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Calculate, create, and send customer invoices

Important

Draft documentation
This content is a draft version of the SkyBill documentation and is subject to final review. Some information may be incomplete or inaccurate. Features, terminology, and procedures may change before the official release.

Creating and sending customer invoices is the final step in the SkyBill billing cycle, where all your setup work comes together to generate actual charges for customers. After you have configured your utility infrastructure, defined tariffs with appropriate totaling types, established contracts with customers, and recorded meter readings, you are ready to calculate charges and create invoices.

This article explains how to transform contract data and meter readings into invoices that you can send to customers. The process combines the quantities calculated by totaling types with the rates and units of measure defined in your tariffs to produce the final billing amounts. You can process invoices individually for specific contracts or run bulk operations to invoice multiple customers at once. SkyBill also provides tools to review consumption patterns, identify anomalies, verify calculations, and send invoices to your customers.

Before you bill customers, ensure customer information, contracts, and meter readings are in place. In SkyBill, the invoicing process has two main steps:

  • Contracts calculation.
  • Invoice generation and sending.

You can carry out these steps for each contract or run them automatically in bulk.

To calculate and create invoices for an individual contract

  1. Select Search (Alt+Q) Lightbulb that opens the Tell Me feature. in the upper-right corner, enter Utility Contracts, and then choose the related link.
  2. From the Utility Contracts list, select the contract you want to invoice.
  3. On the Utility Contract Card page, select the Contract action, and then choose Calculate and create invoice.
  4. On the Calculate And Invoice page calculate all the quantities and pre-billed records for the selected contract. You can also create an invoice for the current billing cycle. When required information, such as an address, is missing, SkyBill displays an error message to prevent invoices from being issued with incorrect data. If everything is correct, select the Posting date, turn on the Post Created Invoice toggle, and then select OK.
  5. Confirm the contract calculation by selecting Yes on the confirmation dialog.
  6. SkyBill automatically updates the billing cycle and account balance, and the new invoice becomes available.

To learn more about processing posted invoices, go to: Posted invoices and Viewing ledger entries.

To manually launch invoice calculation and creation for multiple contracts

  1. Select Search (Alt+Q) Lightbulb that opens the Tell Me feature. in the upper-right corner, enter Calculate Contracts, and then choose the related link.
  2. On the Calculate Contracts page, you can calculate services provided within all contracts or for a specified group of them.
  3. To select a group of contracts to calculate, go to the Filter: Utility Contract section, and then apply filters such as: No., Customer No., Salesperson Code, Contract Category, and so on. Select OK to launch the calculation for the selected contracts. You can review the number of services processed successfully in the pop-up message when SkyBill completes the calculation.
  4. Create and post invoices when SkyBill finishes calculation. To do this, select Search (Alt+Q) Lightbulb that opens the Tell Me feature. in the upper-right corner, enter Create Invoices, and then choose the related link.
  5. On the Create Invoices page, specify the billing and posting dates, and then select OK.

Automated billing process

The automated billing process is a scheduled task that runs in the background, automatically calculating services and creating invoices for multiple contracts. You can set the task's billing frequency.

Follow these steps to set up the automated billing process.

  1. Select Search (Alt+Q) Lightbulb that opens the Tell Me feature. in the upper-right corner, enter Job Queue Entries, and then choose the related link.
  2. On the Job Queue Entries list, select the line with the Automated Billing Process name in the Object Caption to Run column.
  3. On the Job Queue Entry Card page, on the Recurrence FastTab, set the process to run regularly in the background.

To review the consumption journal lines

When the billing process completes, you can review the consumption journal lines on the Service Consumption Journal page.

  1. Select Search (Alt+Q) Lightbulb that opens the Tell Me feature. in the upper-right corner, enter Service Consumption Journal, and then choose the related link.

  2. On the Service Consumption Journal page, you can post consumption journal lines by selecting the Post action.

    Note

    SkyBill doesn't post contracts containing errors. You must first resolve all errors before posting the consumption journal lines.

  3. On the Service Consumption Journal page, you can check for any anomalies or errors that may have occurred during the calculation process. For example, if there is a significant increase or decrease in consumption compared to previous periods, SkyBill will highlight these lines in red. Pay special attention to the Has Warnings field. Select the field to open the Consumption Jnl. Warning page with more details. One way to resolve the warning is to select the Delete warnings action. To learn more, see Billable Quantity Tolerance.

Note

Warnings are the way to avoid billing problems caused by anomalies. For example, there could have been a spike in water consumption due to a leak. In such cases, it is usually better to stop billing and investigate the issue first. You may conclude that the more appropriate action would be to estimate the consumption for that period based on historical data.

Review errors

When you run the billing process, SkyBill generates a summary with the number of processed contracts and errors. You can review the errors in detail on the Error Log page.

To analyze utility ledger entries

  1. Select Search (Alt+Q) Lightbulb that opens the Tell Me feature. in the upper-right corner, enter Utility Ledger Entries, and then choose the related link.
  2. You can analyze the ledger entries by entering the analysis mode. In the action bar at the top of the page, select the Enter analysis mode Shows the button for turning on analysis mode button. Learn more about how to Analyze list page and query data using data analysis feature.
  3. To view more details, choose the Navigate action, and then select the Detailed Ledger Entries. For example, if a meter replacement occurs during a billing period, two separate lines appear for the same tariff component on the Detailed Ledger Entries page. The calculation engine checks for meter replacements, tariff changes, move-ins, and move-outs, and splits them into separate lines. They are all reflected in the Detailed Ledger Entries page.

To learn more, see Contract calculation and posting process.

Send invoices in bulk

After you create and post invoices, you can send them to customers in bulk. Follow these steps to send invoices.

  1. Select Search (Alt+Q) Lightbulb that opens the Tell Me feature. in the upper-right corner, enter Posted Sales Invoices, and then choose the related link.
  2. Select the Print/Send action, and then choose the Print/Send Sales Invoices action. This opens the batch job in SkyBill to simplify the process of sending invoices to multiple customers.
  3. Set up the parameters for the batch job on the Print/Send Invoices page. For example, you can turn the E-mail toggle on to send invoices by email. You can also filter the invoices by the posting date, customer, and so on.

Landlords and tenants
Design details
Create utility contracts
Apply step tariffs to utility consumption
Create and manage supply addresses
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