Billing Groups

Overview

The Billing Groups feature provides you the capability of customizing invoice groups to bill subscriptions and order products based on specific criteria. It enables you to group and create separate invoices for customers with multiple subscriptions. This allows you to bill your customers more efficiently and flexibly. You can utilize various Billing Group Attributes to group subscriptions into different invoices during the billing process.

 

 

Billing Group Attributes

Billing Group Attributes can be used to determine groups of subscriptions being invoiced separately. Please follow the steps below to enable or disable each group attribute: 

• Login to Nue App, and navigate to System Settings
• In the setting's search box, search for "Billing Groups" and click the setting
• You can see the enabled billing group attributes and manage them in the 'Manage Grouping Attributes' section 

NOTE    Please be aware that enabling or disabling any billing group attribute may produce distinct invoices for a customer in each billing period. Consequently, there might be more than one draft invoice generated per billing period. Therefore, it's essential to ensure there are no existing draft invoices in the system before changing the billing group settings, ensuring a clean starting point.  If there are draft invoices in the system, you will receive a notification stating that you must not have any draft invoices before enabling or disabling a billing group attribute. In such a scenario, please proceed to the Invoices and Credit Memu (If enabled) menu and either activate or cancel the draft invoices or credit memos as required. Otherwise, you will receive a confirmation message that the billing group attribute is successfully enabled or disabled.

The following are the standard billing group attributes:

Customer

By default, Nue Billing groups subscriptions with different customers as invoice owners into separate invoices by billing account.

Currency

When multiple currencies are enabled in your organization, if a customer has subscriptions in different currencies, they will be grouped by currencies and billed separately based on each currency.

Sales Account

For organizations with subsidiaries or departments that have their own subscriptions but share the same billing account, they can enable this billing group attribute to separate the invoices for the products or services purchased by each subsidiary or department (sales account), instead of generating one combined invoice for the entire organization. For more details, please see Billing Account Hierarchy.

 

NOTE    Before Release 2407, there was a specific setting "Generate invoices for each sales account" under Nue System Settings -> Invoices. When this setting was turned on, Nue would create invoices separately for each sales account. However, starting from Release 2407, this setting was no longer available and was replaced by the Sales Account billing group attribute instead.

Service Milestone

By default, Nue generates one invoice per billing period for each customer. Oftentimes, companies prefer to create invoices for milestone services separately from their recurring invoices. Once this billing group attribute is enabled, the milestone services will be invoiced separately from the recurring invoices. This also applies to Invoice Preview for quotes, orders, and accounts. For more details, please see Service Milestones and Milestone-based Billing.

 

NOTE    Before Release 2407, there was a specific setting "Generate invoices for service milestones independently" under Nue System Settings -> Invoices. When this setting was turned on, the milestone services will be invoiced separately from the recurring invoices. However, starting from Release 2407, this setting was no longer available and was replaced by the Service Milestone billing group attribute instead.

Entity

When working with large companies that manage multiple subsidiaries, pricing strategies, and sales regions in different countries through different entities, this billing group attribute can be enabled to facilitate separate billing for each entity and ensure clarity and precision in financial management. For more details about how Nue handles multiple entities, please see Manage Multiple Entities. 

 

Custom Billing Groups

In addition to the out-of-the-box billing groups, you have the option to create custom billing group attributes tailored to your specific business needs. For example, you can create a billing group attribute based on the revenue models of your products and services, and then generate invoices for your recurring products and usage services independently. 

 

 

Create Grouping Attribute

To set up a custom billing group, please follow these steps:

• Log in to the Nue App and go to System Settings.
• In the settings search box, look for "Billing Groups" and click on the setting.
• Click the 'New Grouping Attribute' button.
• On the grouping attribute creation page:
  • Provide a meaningful name for the grouping attribute, for example, 'Revenue Model'.
  • Choose a grouping field from the Billing Asset object, for example, 'BillingAsset.Revenue Model'. - The Billing Asset represents the subscription, asset, or entitlement for which the billing engine will generate invoices.
  • Add a description for the grouping attribute to clarify its purpose.
• Once you save and activate the billing group attribute above, the Nue billing engine will create individual invoices for each revenue model. For instance, if your organization has enabled Recurring, One-time, Usage, and Credit Burndown revenue models, Nue billing will group the products and services according to each revenue model and generate one invoice for each of them.

 

Add Filter Conditions

In most cases, businesses may not want to split invoices for each option of the grouping attribute. For example, companies may only want to generate a separate invoice for recurring products and group all other types into another invoice. To achieve this, you can set filter conditions to the grouping attribute by following these steps:

• Click the 'Add Conditions' link.
• The condition blocks will be displayed. By default, only IF and OTHERWISE blocks are added, but you can add more ELSE conditions by clicking on the plus icon.
• Add a filter to each condition block, for example, Revenue Model = Recurring.

After activating the grouping attribute with conditions, when generating invoices, all Recurring type products and services will be billed separately.

 

 

Putting It Altogether

The Billing Groups feature in Nue provides a powerful tool for tailoring the billing process to meet the diverse needs of your organization. By leveraging the different Billing Group Attributes, you can create customized invoices that align with your financial management strategies.

 

For instance, if you manage an international business with multiple subsidiaries, you can enable the Entity attribute to generate separate invoices for each subsidiary, ensuring clear financial tracking. If your customers operate in different currencies, the Currency attribute allows you to bill them in their respective currencies, preventing any confusion or errors in currency conversion.

 

By enabling and managing these attributes, you can streamline your billing operations, reduce manual efforts, and improve the accuracy and clarity of your invoicing process. This flexibility ultimately helps in better financial reporting, enhanced customer satisfaction, and more efficient business operations.