Understanding Collective Bill

The collective bill guarantees that contract accounts are processed together in bill creation and other business processes from contract accounts receivable and payable.

The collective bill concept is used in the following areas:

• Property management

• Housing company

• Branch-central office relationships

Example:

Tenants in a housing company are supplied by a utility company.

The housing company carries out the payment transactions (payments, dunning, returns, correspondence) with the utility company and bills the tenants separately. The bills are paid by the housing company.

The individual contract accounts are allocated to the collective bill contract account (CB account). The CB account is classified by a special contract account category. The individual contract accounts (individual accounts) are allocated to the CB account. You can allocate these in the utilities menu under Business Master Data→Contract Account→Create/Change. In the Bill Creation group box, enter the CB account in the field Coll.bill acct. The individual accounts are allocated to contract partners.

Changes to master data will be included in future bill creation. They do not affect existing transaction data.

When posting documents are created for individual accounts, a statistical posting document is automatically created for the CB account (CB document).

The amount is calculated from the total amounts of the accompanying individual documents.

Posting relevant to the general ledger – if at all necessary – always takes place at individual account level.

In transactions from contract accounts receivable and payable that automatically create a statistical CB document, there is a 1:1 relationship between the individual documents and the CB document. These transactions include:

• Post document (FPE1)

• Create security deposit (FPSEC1)

• Calculate interest individually (FPI1)

• Interest run (FPINTM1)

For invoicing transactions, several individual documents are grouped together to form a CB document. This means that when these individual accounts are invoiced, a statistical CB document is gradually created according to the structure of the individual documents.

Example:

The two individual documents 471200 and 471300 are posted to the contract accounts of contract holders Anne Miller and Henry Smith. These documents can be created by invoicing, a budget billing request or a partial bill. Since the joint CB account 8711 is entered in both contract accounts, the two individual documents are consolidate into one joint CB document; This means that they are allocated to the same CB document 4711. This CB document refers to the business partner Collector Ltd and the CB account 8711. The amount in the CB document is the total amount from the individual contracts.

When the budget billing plan is being created, the system checks whether an individual account is allocated to a CB account. If it is, the CB account is stored in the BB plan and displayed during budget billing plan processing. For regulation purposes, the budget billing items are given the clearing restriction Collective Bill: Refer to Collective Bill Account (6). They can only be paid using a CB document.

During statistical budget billing procedure, posting items from a budget billing plan represent an exception with regards to the time that a collective bill is created. The items are first of all posted without a reference to a collective bill document. The collective bill document is created separately in the budget billing request process.

If you reverse the allocation of a contract account to a collective bill account, clearing restriction 6 is deleted from the budget billing items that have not yet been entered in a budget billing collective bill.

Collective bill print documents are used for joint bill creation and for correspondence with the collective bill contract partner.

They are created using the collective bill transaction.

In order to create a collective bill print document, an invoicing order (EITR with document line item type Z) is created for each statistical item in the transaction Create Collective Bill. Individual bills cannot be printed at this time.

They can only be printed after the transaction Create Collective Bill has been executed.

For example:

Individual bills 3334 and 3335, and individual documents 471200 and 471300 (see previous slide) have been created for the contract accounts belonging to Anne Miller and Henry Smith. Contract account owner Maria Bush receives the budget billing request 2221. Since the joint CB account 8711 has been entered in all contract accounts, the two individual bills have been grouped together as the joint CB document 4711 and the invoicing order 4711 created. This in turn enables the creation of a collective bill print document. During the creation of the budget billing request, CB document 4712 and invoicing order 4712 were created. These invoicing orders refer to the business partner Collector Ltd and the CB account 8711, and are included in a joint collective bill print document.

During the invoicing of individual accounts, print documents are created as the basis of individual bills.

Individual bills cannot be printed at this time.

Statistical CB posting items created during the invoicing of individual accounts are given the clearing restriction Collective Bill: Only Regulate After Collective Invoicing (7) As a result, the CB posting items and accompanying individual documents are blocked for payment and clearing regulation. This prevents them from being (partially) cleared before the collective bill print document has been constructed. They are released by the subsequent transaction Create Collective Bill.

In order to create a collective bill print document, an invoicing order (EITR with document line item type Z) is created for each statistical item in the transaction Create Collective Bill.

Individual bills can only be printed and regulated after the transaction Create Collective Bill has been executed.

Transaction FPCB can be used to manage postings for collective account scenarios. Previously billed items for accounts just added as children can be added as posting to the parent. Similarly, the postings for children accounts which have been removed from the parent account can be removed from the parent as well.

You can reverse a collective bill using the transaction Bill Reversal (Mass Reversal) (EA15). This reverses the CB print document as well as the posting documents (interest documents, account maintenance documents) created when the CB print document was created. The individual account bills grouped together in the print document are not automatically reversed.

When a CB print document is reversed, the statistical CB posting items created during the invoicing of individual accounts are given a clearing restriction again, and are blocked for payment. After the reversal, a new CB print document can be created for the CB account. This document can group together the individual invoicing documents that were contained in the original CB print document.

If you want to reverse an individual bill, you do not have to reverse the accompanying CB document. Exception: If the individual bill has was (partially) cleared when the CB was created within the framework of integrated account maintenance.

Note: If you want to display the reversal document for the individual bill in the printout, you must reverse the CB print document.

Individual bills and reversal bills that were reversed before before being entered in a CB are not included in a CB.