What are billing groups for?

Use billing groups to bundle multiple items from different contracts, orders, or business units of a customer. This allows you to invoice multiple line items created under one customer in one document. The document can contain both debit and credit items. Billing groups help reduce the number of documents your customer receives if, for example, they have several contracts or a usage-based contract that creates new items each time the customer creates a new usage.

Due to the billing group management, multiple business segments and locales can be combined into one billing document. The items will be grouped and listed as separate objects on the respective document.

This means that even if you offer multiple products and services that are divided into different business segments, you can still combine all of their line items into a single billing document for your customer, as long as the business segments belong to the same billing group.

How to create a billing group

Step 1: Open the billing group overview

To create a new billing group, navigate to: Configuration > Business Model > Billing Groups > Billing Group Overview

Click the „+ Add“ button in the top left corner of the overview, which opens an overlay window.

Step 2: Add a new billing group

A. Select the business segments

To create a new billing group, enter the "Ident" and the "Name" for the billing group, which is mandatory. Now add one or more business segments to the billing group. If you do not have any business segments yet, create a new one using the "+" button and fill in the fields ident, name, and description. Learn more about business segments and how to create them.

B. Select the locales

After you have picked the business segments for your billing group, continue with selecting the locales (at least one is mandatory). These locale configurations are used to distinguish between regions or countries and assign them different characteristics like language. If you have not created any locale configurations before, create a new configuration by clicking the "+" button. Select the country from the drop-down menu and add a region. Fill in the data fields name, valid languages, default language, and fallback language, and click the "Save" button to save your locale.

Step 3: Confirm and save the new billing group

To complete the new billing group, select the business segments and locale configurations you’d like to add to the billing group. Click the "Save" button in the bottom right corner to add the new billing group. A confirmation note will pop up in the top right corner. The new billing group is now listed in the billing group overview. If you'd like to cancel instead of saving the new billing group, click “Discard” and the overlay window will close.

How to manage billing groups

Whenever necessary, you can check the billing group details and make changes to it. Let’s take a closer look at the details page of billing groups. Go to the billing group overview and click the "Details" button at the end of the respective billing group entry you’d like to see. The billing group details page opens showing four sections: name, business segments, locale configuration, and splitting configuration.

1. Ident and name

The first section shows the ident and name of the billing group. You can edit both by clicking the pencil symbol in the top right corner.

2. Business segments

The second section shows the business segments that are assigned to the billing group. Add new business segments by clicking the + symbol or remove assigned business segments by clicking the delete button. If you’d like to make changes to the name or description of a business segment, click the edit button and save the changes accordingly.

3. Locale configuration

The third section lists the locale configuration assigned to the billing group. Add new locale configurations by clicking the + symbol or remove assigned business segments by clicking the delete button. If you’d like to change the country or make changes to the region fields or add a new region to the locale, click the edit button and save the changes later accordingly.

If you have more than one region configured a default has to be declared that will be considered for anything you send us without a region. Different regions can be used to define default behavior for language selection. Regions can also be used in case different regions have different tax rates. In this case, you should also configure your Tax Rules for those regions.

4. Splitting configuration

The fourth section, the splitting configuration, defines which items will be included in one invoice and which will be split into several invoices. The checkboxes that are fixed are mandatory splitting parameters.

For example, the check mark for "Customer" means that data from two customers will never be merged into one invoice. Likewise, data with different currencies will never be listed on one invoice. Thus, customer and currency will inevitably lead to a split. These settings can be selected for Contracts, Business Segments, and Business Case.

If different contracts are to be billed via individual invoices, splitting must be activated for "Contracts". If it is deactivated, items from different contracts can be grouped together on one invoice - as long as they belong to the same customer, have the same currency, etc. The same applies to business segments and business case.