All the contracts in the new development area are to be billed monthly on or around the 5th of the month. For this to happen, you need to create a new billing portion in which you can define the relevant control data. Later, you can assign all the contracts of all the business partners living in the new development area to this billing portion. To organize meter readings, you generate meter reading units containing specifications for meter reading order creation schedules. In a later step, you assign installations to meter reading units as appropriate.
- Meter reading orders are created in the SAP S/4HANA Utilities componentDevice Management and contain register-related data and useful information for the meter reader.
- You use meter reading orders to control how and when your business partners' energy consumption is measured. Meter reading orders can be output as follows:
- Download to external meter reading devices (MDE devices)
- As printed customer meter-read cards
- As meter reader forms to serve as a basis for meter reading by your utility company
- Once the energy consumption has been measured, the meter reading results are input to the system and checked for their plausibility (validated). Only then can the business partner be billed for the energy that has been consumed. In scheduling, you define the length of the billing period for all the contracts assigned to a particular billing portion (a billing period of 1 month or 12 months, for example).
- If you wish to charge using the budget billing method, you define the number of budget billings and their cycle in scheduling (one budget billing a month for 11 months, for example).
- Schedule records are used to manage specific dates, including meter reading dates, billing dates, and budget billing due dates.
- To be able to generate schedule records for meter reading and billing, you must have defined the corresponding schedule records. In the meter reading units, you define general data for meter reading (for example, define June 25 as the start of the meter reading period). In the portion, you determine the basis for billing scheduling (for example, define June 30 as the end of the billing period).
Note
All dates specified in a portion or meter reading unit are displayed in full – that is with a year as well as the relevant day and month. The day and month displayed still apply the generation of schedule records, regardless of the year displayed. This means the year does not have any further function in this context. In other words, if you create a portion and specify June 30 2025 as the end of the billing period then June 30 also applies for 2026, 2027, 2028, and so on. To generate schedule records for later periods, you do not need to change the data in the portion. When you generate schedule records, you always determine an interval.