Create a Recurring Bill Plan in Oracle Fusion Applications

What is a Recurring Bill Plan?

The Recurring Billing new feature in Receivables helps you manage the creation of invoices on a cyclical basis for a fixed period of time, according to the terms of the contract with your customer. A recurring bill plan can reliably generate invoices at the specified interval, thereby saving the user from manually creating the transactions. If during the life of the contract the terms change, you can easily update the bill plan and continue to generate invoices according to the new terms of the contract. 

What Does it Do?

Recurring Billing offers multiple features that makes generating transactions for a contract easy and simple to use. You can:

• Use the recurring bill plan to capture details of a contract
• Automatically process recurring transactions based on the bill plan thereby saving the user time manually creating the transactions.
• Update future transactions simply by updating the bill plan
• Track all current and past settings and updates to the bill plan 
• Review the transactions generated by the bill plan

For example, you can create a bill plan to automatically generate monthly invoices to bill a customer $8,000 for leasing commercial office space in a plaza, and if the rents increase, update the bill plan to change the price of the lease.

What contract details are captured in a Bill Plan?

The Create Recurring Bill Plan page opens with certain fields populated by default for your convenience:

1. Transaction Source: ORA_RecurringBilling.
• You can use this predefined transaction source, or define a new transaction source.
• Transaction sources for use with recurring bill plans must be of type Imported, and must have the Automatic Transaction Numbering option enabled.
2. Transaction Type: Invoice. 
• You can use this predefined transaction type, or define a new transaction type.
• Transaction types for use with recurring bill plans must not be of status Void, and must have the Post To GL and Open Receivables options enabled.
3. Currency: Ledger currency.
4. Billing Frequency: Monthly. Can be changed to other frequencies such as Daily, Weekly, etc.
5. Contract Start Date: Defaults to System date (can be changed).
6. Contract End Date: Defaults to System date plus 12 months (can be changed).
7. First Transaction Date: Defaults to System date (can be changed).
• This date will be used as the transaction date for the first transaction generated by the bill plan and all subsequent transactions, increased by the billing frequency, unless you enter a value in the Second Transaction Date field
8. Second Transaction Date: Use this field to create a transaction date for the second and all subsequent transactions created by the bill plan, increased by the billing frequency. 
• You enter a second transaction date if the first transaction created was for a partial period only, and you do not want to use the first transaction date as the creation date for all remaining transactions in the plan.
9. Second Billing Period Start Date: The first billing period start date is the same as the contract start date. By default, each subsequent billing period begins according to the contract start date increased by the billing frequency. 
• If you enter a date in the Second Billing Period Start Date field, this becomes the start date of the second billing period and all subsequent billing periods increased by the billing frequency.

How does it Work?
You can generate invoices from a bill plan by:

• Scheduling a run of the Generate Recurring Billing Data program.
• The Generate Recurring Billing Data program selects active recurring bill plans, generates invoice lines, and uploads the invoice lines to the AutoInvoice interface tables.
• You can schedule the Import AutoInvoice program to group invoice lines into invoices per customer, bill plan name, and bill plan period. Note: The bill plan name and bill plan period were added as mandatory grouping criteria to the AutoInvoice grouping rule.

Can it be Modified or Terminated?
Yes, you can edit bill plan general information:

• You can Inactivate a bill plan by Unchecking the Active check box.
• Update these fields: Conversion Rate Type, Conversion Rate, Contract End Date, Bill-to Customer Site, Bill-to Customer Contact, Ship-to Customer Site, Ship-to Customer Contact, Payment Terms, Receipt Method, and Payment Instrument.
• Updates will only affect future generated transactions.

You can also Edit bill plan lines:

• Add new bill plan lines: Click the plus (+) icon to add a bill plan line. Complete all of the required information for the new line.
• Delete existing bill plan lines: Select a line and click the delete (x) icon to delete a line.
• Update the quantity of an item: Use the Quantity field to update the quantity to be billed for the line item.
• Make a price change to an item: Use the New Price and Effective From fields to enter the new price for the line and the date the new price becomes effective.
• Updates will only affect future generated transactions.

Changes will also be tracked and recorded. You can access the Review Recurring Bill Plan History page to track and view the bill plan history for modifications. Either select a bill plan and click the Review Recurring Bill Plan History button, or click the Change History icon on a bill plan. 

Note: The Change history icon is only available if the bill plan contains historical information.

Below is a quick demonstration of creating Recurring Bill Plans in Oracle Fusion applications:

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