Billing Accelerator Overview

Nue Billing Accelerator is designed to revolutionize recurring billing for Revenue Operations. With our powerful platform, managing the complexities of subscription-based services, physical goods, and one-time services in a unified way has never been easier.

 

Invoicing

When an order is activated, Nue Billing Accelerator takes charge, seamlessly handling the billing process for each product within the order. Since prices are already calculated for each order product, Nue Billing Engine generates invoices based on the order product details as well as billing period, billing timing, billing cycle day, and other customizable billing parameters specific to your customers and products, ensuring accurate and efficient invoicing.

 

Credit Memos

For scenarios involving negative order products such as product returns, subscription co-terming, or cancellations, finance ops users can enable the Credit Memo feature. Nue Billing Accelerator enables the creation of credit memos in replace of negative invoices and invoice items, facilitating smooth handling of these processes within your finance operations.

 

With Nue Billing Accelerator, your finance team gains full visibiility over billing schedules, invoices, and credit memos. Nue's intuitive interface helps them to efficiently manage and track these financial activities, ensuring accuracy and timeliness.

 

Collections

Nue Billing Accelerator seamlessly connects with payment and collection vendors such as Stripe, QuickBooks, and NetSuite. This integration enables streamlined invoicing and facilitates real-time communication of payment statuses back to Nue. Stay on top of your revenue streams effortlessly.

 

Revenue Recognition

Nue Billing Accelerator seamlessly integrates orders and invoices into Revenue Recognition tools such as RightRev, enabling real-time generation of revenue contracts and adherence to the ASC 606 guidelines.

 

Unlock the full potential of your recurring billing operations with Nue Billing Accelerator. Experience the power of Nue Billing Accelerator in streamlining not only your billing processes but also your revenue recognition. Maximize efficiency, accuracy, and compliance while gaining deeper insights into your revenue streams. Let's dive in!

 

PERMISSIONS REQUIRED   Please enable the following permissions in the user role:  Invoice Management Billing Schedules

How Nue Billing Works

Before we start working on a billing scenario, let's take a look at how Nue billing works at a high level.

 

In general, Nue billing generates invoices and credit memos - both are considered billing transactions - from the following 2 transaction sources:

• Rated, unbilled, active order products (a.k.a. booking transactions)
• Rated, unbilled usage records

As illustrated in the following diagram, once a quote is finalized into an active order, the order products in the order will be used for 2 subsequent operations: 

• Provisioning: Each order product will be provisioned into a subscription, an asset or an entitlement, according to its product category; 
• Billing: Nue billing engine will generate invoice items and credit memos based on the product's revenue model, as well as billing parameters, such as Bill Cycle Day, Billing Timing, Billing Period, etc.
  • For products that fall under Nue's supported usage models, such as Overage Usage, the Billing Timing is typically set to Billed in Arrears. In such cases, after the order product is provisioned into a usage-type subscription, users have the ability to upload Raw Usage data to Nue. The Nue Usage Accelerator then performs real-time rating on the Raw Usage, applying relevant pricing calculations. At the end of the customer's billing period, the Nue billing engine consolidates all rated usage and generates an invoice item, which is subsequently merged into the invoice for that specific billing period.

 

One notable advantage of Nue Billing Accelerator is its inherent scalability. This scalability stems from the separation of the rating and billing processes. During billing operations, the Nue billing engine efficiently retrieves the pre-rated order products and usage records, applies the appropriate billing parameters, and proceeds to generate invoices seamlessly. This architectural design ensures that the billing system can handle growing volumes of data and process invoices in a timely manner, accommodating the expanding needs of businesses.

 

Example

EXAMPLE   Chloe placed an order for customer Sharper Revenue starting 03/01/2022 for a 12-month subscription of 20 licenses with a monthly recurring CMRR of $100.  She also added 10 licenses for this subscription on 06/01/2022 with a monthly recurring CMRR of $50.   Chloe’s company bills on a quarterly basis, and the quarter starts on 01/01.    The product is billed in advance.   What is the total invoice amount billed for this subscription quarterly?

 

In this example, Chloe placed 2 orders. The first one was provisioned into the initial subscription, and the second one was a change order that added 10 licenses to the subscription.

 

So we have the following subscriptions and order products.  Please note that the total TCV of 2 order products is equal to the TCV of the subscription.

 

Order or Subscription	Number	Start Date	End Date	Quantity	Delta MRR	TCV
Subscription	SUB-001	03/01/2022	02/28/2023	20	Varies	$1650
Order Product	OP-001	03/01/2022	02/28/2023	10	$100	$1200
Order Product	OP-002	06/01/2022	02/28/2023	10	$50	$450

Because the company has a Quarterly billing cycle, and the quarter starts on the 1st day of January, there will be 4 total billing periods for this customer: 

• 04/01/2022 - 06/30/2022
  • OP-001 starts before 04/01, so its prorated transaction amount for the month of 03/01/2022 - 03/31/2022 will be merged into this billing period.
  • OP-002 starts in on 06/01, but its prorated transaction amount for the month of 06/2022 will be merged into the next billing period.
    • Optionally, if Billing Proration is Enabled, then the prorated transaction amount will be billed in the current billing period.  
  • This results in an invoice item of $400 total.
• 07/01/2022 - 09/30/2022
  • In this billing period, both OP-001 and OP-002 will be billed for the full billing cycle.  
  • In addition, the prorated transaction amount of OP-002 for the month of 06/2022 will be added.
  • This results in an invoice item of $500 total.
• 10/01/2022 - 12/31/2022
  • In this billing period, both OP-001 and OP-002 will be billed for the full billing cycle. 
  • This results in an invoice item of $450 total.
• 01/01/2023 - 03/31/2022
  • In this period period, both OP-001 and OP-002 will be prorated for the period between 01/01/2023 and 02/28/2023.
  • This results in an invoice item of $300 total.

The cumulative value of all four invoice items totals exactly $1650, precisely matching the Total Contract Value (TCV) of the subscription.

 

The following diagram illustrates how this works: 

From this example, we can see that Nue Billing Accelerator strictly generate invoices using booking transactions - namely Order Products, which can be from original orders, or change orders.  Order transactions are immutable once activated.  This ensures billing accuracy and scalability.  

Key Billing Concepts

The following table outlines the key billing concepts.  

Billing Schedule	How often billing is run
Billing Period	How often customers or products are billed
Bill Cycle Day	The start date of a billing period
Billing Timing	Whether the products or services are billed before or after the products or services are delivered / consumed
Payment Term	When the invoice is due
Partial Period Proration	How the first partial period is billed

For detailed information about these key billing concepts, please refer to the following documents: 

• Billing Schedules
• Billing Parameters

A Billing Scenario

Thoughout this tutorial, we'll provide practical examples using a hypothetical prospect/customer named Sharper Revenue Inc. This potential buyer is interested in the VROOM BUSINESS product from our hypothetical company Vroom Inc.

 

VROOM BUSINESS is a bundle product priced at $99.99 License per Month.  It contains all the features of VROOM PRO, as well as up to 1 VROOM Phone As a Service per license, and up to 20 hours of Professional Services.  Customer can purchase additional VROOM Phone and Professional Service hours.

 

To make it simple, we start with the following scenario: 

• VROOM BUSINESS is a recurring services billed in advance, where payment is expected from customers before the provision of goods or services. In this billing model, customers are typically charged for a specific period of time in advance, usually at the beginning of that period.
• VROOM Phone is a product with one-time revenue model that is billed in advance as well.
• Professional Services is a one-time service that is billed in arrears, where payment is expected from customers after the provision of goods or services. In this billing model, customers are typically billed for the usage or consumption of products or services that have already been provided within a specific billing period.
• Customer Sharper Revenue contracts to a 1-year VROOM BUSINESS subscription, but wants to do monthly payments. 
• The company Vroom Inc. would like the first invoice to be created when the subscription starts. 

Billing Parameter Configurations

First we need to set the ollowing configurations for this scenario at the organization level: 

• Login to Nue App
• Navigate to Settings → Billing
• Set Billing Period to Monthly
• Set Bill Cycle Day to Auto-Set to the First Subscription on Subscription Start Date
• Enable Automatically generate the first invoice when an order is activated
• Click Save.

 

Now let's look at the Billing Timing configuration. VROOM BUSINESS has a Recurring revenue model, so by default it's billing timing is Bill In Advance. VROOM Phone has a One-time revenue model, so by default its billing timing is Bill In Arrears.  We do not need to make configuration changes for these 2 products.

 

Professional Services though has a One-time revenue model, so by default it's billing timing is Bill In Advance.  So we need to change this to Bill In Arrears.  

• Navigate to Price Builder → Product Catalog
• Search for Professional Services and click Edit Icon
• Set the Billing Timing to Bill In Arrears
• Save

 

Create Quote and Order

Sales reps first create an opportunity, and a primary quote that contains the 1-year VROOM BUSINESS line item.  

 

Please note that VROOM BUSINESS has an annual price plan with UOM License / Year.  However, the customer can still be billed on a monthly basis.  The customer's billing period is not necessarily aligned with the price plan the customer signs up for.  

 

In this quote, we do the following: 

• Set the Start Date to 05/18/2023, Subscription Term 12 Month
• Set the Quantity of VROOM BUSINESS to 5, and Net Sales Price to $100
• Set the Quantity of VROOM Professional Services to 40
• Set the Quantity of VROOM Phone to 2
  • Note that 1 VROOM Phone is included in this bundle for free.  
• This comes to a total of $2505.99.  

The folloiwing picture shows the quote details.  

 

 

 

Now you can close-won the opportunity.  The primary quote will then be finalized into an active order.  

View and Activate First Invoice

After the order is activated, because we configured the Billing Schedules to generate the first invoice upon order activation, we are expecting the first invoice to be created with the following line items: 

Product	Start Date	End Date	Transaction Amount
VROOM BUSINESS	05/18/2023	06/17/2023	$41.67   Note: The line item is priced at $100 License/Year, which comes to an estimated monthly prorated amount of $8.33.    As a result, the first monthly invoice comes to $100 / 12 * 5 = $41.67
VROOM Phone	05/18/2023		$5.99

 

Invoice Total: $47.66

Invoice Date: 05/18/2023

Due Date: 06/17/2023

When you navigate to the order list page in Nue, you can see the billing state of the order from the order products popup window:

• The Billed Amount for VROOM BUSINESS is $41.67
• The product has been billed to 06/17/2023 (Invoiced Until) and the next invoice will be generated on 06/18/2023 (Next Billing Date)

 

Now let's take a look at the invoice generated in the Lifecycle Manager. 

• Login to Salesforce, and navigate to Nue on Salesforce → Accounts
• Click to open the account, and click on Manage Customer Lifecycle button
• Navigate to the Invoices tab.

An invoice is generated in Draft status.  The Invoice Amount is $47.66.  The Invoice Date and Due Date are also set correctly.  

 

Please note that the Balance is shown as $0.00, because this invoice is still in Draft status.

 

 

There are 3 actions in the Actions column: 

• View
  • View the invoice details, including invoice detail information, invoice line items, payment applications, etc.
• Activate
  • Activate the invoice
  • The user needs to have Activate Invoice custom permission in the permission set assigned to see and perform this action
• Cancel
  • Cancel the invoice
  • The user needs to have Cancel Invoice custom permission in the permission set assigned to see and perform this action

For more details about permission sets, please refer to Nue on Salesforce Setup Guide.  

View Invoice Details

You can click 'View' action icon to view invoice details directly in Salesforce.

 

On the Invoice Detail page, there is the following information: 

• Invoice Properties
  • The invoice detail information, such as Invoice Date, Balance, Due Date, Total Amount, Tax Amount, Start and End Date, etc.
• Invoice Items
  • The invoice items.  Nue generates one invoice item for each distinct Subscription, Asset or Entilement that the customer has.
  • There may be more than one order products (a.k.a. booking transactions) associated to a single subscription, asset or entitlement as a result of change orders.  Nue billing engine bills all active order products in the specified billing periods, and group them into invoice items based on their respective subscriptions, assets, and entitlements.
• Payment Applications
  • After an invoice is activated, Nue transfers the invoice to the designated payment systems, such as Stripe.  After the customer pays the invoice via the integrated payment system, Nue automatically updates the invoice's status to Paid, and sets the invoice balance to 0.   Nue also creates Payment Application records, which record the payment information of this invoice, such as transaction amount, transaction date, payment source, etc.  
  • An invoice can be paid more than once.  So there may be more than one payment application records associated to an invoice.

In our example, VROOM BUSINESS also bundled 3 products: Group Meetings, Private and Group Chat, Concurrent Users with $0 price.  Thereforce, there are 3 invoice items (shown below) having $0 transaction amount.  To hide the $0 invoice items, you can enable the billing setting: "Hide invoice items with $0 total amount".  

 

Activate Invoice

You can click 'Activate' action icon to activate an invoice.  When an invoice is activated, the invoice's status is changed from Draft to Active.

 

For more information about invoice status transition, please refer to Invoices and Credit Memos Lifecycle.

 

Once an invoice is activated, it can be transferred to a collection system for payments.  For example, if you are using Stripe for collections, the invoice will be transferred to Stripe for payments.

 

You can click on the 'Search' icon, which will essentially refresh the Invoice List.  The invoice is now in Active status, the balance of the customer is changed from 0 to $47.66, and the invoice bar correctly shows $47.66 is NOT DUE YET.

 

 

 

Setup Recurring Billing Schedule

Now that the first invoice is generated and activated, we can set up a recurring billing schedule to bill the remaining amounts.  Nue provides many different, flexible ways to generate invoices for customers.

 

To set up a recurring billing schedule, you can follow the steps below: 

• Login to Nue App.  
• From the menu, navigate to Revneue Manager → Billing Schedules
• Click New Billing Schedule
• In Schedule Type, select Recurring
• Optionally, set "Automatically activate generated invoices"
• Under Customer Filter, you can filter by customer name Sharper Revenue if you want to create this billing schedule only for this one customer.
• Under Schedule, you can schedule an execution frequency or leave it as default
• Click Save and Close.  
  • You will be asked: 'The billing schedule is in Draft status. Do you want to activate and run the billing schedule now?', click Yes to activate and execute the billing schedule.

 

This will configure a billing schedule that runs daily to bill for this particular customer (If you set a customer filter).

 

If you enable "Automatically activate generated invoices", then the invoices generated in each billing job will be automatically activated and transferred to the collection system for payments.  Otherwise, the generated invoices will stay in Draft mode, until finance ops users review and activate them manually.

 

You can also create on-demand biling schedule that is scheduled to run once, or immediately.

Review and Activate Invoices in Billing Job

After a recurring billing schedule is created, a new billing job will be created according to the recurring schedule.  

 

You can review and activate all invoices in a billing job by following the steps below: 

• Navigate to Revenue Manager → Billing Schedules
• Find the Billing Schedule and click the 'View' icon, which launches the Billing Jobs popup
• You can see a list of billing jobs executed for this billing schedule, and their statuses.
• To review the invoices generated by a billing job, click on the link in the Invoice Generated column.  
• To activate the all the invoices generated by a billing job, click on the Activate action icon (shown below).

Manage Invoices and Credit Memos

Nue Billing Accelerator also offers users the capability to generate credit memos as an alternative to creating negative invoices in a billing process.  You can learn about credit memos in this tutorial.  

 

Finance ops users can manage all invoices and credit memos in Nue App.  

• Login to Nue App
• Navigate to Revenue Manager → Invoices (or Credit Memos)

This page displays a comprehensive list of invoices, arranged in descending order based on their Invoice Number.

 

Searching, Sorting and Filtering

Users have the ability to search for invoices using either the complete or partial invoice number.

 

By default, all invoices are sorted on their Invoice Number by a descending order.  Users can change the default sorting field and order.  Users can also add more filtering criteria by clicking on "Add new sort field" action.

 

For example, you can sort invoices by Due Date in an ascending order, and by Invoice Balance in a descending order as shown in the following picture: 

 

 

Users can also filter invoices.  There are the 3 system-defined filters:

• Active Invoices
• Draft Invoices
• Canceled Invoices

Users can click on any of the system-defined filters in Saved Filters to filter for the invoices.

 

Users can also create and save custom filters.  For example, you can filter for active invoices that are past due by following the steps below:

• Click on 'Filters' in the Filter & Search bar, which launches the Filter popup

 

• In the Filter popup, create the following filtering criteria: 
  • Status equal to Active
  • Balance greater than 0
  • Due Date greater than today (which will be defaulted)
• If you would like to save the filter, in the Save As field, you can enter the filter name, such as 'Invoices Past Due', and click Save button.  After the filter is saved, it will appear in the Saved Filters section under the Filter and Search bar. 

 

The search criteria, filters and sorting criteria can be used together.  For example, you can filter for all past due invoices, sorted first by Due Date in ascending order, then by Balance in descending order.

 

Activate, Cancel and Delete Invoices

Users can view, activate, cancel and delete invoices using the action icons in the Action column.  Whether a certain action is available depends on the status of the invoice. 

• For invoices in Draft status: View, Activate and Cancel actions are available
• For invoices in Active status: 
  • If the Payment Status is Paid, only View action is available
  • Otherwise, View and Cancel actions are available
• For invoices in Canceled status; View and Delete actions are available

For more information of the invoice statuses, please refer to Invoice Status Explained. 

 

All the functionalities above are also available for Credit Memos.  

 

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Congratulations! You've successfully completed the Billing Accelerator tutorial and now have a solid understanding of how Nue billing works. You've learned how to create an order that generates the first invoice for a subscription, an asset and an entitlement in a unified way.  You've also learned how to setup a billing schedule that bills your customers on a recurring basis.

 

But the journey doesn't end there! You can continue to go through other tutorials that provide a deeper dive of each billing concept in Nue Billing Accelerator.