Describing Omnichannel Convergent Billing (1MC)

Sometimes, you might want to use collective processing to create a single follow-up document for several preceding documents. For example, you might want to create a single invoice for multiple orders or outbound deliveries. To combine multiple items of the preceding documents (sales orders, deliveries) successfully, the items must have specific common characteristics. These characteristics are, for example, the billing date, the payer, and the terms of payment. To date, in standard functionality, these preceding documents were only from the sales application area.

SAP S/4HANA Cloud now provides applications that can combine billing data from other SAP application areas as well as from external data sources to create a single billing document to present to a customer. The data sets from the SAP applications and the external data sets must have specific common characteristics such as sold-to party and sales organisation to allow data combination to a single billing document.

An External Billing Document Request (EBDR) is a request object that persists billing data received from an external system in your SAP S/4HANA Cloud system. An EBDR has a dedicated object page that displays attributes. EBDRs are of central importance for the main uses cases of omnichannel convergent billing. These objects appear alongside other SD documents in the billing due list (inside the Create Billing Documents app). This enables external billing data to be billed together (converged) with internal billing due list items (such as sales orders and debit memo requests) to produce a single, final customer invoice. EBDRs don't need to be combined with internal billing data - stand-alone billing of the external billing data that they contain is also possible.

• You can now enter billing data that you want to bill in your SAP S/4HANA Cloud system into a pre-delivered Microsoft ® Excel ® (spreadsheet) template.
• You can do this manually (by hand) or configure the system that generates the billing data to output it in the required format (specified by the template).
• Once your external billing data is correctly written to the required format (*.XLSX), you can easily and quickly upload the data into SAP S/4HANA Cloud.
• Once in the system, your data is processed and persisted in the form of EBDRs that appear in the billing due list (Create Billing Documents app) and the Manage Billing Document Requests app.

• The figure, Manage Uploaded Billing Data, shows a preview of the billing data displayed in different tabs that are categorized according to the type of data (1).
• You can run an import simulation to check that all the data to be imported is valid and doesn't conflict with existing data (2).
• If the results of the simulation are valid, you can choose Create to persist the data in your system in the form of an EBDR (3).

This is the process diagram for scope item 1MC - Convergent Billing.

Note: Where solid and dashed lines emanate from a process step the dashed lines represent an alternative combination of the external billing document request with the process data originating from one or more of the SAP S/4HANA Cloud processes.

The main benefits of the business process are listed in the figure, Business Benefits.

The table, Principal Roles and SAP Fiori Apps used in Convergent Billing, lists the roles and apps used in the process steps.

External billing document requests (EBDRs) are request objects that serve to transform and persist billing data that your SAP S/4HANA Cloud system has received from an external source (such as an external SAP or non-SAP system). Once an EBDR has been created in your SAP S/4HANA Cloud system, the billing items that it represents can be billed independently or together with internal sales and distribution documents to produce one final, combined customer invoice. One major advantage of this omnichannel approach to billing is that it greatly reduces the administrative overhead that is traditionally associated with the combined billing of solution-centric offerings.

The Billing Document Request App provides the following view and search features:

• View the general attributes (for example, billing date, status and total amount) and contextual information (for example, the source system from which the BDR data originates).
• View the terms and conditions (Incoterms).
• View individual billing items contained in the BDR.
• View the business partners involved in the transaction.
• View accounting information.
• View pricing elements and tax information.
• View texts that are attached to the EBDR from the source system or upload.

With the Billing Document Request app, you display the details of an external billing document request (EBDR). This includes the status, involved business partners, net value, individual billing items, and several other aspects of the EBDR. 

The Billing Document Request app has the following transactional features:

• Branch directly to item details and material details.
• Branch directly the sold-to party object page.

EBDRs enable you to bill external billing data from different sources. Moreover, you can also converge the external billing data (for example, pay-per-use data) with internal billing data (for example, billable items from a delivery).

The app consists of front-end components (such as the user interfaces) and back-end components (such as the OData service). The back-end and front-end components are delivered with separate products and have to be installed in a system landscape that is enabled for SAP Fiori.

With the Create Billing Documents app, you can create billing documents (for example, invoices and credit memos) from items in the billing due list. This includes debit memo requests, sales orders, deliveries, and other sales and distribution (SD) documents. You can also generate temporary billing documents that you can review before converting them to final billing documents.

The Create Billing Documents app provides the following view and search features:

• Search using basic filters: by document number, document category and sold-to party for all billing due list items created before and including a specific date.
• Search using additional filters; add additional filters to the filter bar and filter by sales organization, by billing type, by customer project or by billing document issue.
• Select the columns you want to display.
• Sort the displayed data by one or more data types.
• Group the data.
• Use page variants to save and load custom filter and column layouts that you have created.

When searching, you can show and hide the filter bar. You can save your filter settings and restore the original settings.

Saved layout variants also save the values that you have set in filters. You can share saved layout variants with other system users.

The Create Billing Documents app has the following transactional features:

• Display details of any SD document in the billing due list (for example, sales order, outbound delivery or credit memo request) by choosing the corresponding document number.
• You can make billing settings so that the system performs intended actions automatically when you create billing documents.
• You can select one or more items in the billing due list to create billing documents for them.
• After you have created billing documents, you can manage them using the Manage Billing Documents app.

According to the billing settings, the following actions are performed by the system when creating billing documents:

• Enter the billing date and type before billing.

  If you enable this setting and choose to create billing documents, the system requests a billing date and the required billing type before creating billing documents.

• Create separate billing document for each item of billing due list.

  If you enable this setting and choose to create billing documents, the system creates separate billing documents for each item of the billing due list that you have selected.

• Automatically post billing documents

  The system automatically posts all billing documents that you create to accounting and triggers output (for example, an invoice by e-mail). Note that if you do not choose to post billing documents automatically, you must post them manually using the Manage Billing Documents app.

• Display billing documents after creation.

  The system generates and displays temporary billing documents for the SD documents that you have selected for billing. You then have the option to save or discard them. Saving converts them to final billing documents, while discarding them returns you to the billing due list.