Before going through a bill run for recurring charges, you need to perform billing checks on the charges that you want to include; to make sure that they will be correctly invoiced. This guide will take you through the steps you need to take in order to invoice recurring charges using bill runs.
You might choose to use bill runs when you want to create invoices for recurring charges; which are fixed licence fees for rent and contract services that you invoice in advance. The advantage of using the bill run wizard is that you can automatically generate invoices for multiple customers in one go.
Performing Billing Checks For Recurring Charges
The billing check process helps you ensure the accuracy of the charges that the bill run wizard will pick up. Here are the elements you need to check before doing a bill run for recurring charges:
First, run the Pre Bill Run Report; which is available under Reports > Billing Reports. You can choose to run the report by Organization, Client Type, Location or Account.Choose a date up to which you want to bill, then select the desired Accounts, Product Groups, Products or Floors.
If you see any incorrect charges (e.g.: additional, missing or with incorrect information), go to Licences and edit the Licence, then run the report again. Proceed to the bill run only when you are sure that what you see on this report.
Next, check your Draft Invoices - There should not be any draft invoice on recurring charges for the particular customer(s) you’re billing.
Performing a Bill Run For Recurring Charges
Go to: Invoices > Bill Run. click Start a Bill Run and select your Location.
Deselect the two ad-hoc charges and make sure that both recurring charges are checked. Click Next to continue.
Choose the contract services to bill - Select a Date Range by adding the date that you select here represents the last date of the current billing period. This means that your billing period extends from the last bill run to the selected date. Below the Date Range, choose the contract services that you want to bill. Click Next to proceed.
On the next screen, go through the same steps to select rent fees to bill.
Complete the Bill Run - You can choose whether to run the Bill Run in the background and be notified when it has completed, or wait on screen while it runs. By default it will run in the background. Deselect the check box if you would prefer to stay on the page while it runs. Please read the on-screen warnings to make sure that nothing unintended occurs. Click the Finish button when you are ready.
If you choose to let the Bill Run take place in the background, you will receive an email and be notified on screen when it has completed, along with a link to view your Draft Invoices.
If you do not choose to run the process in the background, you will be asked whether you want to display draft invoices after transfer. This will take you to the invoice preview screen right after the bill run completes, without sending you any notification.
Once you start the Bill Run process, Operate will show the screen below. You do not need to stay on the page - you can navigate away from it and perform other tasks within any area of Operate, including another bill run. The system will not slow down while processing. You will be notified by email and on-screen when it is done.
You will then see a list and preview of all of your invoices. You can select each invoice and make sure that they are correct and are numbered consecutively, taking into account the prefixes that you have configured.
If you are happy with how it all looks, set a Due Date and Invoice Date, then click Approve All to approve your invoices.
Once approved, your invoices are ready to be sent to your customers. If you have a few invoices and want to send them manually, you can select each one and use the Print or Email buttons to either open a print window or an email editor respectively.
If you have a large amount of invoices, you can use the Automatic Invoice Production button, which will either print or email invoices, according to the preference set on each customer's account. If the invoice will be emailed, your customer will receive an email (read more on how to configure this email). If the invoice will be printed, you will see separate browser tabs which will allow you to print the invoice for each customer who prefers so.
Click Close when you have finished your bill run process.
All approved invoices will now be available under Invoicing > Invoices.
If for any reason you need to go through the Bill Run again, it will not duplicate the draft invoices that have already been generated.