Introducing Project Billing (‏4E9‏)

The key process steps supported by Project Billing include:

• Managing Project Billing
• Monitoring Billing Elements
• Preparing Billing
• Automating the Billing process, scheduling the Project Billing preparation job
• Submitting BDRs

The benefits of Project Billing are:

• Reducing time to bill for a project billing manager or billing team.
• Reporting and tracking of different financial values that are relevant for billing.
• Ability to write off or postpone full amounts or quantities.
• Enabling of flexible material determination so that new activity types and sales materials can be defined.

The following Core Data Services (CDS) Views have been released for Manage Project Billing, which allows users to consume data related to project billing for analytical purposes:

• Project Billing Element (I_ProjectBillingElement)
• Entries for Project Billing Element (I_ProjectBillingElementEntry)
• Entry Flow for Project Billing Element (I_ProjectBillingElementEntrFlw)
• Billing Plan for Project Billing Element (I_PrjBlgElmEntrBillgPlnLink)
• Journal Entry for Billing Element (I_PrjBlgElmEntrJrnlEntrLink)

Billing Specialist – Projects is the business role which enables you to manage project billing and schedule repricing of billing records for projects. SAP_BR_PROJ_BILLG_SPCLST is the template business role, which corresponds to the Billing Specialist based on the business catalog - Project Systems - Project Billing (SAP_PS_BC_PROJ_BLNG_PC) for the new billing solution for customer projects. The business catalog, Project Management - Projects Billing (SAP_PSP_BC_PRJ_BILLING_PC), is deprecated, which provides access to the Release Billing Proposals, Release Billing Requests, and Edit Billing Request apps. The key tasks performed by the Billing Specialist are described in the following sections.

The Manage Project Billing app enables the Billing Specialist to monitor billing elements, prepare Project Billing Requests for ones that are due, and generate corresponding Billing Document Requests.

A Billing Specialist can use this app to complete the following tasks:

• Monitor and prepare billing for billing elements of contract types: Fixed Price, Time and Expenses, Periodic Service, Usage-Based.
• For Time and Expenses and Usage-Based billing elements, you can do the following:
  • Postpone items to the next bill.
  • Postpone items with a service date after a specified date to the next bill.
  • Write off the entire or partial amount to be billed for one or more items.
  • Process previously written-off items.
  • Include any items that were postponed or written off previously, before submitting the project billing request in the current billing cycle.
• Prepare billing for multiple billing elements, all belonging to the same customer project, in one project billing request.
• Create a billing document request for a billing element upon submitting the prepared project billing request.
  Note

  If the billing document request is created directly after submitting the project billing request, you can preview the invoice and look at the actual printout that would be sent to the customer.
• Create a billing document request for a billing element with a prepayment amount that is due.
• Add, edit and delete additional items in project billing request for billing elements included in this project billing request.
• Incorporate any received prepayment amounts automatically when preparing the bill in a billing cycle.
• Continue to prepare billing seamlessly when the Billing Document Request from a previous billing cycle gets rejected. The billing amounts from the rejected billing document request are automatically integrated into your current billing cycle.
• Prepare billing for unbilled amounts of projects in stage Completed.

Note

You can transfer customer reference details from sales order items to the billing document request (BDR) using the Manage Project Billing app.

If the sales order items have different customer references, then individual BDRs will be created for each customer reference.

With this app, a Billing Specialist can schedule recalculation of the billing amounts when the following scenarios occur:

• The sales rate changes.
• There is a change in material configuration leading to a change in sales rate.
• The To Be Billed amount does not reflect correctly in the Manage Project Billing app due to errors.

A Billing Specialist can use this app to complete the following tasks:

• Schedule jobs to update the sales rate and the unbilled amount for billing elements in the following projects:
  • Specific customer projects.
  • Projects belonging to specific customers.
  • Projects belonging to specific service organizations.

  The revenue recognition corresponding to these billing elements also gets updated.

• Monitor jobs that have been scheduled.
• Display job results with detailed error logs. You can navigate to the job results by clicking the icon in the Log column.
• Copy a job.
• Cancel a job.

To further automate the billing process, the Billing Specialist can use the functions for scheduling the automatic preparation and release of the billing document requests that are overdue for the current date of different projects, billing methods, and prepayment posting.

You can use this app to do the following:

• Create a new job to schedule the automatic release of billing document requests for billing elements belonging to a particular project or projects of a customer or service organization.
• Select different billing elements or billing methods that you want to process and include in the billing document request.
• Release the billing document requests for billing elements with existing project billing requests, without project billing requests or both.
• Create one billing document request per project or billing method.
• Schedule the release of billing document requests for a specific day and time, recurrently or immediately.
• View existing application jobs and check their status, log, and other details.

Note

Billing document request includes the amounts that are requested to be billed. This document is generated based on the project billing request and is used to create a final billing document that is sent to the customer.

With this app, you can select and get an overview of the existing project billing requests.

You can use this app to do the following:

• Display, sort and filter a list of all project billing requests in the system.

• Display project billing requests in detail.

• Adjust view settings.

• Navigate/share to related apps

• Track the approval status.

• Create a billing document request.

• Reject project billing requests.

• Export data to spreadsheets.

With this app, you can configure workflows to set up the approval process for project billing requests. The app provides several options for specifying the approver and the start conditions, and helps control and manage approval processes.

You can use this app to do the following:

• Display the list of existing workflow definitions.
• Display the detailed information for a workflow definition.
• Define the order in which the start conditions of existing workflows are checked.

  If you’ve defined several workflows, the start conditions are checked in the order you've defined. As soon as the start conditions for a workflow are met, this workflow is used. This ensures that only one workflow in the list of your defined workflows is started, even if several workflows have matching start conditions.

• Create new workflows or copy existing workflows and modify them according to your requirements. You can configure the workflow as follows:

  • Define recipients, such as an assignment by a user or a project responsibility (it can be a Project Accountant, a Project Controller, a Project Manager, or a Project Partner) who will receive approval requests. A project billing request will go for approval of that BE project role. Requests will be navigated to the member assigned to a corresponding role.

  • Set the step conditions for approval: if these conditions are met, the approval workflow is triggered.

  • Set automatic project billing request Approval/Rejection (after some time),

  • Support Approvals by multiple persons (different scenarios are available: approval by one of the specified recipients from the list or approval by all the persons specified),

• Create, copy, define the order, or deactivate workflows.

By default, approvers are informed via notifications in the SAP Fiori Launchpad.

Aa an approver, you can display the list of the project billing requests that have been sent for approval with the My Inbox - Project Billing Requests app. With this app, you can:

• Approve or reject project billing requests.

• Enter a reason for approval or rejection.

• Claim a project so that only you can approve or reject it.

• Forward a project billing request to another user for approval.

• Suspend a project billing request for a certain period of time.

• Display the workflow or task log.

• View the complete object page embedded in the app.

Note

You can configure the system to additionally notify approvers via email about new work items in their Inbox.

The following demo shows you how to define a workflow and how to perform the approval process: