Collective Billing

During collective billing, the system groups as many billable transaction items as possible into each billing document. Each billing document can, therefore, contain items from different business transactions.

Features

Grouping of Items in Billing Documents

Items can be grouped into a single document if they have the same values for billing document header data. The following are examples of split criteria:

Billing type
Billing date
Payer
Billing unit
Terms of payment
Incoterms
Letter of credit

If the system finds a different value for at least one split criteria, billing due list items cannot be transferred to a single billing document.

Example Example

The system cannot create a billing document for two items with the same sold-to party but different payers, as every billing document is created for exactly one payer

End of the example.

Definition of Split Criteria

You can modify the default split criteria as follows:

By defining which data is copied from a billing due list item to the header and items of a billing document
You define this in Customizing for Customer Relationship Management under Billing Define Copy Requirements and Billing System Enhancements Business Add-Ins Copying Requirements .
By modifying the metadata for the billing application
By adding header fields to the structure of the billing document, you automatically add split criteria.

You modify metadata in Customizing for Customer Relationship Management under Billing System Enhancements Access Billing Engine Navigator .

Split Analysis

If you were expecting a combination of items in one billing document instead of the creation of separate documents, you can display the reasons for the document split in the WebClient UI, on the Billing Documents page.

Activities

When collective billing is triggered, the system carries out the following steps to create billing documents:

Groups billing due list items according to payer and default billing document type, for each processing package
Transfers billing due list items into billing document items and completes the relevant master data (item partner, item text and item price) by calling up the relevant services
Groups all items that belong to a billing document, taking into account the split criteria
Creates the billing document header and items, supplementing master data and other information (for example, header partner, item text, and item price) by calling up the relevant services
Updates the billing document in the database and triggers output

You can see the results of collective billing in the WebClient UI as follows:

On the Collective Run Logs page
On the Billing Documents page, by entering the collective run number as a search criterion