Executing the Process from Consumption Items to Customer Invoice

CutAbove use the three services CPU, RAM, and Bandwidth for their Cloud Selection service.

The consumptions are stored in Convergent Invoicing and triggered to be rated in Convergent Charging. For the first invoice, a recurring fee for the service is created from the Billing Plan in Convergent Invoicing.

Let's see how this is done.

We return to Karen, O2C’s billing specialist. She creates recurring fees for the billing plans for CutAbove's new provider contract. CutAbove has a Subscription Contract for Cloud Selection Service Level Platinum. The Contract was closed on 01.03.2024. For each month, a recurring Fee of EUR1,000 and a recurring fee of EUR4,000 for Service level agreement platinum are created.

Later, Karen runs a rating for consumption items from the cloud storage usage.

All billable items from consumption and recurring are consolidated in one invoice for CutAbove.

As you explore new markets and new digital business models, regardless of industry, being able to accurately invoice your customers while compensating your partners in creative and sometimes complex revenue sharing agreements is critical. Both customers and partners are asking for the same invoicing capabilities: accuracy, personalization, comprehension, flexibility, and availability at every touchpoint. Customers want to easily check their invoices and to monitor their consumption in real-time, on any device.

When they subscribe to multiple services, they want to consolidate them into a single (= convergent) invoice overview, including discounts, taxes, and other billing variations as, for example, itemized details.

SAP BRIM offers a flexible solution for automating the billing and invoicing process. Consolidate service pricing from multiple sources to produce easily understandable invoices and discounts that drive loyalty, enhance cash flow, and increase customer engagement.

The invoicing component of SAP BRIM pulls rated events, or even complete bills, from several upstream, multivendor rating or billing streams, and then consolidates the information into a single converged invoicing document.

The resulting document can then be enriched with flexible discounts, multiple aggregations, different levels of detail, and notifications about prior payment activity or late payments.

Billable Item

A billable item (BIT) is a priced event transaction received by SAP Convergent Invoicing from a source system which is to be applied to a customer statement of invoice. BITs are stored and processed in SAP Convergent Invoicing.

In the business example for each usage record of CPU, one billable item is created.

Billing Plan

A Billing Plan in Convergent Invoicing is a definition of a scheduled plan for creation of billable items. It is assigned to a FI-CA provider contract item.

A Billing Plan can either create charges, credits, down payment requests, or a combination. For recurring billing plan items, refer to a billing cycle which can have a periodicity of monthly, quarterly, or yearly.

The following video outlines the requesting billing plan item process and item storage in SAP Convergent Invoicing:

In SAP Convergent Invoicing, we have the option to store billable items and consumption items. The storage of billable items is the starting point in SAP Convergent Invoicing, while the decision to store consumption items in SAP Convergent Invoicing is a solution architecture decision depending on the use cases.

Keep all invoice-relevant data in one system for consistency purposes.

One more hierarchy level is available regarding consumption items that are a source for billable items.

• One more option for aggregation is possible.
• Structured consumption item information on the invoice.
• Correction of consumption items in the SAP Convergent Invoicing correction workbench.
• Manual capturing of consumption in SAP Convergent Invoicing.
• Aggregation of consumption items before rating for the reduction of billable item volume.