Contract Billing: General Information

In MYOB Advanced, you begin billing the customer after setup and activation of a contract. You can also bill a customer after contract usage has been recorded. You can also perform mass-processing billing for a contract with no usage.

Learning Objectives

In this chapter, you will learn how to do the following:

  • Run contract billing
  • Perform scheduled billing and billing on demand
  • Perform billing by case, by case activity, and by the number of cases

Applicable Scenarios

You perform the contract billing process when your company needs to bill customers for the services provided to them.

Billing of Contracts

After contract activation, your company starts providing the services defined by the contract. Billing is performed for the usage accumulated during a billing period. You also can perform billing for prepaid included services that have not been performed yet. Each time you run contract billing, an invoice is generated.

You can run contract billing for a particular contract on the Customer Contracts (CT301000) form as long as the contract has the Active or Pending Upgrade status. If needed, you can use the Run Contract Billing (CT501000) form to run the billing process for multiple contracts at once (mass-processing of billing).

Common Billing Scenarios

In MYOB Advanced, you can choose the frequency of billing depending on the terms of the contract and specify scheduled billing or on-demand billing.

Also, in MYOB Advanced, you can bill a customer for the services included in a contract on a per-case basis or a per-activity basis, or you can bill multiple contracts simultaneously.

Billing Scenarios

Common billing scenarios include the following:

  • Billing on a schedule: You bill on a schedule for the usage accumulated during a billing period, which can be a week, month, quarter, or year. Scheduled billing is the most common way to bill customers recurrently. The billing schedule for a contract can be viewed on the Summary tab on the Customer Contracts (CT301000) form. When you run contract billing, the system generates an invoice with the next billing date and shifts the schedule dates by the incrementation step. Here you can see the start date of the billing schedule, the billing period, the date of the last (most recent) invoice, and the date of the next invoice. On the AR History tab of the Customer Contracts form, you can view the invoices that have been generated previously for the selected contract.
  • Billing on demand: In some cases, you might want to perform contract billing any time services of the contract have been provided. If the contract is billed on demand, billing is performed for the usage accumulated up to the date of the billing.

For more information, see Contract Billing: Contract Examples

Ways of Billing a Customer

In MYOB Advanced, you can bill a customer in the following ways:

  • Billing on a per-case basis: In MYOB Advanced, you can bill a customer recurrently and on a per-case basis for time and overtime. If you are billing the customer in this way, on the Non-Stock Items (IN202000) form, you should first create a non-stock item of the Labor type. Then on the Case Classes (CR206000) form, you create a case class for cases that are billed on a per-case basis. On the Contract Items (CT201000) form, you create a contract item, and in the Recurring Item box, you specify the recurring item.
    After you create, set up, and activate the contract that includes the contract item, you create a case on the Cases (CR306000) form. On the Additional Info tab, you specify the billable time and billable overtime and release the case.
    Note: With per-case billing you can bill the customer only after the case is closed.
    For more information, see Contract Billing: To Bill a Support Contract by Case Usage.
  • Billing on a per-activity basis: In MYOB Advanced, you can also bill a customer on a per-activity basis for time and overtime. To set up billing by case activities, on the Non-Stock Items form, you should first create a non-stock item of the Labor type. Then on the Case Classes form, you create a case class for cases which will be billed based on a per-activity. On the Contract Items form, you create a contract item, and in the Recurring Item box, you specify the recurring item.

    After you create, set up, and activate the contract that includes this contract item, you create a case on the Cases form. On the Additional Info tab, you link the contract to the case in the Contract box, and on the Activities tab, you add the activity and specify the billable time or overtime for each act of rendering services. Then you release the case and bill the contract. For more information, see Contract Billing: To Bill a Consulting Contract by Employee Activity Usage.