The Inform Eclipse Integration offers benefits such as:
The ability to reroute billing of items to external billing systems, using Billing Routes
Monitoring of the Billing Status of said items (Not Billed, Ready to Bill, In Billing)
Automatic changing of Billing Status based on other triggers
Tools to create exports that can be uploaded to Eclipse
Billing process overview
The following assumes that quotes are built in The Layer, although the process can be adapted to suit other flows.
Quote is created in The Layer and converted to Sales Order after signing.
Data can be captured and amended at either stage and added to Data Capture.
Data can be subjected to customised validation to ensure accuracy and compatibility with Eclipse.
When ready, sales order lines with the Eclipse Inform billing route are fed into the Billing Queue.
This happens based on different triggers depending on whether the lines are services or physical products.
Billing statuses are shown, indicating the stage of billing for each line.
The Billing Exports app within The Layer is used to create CLI files from the sales order lines. This file can then be imported into Eclipse.
The Billing Exports app is then used to update these lines in The Layer to reflect that they are now in billing.
Billing platforms
The Eclipse integration uses Billing Platforms to control the billing and invoicing process.
Billing Platforms are assigned to items in inventory in the form of a Billing Route, and can be used to represent an external billing system. This indicates the items that should be sent to Eclipse for billing, and prevents invoicing from within The Layer.
The billing route for a product or service's up-front and recurring charges can be set independently in the item's record in inventory.
Bill status
The Bill Status field against a Sales Order line is used to reflect an item's current position in the billing process. The following states are present in The Layer:
Not Billed - item has not yet entered the billing queue
Ready to Bill - item is ready to be sent to Eclipse
In Billing - item has been sent to Eclipse
Items with a billing route set to Inform Eclipse will transition from one state to another based on various events. Firstly, all items must be converted to asset.
The second trigger depends on the item type:
Billing Status can be seen on the sales order grid as a coloured circle.
Orange - Not Billed or Ready to Bill
Green - In Billing
This is based on both recurring and up-front statuses.
You can check the statuses in more detail in Data Capture. This allows you to see the statuses for individual items for lines with a quantity more than one:
These values will be read-only unless you have the Allow update billing user role.
Bill start date
The Bill Start Date indicates the day on which billing will begin. This is populated as below:
These Bill Start Override field can be used to override the default date, so long as you have the Allow update billing user role. Otherwise, it will be a read-only field.
Using the Billing Export app to transfer items to Eclipse
The Billing Export tool is an App within The Layer. It is accessible from the Apps button on the menu at the bottom of the screen, for users with the Apps - Change Queue role.
This app allows us to create export files containing CLI data, in a format tailored to Eclipse.
This app allows us to view items that have either an up-front or recurring billing status of Ready to Bill.
Use the top-right filter to show only items that have one or both billing route fields set to Eclipse.
This gives us a summary of all lines that are ready to be sent to billing.
The following functions are available:
Export Inform Billing
Transfer to Billing
Creating the export file
The Export Inform Billing button is used to create the export file that will be uploaded to Eclipse.
Updating billing status of exported lines
The Transfer to Billing button is used to change the status of selected lines from Ready to Bill to In Billing. This should be performed when the file upload to Affinity is complete.
Tracking assets for changes and re-exporting to Eclipse Inform
It's possible to configure change tracking for specific fields for items with a specific billing platform set.
Changes are fed into the Change Queue app. From this app, you can decide if you want to ignore individual changes (i.e. not upload them to Inform Eclipse). You can then create a spreadsheet with changes that should be uploaded.
This spreadsheet can then either be manipulated and uploaded to Eclipse, or used as the basis for manual updates.
For more information on using the tracking asset changes, and the Change Queue app, check this article.