Synchronization of Billing Cycles

The billing cycle is used for determining billing periods; it determines the end and the length of a billing period. In a distributed componenet landscape, you can distribute the billing cycles between SAP Convergent Charging, SAP Convergent Invoicing, and SAP Customer Relationship Management, keep them synchronized and therefore use them consistently.

You can use the billing cycle in the provider contract to determine the billing date. If a billing cycle is defined in the contract account, this is initially valid for billing as well as for invoicing. However, for billing, you can define a different billing cycle in the provider contract. As a result, you can execute billing in a different cycle than invoicing.

Rerating and Reversal of Billable Items

You can:

During rerating or reversal, SAP Convergent Invoicing updates the status of billable items that have already been processed. Reversal is possible for all statuses of billable items. The system excludes items that have not yet been billed. However, items that have already been billed remain as they are. To compensate for this, the system generates billable offsetting items with a reversed plus/minus sign.

For more information, see Reversal of Billable Items.

General Improvements for Configuration and Data Processing

New Master Data Objects: Provider Contract and Product

In Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable, the master data objects Provider Contract and Product are available in an integrated scenario with SAP Convergent Invoicing and SAP Customer Relationship Management. The CRM system is the leading system for product and contract. This means that you create and change provider contracts and products in the CRM system and replicate them afterwards in the connected systems. In Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable and in SAP Convergent Charging, you can only access provider contract data and product data that you need for mapping the business processes in these components.

Processing Prepaid Consumption and Refills

You can bill the consumption of prepaid services in SAP Convergent Invoicing and post it in Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable. SAP Customer Relationship Management and SAP Convergent Charging are fully integrated in the process. You can do the following:

For more information, see Prepaid Processing.

Archiving

You can archive billing and invoicing documents in parallel using a mass activity (see Archiving of Billing Documents and Archiving in Invoicing in Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable). You can also archive billed items. The archiving of billed items is also available as a mass run.

Distribution of Master Data

Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable automatically distributes and synchronizes the master data with SAP Convergent Invoicing. SAP Convergent Charging handles the Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable master data as follows:

If you use SAP Customer Relationship Management, enter the master data there and then distribute it to Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable in the ERP system. Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable then makes sure that the master data is sent successfully to SAP Convergent Charging.

Demand Side Management (DSM) Items

In SAP Customer Relationship Management (SAP CRM), you can define billing request items (BRIs) and send them to FI-CA Billing as billable items with the DSM-specific information required for billing. The item category from SAP CRM allocated to the BRIs is mapped to a billing process and a billing subprocess in FI-CA. With the billing process and the subprocess you can select the billable items when you create a billing document. As the item category of the BRIs is dependent on different settings in the program, you can use the billing subprocesses in FI-CA to control the selection of billable items that are indirectly based on the program type, program profile, and transaction type. You can then continue processing in Invoicing in Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable.