Service and Product assets can be synced to Abillity as Service Charges, allowing for the billing of upfront and recurring charges.

For each service synced, two entries may be created in Abillity - one for upfront charges, and one for recurring charges. Products should create a service charge for upfront charges only.

A service charge will not be created for an upfront or recurring component if that component has a £0 sell price.

These appear in the Pricing tab in Abillity, where they can be processed.

Fields are synced as follows:

*Different fields may be used for your configuration if these fields are required for another purpose

**This field may be renamed for each base category

***If set

****If not set in The Layer, sync this as 0

The following fields may be populated based on other properties:

The Layer will attempt to match products and services to charge types in Abillity. We do this by storing numerical Service Charge IDs from Abillity against inventory product and services in The Layer

We can store one service charge ID for upfront charges, and one for recurring charges, if required.

The default fields are Data Description for upfront, and Pricing Tier for recurring, though this may be configured differently if you require use of those fields for another purpose.

When the asset is synced to Abillity, the charge type for that ID will be set.

We will map the Product Name field in The Layer to the Description field in Abillity. This will override any name inherited from the charge type.

If a product or service from The Layer is synced without a charge ID, the sync to Abillity will still occur, and the item should appear in the reject queue.

To resolve this, users should create the charge type in Abillity, and also create the inventory item in The Layer to match, ensuring the Abillity service charge ID is added to the corresponding fields in The Layer.

When exporting from The Layer to Abillity, a service charge will only be sent if it has a non-zero sell price.

Here, you can see one service charge for an recurring cost item, and one charge for an upfront cost item:

Items with no recurring or upfront costs will not appear at all in the Billing Exports app unless they are associated with a billing ID that has not previously been sent to Abillity.

This is to ensure that new billing IDs can be synced to Abillity even if no charges are associated with it at the time of sync.

When a service charge is synced, any new connected Billing IDs will also be synced. This means that billing IDs do not need to be uploaded individually.

The unique identifier of service asset in The Layer will be synced as a billing ID in Abillity.

The default field name in The Layer is MSISDN, though this may have been overridden in your instance to e.g. Number, CLI, Serial.

Billing IDs will only appear against a site once. If another service asset is synced against an existing billing ID, the billing ID will not be duplicated.

Service charges do not need to be associated with a Billing ID to sync.

*This field may be renamed for each base category

**When ceased or synced service had fixed billing

If a Billing Start Date Override has been set in Data Capture, this date will be used as the First Payment date for the service charge.

A new Billing ID will use the Connection Date as the Start Date in either case.

When populating data in Data Capture, order processors will select an Action for each line. The choice will generally depend on the classification chosen for that line e.g. New, Renewal, Upgrade.

When using the Abillity integration, the primary actions will be:

If New and Cease is selected, the order processor must select a Target Asset. This may be auto-selected in Data Capture, depending on your processes.

This will populate the MSISDN / Number or equivalent field. In turn, this determines what will be ceased when we sync the new service to Abillity.

When populating data in Data Capture, order processors will select an Action for each line. The choice will generally depend on the classification chosen for that line e.g. New, Renewal, Upgrade.

When using the Abillity integration, the primary actions will be:

If New and Cease is selected, the order processor must select a Target Asset. This may be auto-selected in Data Capture, depending on your processes.

This will populate the MSISDN / Number or equivalent field. In turn, this determines what will be ceased when we sync the new service to Abillity.

When a New & Cease line is successfully synced, the End Date of the ceased Billing ID will be populated, and a new Billing ID created with the same reference.

The existing service charge(s) will have their Last Payment date updated, and a new entry will be created.

The New & Cease option is enabled system-wide from Settings - Company Settings - Customisations.

It is recommended to also disable the Update option. This is an alternative to the New & Cease action, but is less compatible with the integration.