Nue Billing and Usage Accelerator stands out as a versatile solution capable of seamlessly generating invoices for a diverse range of products. Its strength lies in its ability to handle various billing scenarios, including physical goods, milestone-based services, subscriptions, and consumptions. What sets it apart is the incorporation of a unified object model, streamlining the invoicing process and ensuring consistency across different types of products. This innovative approach not only simplifies billing complexities but also enhances the overall efficiency of invoicing operations, making Nue Billing and Usage Accelerator a comprehensive tool for businesses with diverse product offerings.

This article outlines the object model of Nue Billing & Usage Accelerator.

Object Model Overview - Nue Billing & Usage Accelerator

As illustrated in the following diagram, Nue Billing & Usage Accelerator interfaces with Nue Lifecycle Manger and Price Building via objects including Account, Contact, Product, Order Product, etc.

Order-based Billing

Nue embraces the fundamental concept of order-based billing, considering the order as the primary monetary transaction within the traditional Lead-to-Cash flow. In the sale of physical goods, an order is initiated when a customer places a request, and the initial invoice is issued upon order placement or fulfillment. In cases of subsequent quantity adjustments from the same customer, a change order, essentially another order, is created, containing additional quantities and corresponding invoiced amounts.

In contrast, when dealing with recurring services like subscriptions and consumptions, many billing vendors generate invoices directly from subscriptions, bypassing the order-centric approach. This practice introduces challenges when there are constant changes to subscriptions (e.g., quantity updates, price adjustments, term updates) and that it often requires the deployment of multiple billing engines when the company offers a variety of products and services.  Managing a unified invoice with items from various billing engines is not only error-prone, but also makes pricing changes very challenging to manage. 

To address these issues, Nue deliberately maintains a separation between orders and subscriptions. Subscriptions are viewed as virtual, recurring customer assets, while orders remain the pivotal monetary transactions used for generating invoices. This intentional separation enhances clarity, minimizes errors, and facilitates smoother adaptation to pricing changes.

Invoice, Invoice Item and Invoice Item Detail

Invoice and Order Relationship

It's crucial to highlight that within Nue, there exists a many-to-many relationship between invoices and orders.

An order having more than one invoices

An order, when it contains recurring order products - which will be provisioned into subscriptions, will resut in the generation of one or more invoices, each corresponding to a specific billing period.

For instance, consider a customer with an order containing a 12-month recurring order product (a.k.a. subscription) at $100 per month, spanning from 01/01/2024 to 12/31/2024. Given the customer's quarterly billing frequency, the order is typically associated with 4 invoices.

In this simple example, each quarterly invoice will have 1 invoice item for the subscription.  Each invoice item will have 1 invoice item detail for the recurring product.  

In certain situations, an invoice may combine multiple billing periods. For example, if, for any reason, a Q1 invoice is omitted for the customer, the subsequent Q2 invoice will consolidate all the invoice items from Q1 as well.  So the Q2 invoice will have 2 invoice items for the same subscription, one for each quarterly billing period.  Each invoice item will contain one invoice item detail.  

An invoice associated with one or more orders

An invoice may also be associated with more than one orders.  Consider the following examples: 

EXAMPLE #1: A customer places 2 orders.  The first order contains an order product provisioned into a subscription at $100 per month, spanning from 01/01/2024 to 12/31/2024, while the second order contains an one-time order product provisioned into a service entitlement of $500, with the service date on 01/01/2024.  The customer is billed monthly.  So the first invoice with Invoice Date on 01/01/2024 will contain a total billable amount of $600, from both orders. 

In this scenario, the first invoice comprises two invoice items. One contains the monthly fee for the subscription, while the other includes the one-time charge associated with the entitlement. Each invoice item is associated with a single invoice item detail, aligning with the billable amount of each respective order product.

EXAMPLE #2: A customer places an order that contains a subscription at $100 per month, spanning from 01/01/2024 to 12/31/2024.  A month later, the customer wants to add 10 licenses of the subscription, so they place a second order that contains an additional $50 per month, spanning from 02/01/2024 to 12/31/2024.  The customer is billed monthly.  So the invoice generated on the 2nd month with Invoice Date on 02/01/2024 will contain a total billable amount of $150, from both orders.  

In this scenario, the invoice contains a single invoice item, representing the total monthly charge of the subscription.  Within this invoice item, there are two invoice item details, each corresponding to the billable amount of two separate order products - one from each order.

Nue Billing Accelerator Objects

Invoice

Represents a customer invoice, encapsulating charges for products or services within specific billable periods. 

Fields