Suggestions on my solution approach: Multiple Bills for same Bill Period

[srinivasankh]

Hi,

Can anyone suggest whether my solution approach is correct based on the following requirement:

Requirement:

On 1st of every month, there will be a Main Bill based on a standard rate (say X0) for previous month.

Then on 3rd of every month, based on many inputs from external departments there will be calculated rate (X1), then the supplementary bill should be raised based on diffrence rate X0 - X1 (either + or -). Sometimes after this second bill, there may be another bill which will be based on differential rate to either debit or credit the customer account i.e. based on calculation X2 - [X0 - X1]. All the bills should be for the same period.

Facts on standard SAP IS-U:

There cannot be more than one Bill & Invoice generated for the single billing period.

Solution approach:

To map the requirement, I am asking the user to do the following in sequence:

1) Generate a Bill n Invoice based on standard rate X0 [Main Bill in AS-IS]

2) After many inputs from external departments, update the Price/Installation Facts (logic to derive new rate and updates using ABAP)

3) Do a full reverse of that Bill (which reverses the Invoice also)

4) Generate a Bill n Invoice for the same period with the new Price/Instln facts [called as Supplementary in AS-IS]

5) If another bill has to be raised with new rate, then repeat step 2, 3 and 4. [called as subsequent supplementary bills in AS-IS]

Then in PrintWorkbench/SmartForms, there will be a logic to display all relevant values like Main Bill, Supplementary Bill, difference amount, payments if any etc...

Here I am NOT suggesting to use Adjustment Reversal (EA21) because it has got limitation of generating a main bill and then one subsequent bill and not more than two times. But the requirement is that 1 main bill and then more than 2 supplementary bills.

User is a bit reluctant to use 'Reversals' in SAP because of their bad experience in past.

Is there anyother standard SAP process in IS-U to meet my client's requirement? (like BackBilling / DPC etc...) If no other solution, then how to convince the user to do adopt the above approach?

Thanks in advance!

Srinivasan

[anu_p4]

YOu can try using floating backbilling, since it does not reverses the previous bill and always posts the adjustment lines aliong with the current bill. Eventually, you will have a main bill already generated last month and a subsequent bill with the correction from the last month. You may need to experiment a little bit to hit the correct configuration to achieve what is required. I think this is the only close thing I can think about or else full reversal and bill print enhancements as you already figured out looks like a good approach.

-Q

[srinivasankh]

Hi,

Thanks for your reply.

To be frank, I have not used DPC or floating backbilling. But, I think in the case of backbilling also the corrections or adjustments are carried only after creating bill for the new billing period w.r.t to actual Meter Reading Results. But the requirement is that, there will be changes in the price for the same period for which the bill was already raised and also there might be changes in consumptions too. Here the consumptions are not directly from the meter, it is depending on external inputs and calculations.

Thanks,

Srinivasan

[anu_p4]

S,

Yeah Backbilling will do the correction in the next bill month. So, each bill month, it will show corrections from the last month and the charge lines for the current month. But it will take both meter reads and price corrections. Though I think you need both main and subsequent bills in the same period. How many customers are you talking about? Is this a big number? or other wise I was thinking if you can have another installation under the same contract account but without joint invoicing. BIll the first installation with the original meter read and prices - Call it main bill.

Then bill the 2nd installation with the new consumption (coming from exter inputs) and new prices - Call it subsequent bill.

Not sure if you like it, but if you are talking about very few customers, then I think it is more cleaner, since you dont need to reverse the bill and ask bill print team to print reversed bill as well.

Let me know what do you think,

-Q

[srinivasankh]

Hi,

Here I am talking about for only 3 customers, even in future there will not be more than 8 customers.

The actual requirement is to get multiple subsequent bills. From you suggested approach, unless you do a full reversal you cannot have multiple subsequent bills for the same period I guess.

In addition to this, there is a requirement in which we have to have 2 main bills for the same customer for the same period and multiple supplemetary bills as possible.

Here the 2 main bills are required because, they there are two source and two different way of calculating rates and also to point two different Business Areas (which is at Cont Acct level).

After change in rates, corresponding supplementary bills needs to be generated.

Because of which I have framed the following arroach:

One BP - 2 Cont Accts (for two diff BA)

Then each CA will have a Contract-Installation-RateCategory-Schema.

Bill and Invoice at BP level which will produce 2 Main Bills.

After getting adjustment rate, do a full reversal of corresponding previous mail bill, then re-invoice at CA level.

Develop logic in PrintWorkBench to display the required fields in required format.

Hope this will make you understand the reqs in detail...

Thanks,

Srinivasan

[anu_p4]

Okay, that was a good explanation of the requirement. So, I think your approach is good.

I just thought that if you can have an another installation under one contract account, you can bill the same period on different dates. So for eg:

1st Contract account: Bus Area A

Installation 1: Bill for Jan bill month (Jan 1 to Jan 31st) on 1st Feb - This is your MAIN bill.

Installation 2: Bill for Jan month (Jan 1 to Jan 31st) on 15th feb - (if it takes 15 days to make the changes at the installation facts level - Or Set the scheduled bill date for the portion on this installation based on the no. of days it takes to correct the consumption and prices) - SUBSEQUENT Bill.

Similarly,

2nd Contract account: Bus Area B

Installation 1: Bill for Jan bill month (Jan 1 to Jan 31st) on 1st Feb - This is your MAIN bill.

Installation 2: Bill for Jan month (Jan 1 to Jan 31st) on 15th feb - (if it takes 15 days to make the changes at the installation facts level - Or Set the scheduled bill date for the portion on this installation based on the no. of days it takes to correct the consumption and prices) - SUBSEQUENT Bill.

But I am not sure if you can have multiple installations and different Portions/MRU to have this set up. In that case your approach is sounding good.

-Q

[srinivasankh · Accepted solution]

Alternative solution approach to be used!