Importing, Managing, and Storing Billable Items

You can import, manage, and perform billing for billable items from different external systems. You define classes of billable items according to your business requirements for import and data storage of billable items. Classes of billable items determine the technical attributes of a billable item, such as the tables for data storage and the function modules that receive the items from the external system and store them in Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable. You use a generation tool to create the interfaces and define the required database tables for data transfer. You can select preconfigured interface components and add installation-specific fields. The interface components map business processes from a billing perspective and define which business transactions are supported by a class of billable items (for example, clearing of down payments).

You can transfer and store billable items from an external system as raw data or as billable data.

You can simulate billing of billable items. You can store billed items and those for which billing has been simulated separately on the database. You can define data storage for a specific period, which means that you can delete items in tables that are no longer required after a specified retention period.

You can monitor billable items according to their status, change the status of individual billing transactions, and display billable items.

Sample reports are available for transferring raw data to billable items and for creating test data.

Processing Billable Items

You define rules for the selection and automatic grouping of billable items in billing units in the billing process. You can define technical restrictions for billing items that are to be billed together. The system creates a billing document for each billing unit; this billing document can then be invoiced after invoicing in Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable. You can control the aggregation of the billable items to billing document items using grouping variants for the billing process. You can define calculation rules that specify how the target date for billing is to be determined.

You can perform billing automatically or as a dialog process, and reverse billing documents.

Integration of SAP Convergent Charging

You can integrate billing in Contract Accounts Receivable with SAP Convergent Charging. SAP Convergent Charging allows you to perform dynamic, real-time pricing for services and determine the invoice recipient.

You can link the two applications by activating the interface component SAP Convergent Charging when you configure the corresponding class of billable items.

Integration of SAP Customer Relationship Management

You can integrate billing in Contract Accounts Receivable with SAP Customer Relationship Management (SAP CRM). This allows you to define one-off charges in CRM and then transfer them as billable items to billing in Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable. In billing, you can bill one-off charges and then perform further processing in invoicing in Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable.

You can link the two applications by activating the interface component CRM Order when you configure the corresponding class of billable items. This interface component derives the internal account assignments for the billable items from the account assignment data in Customer Relationship Management.

For more information, see Integration → Billing in Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable in the documentation for Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable.