phones, tablets, and laptops. The mobile phones and tablets are invoiceable and taxable, and they require revenue schedules.

Later, you add laptops to your product catalog. Your laptops are invoiceable, but not taxable, and they require revenue schedules. Assign the laptops the same billing rule and revenue recognition rule as your other products. Then create a tax rule that doesn’t calculate tax and apply it to the laptops.

Next, let’s take a closer look at the fields on each of our rules.

Generate Invoice

• Yes: When Salesforce Billing creates an invoice, it creates an invoice line for this order product.
• No: When Salesforce Billing creates an invoice, it doesn’t create an invoice line for this order product.

Partial Period Treatment Define how Salesforce Billing creates invoice lines for recurring order products that begin invoicing on a different day of the month than their start date.

• Separate: Salesforce Billing creates two invoice lines on your invoice. The first line covers the period between the billing start date and the order start date. The second line covers the entire next billing period.
• Combine: Salesforce Billing creates a single invoice line that covers the partial billing period and the first full billing period. All subsequent invoice lines follow a monthly billing period.

Taxable (Yes/No) When this field value is Yes, Salesforce Billing calculates an estimated tax on the order product, and tax for all invoice lines created from the order product.

Create Revenue Schedule? If you want Salesforce Billing to create a revenue schedule for your invoice line, set your revenue recognition rule’s Create Revenue Schedule? field to Yes.

All rules have child objects called treatments, which customize how Salesforce Billing handles the invoicing process for an order product. Each treatment is linked to a legal entity, which is a Salesforce Billing object representing the way a structure or company is organized. For example, a company can create two legal entities: one to represent its American branch and one to represent its European branch.

Each order product can also link to a legal entity. First, Salesforce Billing applies a rule to the order product or order products that the rule covers. Then, for each treatment with a specific legal entity, Salesforce Billing applies the treatment to order products that have the same specific legal entity as the treatment. A rule can have any number of treatments. If several of a rule’s treatments have the same legal entity as the order product, Salesforce Billing uses the newest treatment.

There are three types of treatments. Each treatment is linked to a GL rule, which Salesforce Billing uses to record transactions in an external general ledger system. GL rules aren’t covered in this module.

Billing Treatments Associate an order product’s invoice lines and revenue transactions with finance books. You can also link to invoice plans that define custom billing schedules for order products. Tax Treatments Define whether Salesforce Billing uses its own tax engine or an external tax engine to calculate tax on invoice lines. Revenue Recognition Treatments Define how Salesforce Billing allocates revenue from an order product or invoice line to a revenue schedule.

Rules are an easy way to quickly configure groups of order products for invoicing. They help you control whether an order product is invoiced, how it’s taxed, and how revenue schedules are made from the order product or its resulting invoice line.

Every billing implementation has unique demands based on the organization’s product catalog and invoicing needs. Meet these demands by customizing how and when Salesforce Billing invoices your products.

• Defining Rules and Treatments
• Defining Your Invoicing Setup with Billing Rules
• Tax Rules and Treatments
• Configuring Your Revenue Recognition Rules