Billing Plans in Intellectual Property Management

The Billing Plan object is a date plan that defines the framework for billing. During transaction processing in Intellectual Property Management, you define a detailed billing plan for individual items in the acquisition or sales contract and in doing so define when a specific amount is to be billed. The Distribution/Revenue Plan is a special type of billing plan, which does not control the time of billing, but controls distribution of the billed value between various account assignment objects during transfer to SAP Accounting.

Note Note

Most header billing plans are not supported in Intellectual Property Management. The only exception is the header billing plan for multiple payees.

End of the note.

When license contracts are processed, the system defines whether a billing plan is required and which billing plan type is used according to the item category. The following billing plan types are used in Intellectual Property Management:

Transaction Type	Billing Plans
Rights acquisition or service acquisition contract	Billing plan for payment distribution as a result of a royalty split between multiple payees Billing plan for periodic settlement of variable royalties Billing plan for installments (milestones) for distribution of the net value of the price-relevant royalties item between specific installments. Billing plan for distribution/revenue plan
License sales contract	Billing plan with confirmation for periodic settlement of variable royalties Billing plan for installments (milestones) for distribution of the net value of the price-relevant royalties item between specific installments. Billing plan for distribution/revenue plan for revenue distribution (only relevant to license sales).

The respective billing plan type is linked with the item category in Customizing and cannot be changed in the document.

Billing Request Item (BRI)

Billing request items are items to be billed that are generated from a billing plan using selected criteria such as general date information, start and end date, frequency, billing date and the billing creation date. Criteria are proposed from the billing plan type. Billing request items also contain information on the settlement period and the amount for settlement. Billing request items can be used to create several settlements for a contract item, for example, at regular intervals during the contract validity period.

Each BRI triggers a settlement after it has been released. (Exceptions are billing request items with confirmation.)

Settlement times and the generation period are defined by date rules in Customizing and these values are proposed in the license contract. You can change these values if necessary.

Distribution Items — Business Transaction Allocation

The business transaction allocation (BTA) in the revenue plan is the equivalent of the billing request item (BRI). Unlike BRIs, these items are not displayed during contract processing, but are only found in the contract BDoc.

Difference Calculation for Exploitation-Dependent License Fees

The difference calculation is used for royalties items with exploitation-dependent license fees, which are billed periodically using billing request items (BRIs). These variable license fees are often defined as scales, whose assessment basis (scale base) is produced from the usage data cumulated since the contract start (ITD data, instead of the PP data, which is cumulated for each settlement period). Royalties due for the settlement period are therefore determined by calculating the license fees based on the ITD data cumulated to the end of the current settlement period. The license fees, which are produced from the ITD data for the end of the preceding settlement period, are then deducted. Confirmation data in the license contract is cumulated as ITD data in each BRI to support this calculation method.

More Information

Billing Plans