4.3 Invoice Review/Trial Billing Runs

Trial Billing Runs enable you to review the invoices generated by the billing system before they become
active. This is typically used so that any adjustments or cancellations may be performed before the outstanding invoice balances are posted to the customer account and emails are sent out to the customers.

Navigate to “System >> Billing Configuration” menu and select the “Trial Billing Runs with Approval” checkbox as shown below.

Fig. 1 – Enabling Trial Billing Runs on the Billing Configuration screen.

2. With this setting active, when the billing cycle runs, the following differences in behavior apply:

Invoices will be generated in “Draft” status
The amounts from the invoice will not be applied to the Customer’s account balance.
The Customer will not be able to see the Draft Invoices when logging in from the self-service portal.
The billing run will not be finalized and must be approved (or cancelled)

3. To review the status, go to the “Billing Cycles >> View Billing Cycles” menu and click on the “Run ID” that needs to be reviewed (the billing runs that need to be approved will be highlighted in pink). See Figure 2.

4. Click to review and approve/cancel the billing run

5. Click to view the invoices

Fig. 2 – Billing Cycles screen.

The easiest way to review the results of the billing run is to go to the “Reports” menu and run the various reports of interest (usually the Invoice report and the Accounting reports). You may also click on the hyperlink under the “Orders Processed” column to see the list of invoices generated during this billing run.

Once you have reviewed the charges, click on the “Run ID”, and then select from the 3 radio button choices seen in Fig 3.

Fig. 3 – Approve or Cancel the Billing Run.

The choices are self-explanatory:

1. Cancel all Invoices in the billing run – All invoices from this run that are in “Draft” invoice status will be changed to “Cancelled” status. They will remain in this Cancelled status regardless of future billing runs. Note that when an Invoice is cancelled, the Next Billable Date for each of the Charges in the Order is rolled back, so that the Order may be re-billed for the same period. E.g., if the Invoice generates Charges for January, then when the Invoice is cancelled, then the next billing run will generate Charges for January again.

2. Finalize this billing run and send emails (no payments) – This option will change the status of the invoice to “Outstanding” and the current charges amount on the invoice will be applied to the customer’s account balance. The customer will be notified via email. However, no payments will be processed, even if the customer has a payment method (credit card / ACH) on file.

3. Finalize billing run, send emails, process auto-payments – This option is similar to the one above except that payments are also processed.