Approving and Locking Bills - Managing Bill Lifecycle - m3ter Documentation

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Account Bills can be taken through a lifecycle, from when they are first generated in a Pending status, being approved, and finally being locked at which point they can no longer be recalculated or updated. Bills can be in either Pending or Approved status:

• Pending Status:

  • When Bills are first generated they have a Pending status.
  • You can move a Bill into Approved from Pending status.
  • You cannot lock a Pending status Bill.
  • Pending status allows you to review and check an Account Bill before moving it to Approved. When you are satisfied a Pending status Bill on an Account is correct and complete, you can move it to Approved status meaning it is ready for sending out to invoicing systems.

• Approved Status:

  • You can lock an Approved status Bill.
  • If you recalculate an Approved status Bill, such as running a Bill job that includes an Approved Bill or recalculating an Approved Bill directly in Bill management, the Bill is automatically moved back to Pending status.

Note: Approving Bills with Integrations set up for 3rd-party systems. m3ter integrations for sending Bills to 3rd-party invoicing systems are typically configured to send Bills out when they are changed from Pending to Approved status, and this change of status can also be used as the trigger for billing flows implemented for custom integrations.

Only Approved status Bills can be locked. A locked Bill cannot be changed - it can no longer be:

• Selected in Bill management.
• Unlocked.
• Updated.
• Recalculated, and is therefore excluded from any billing runs.

You can also define a Global lock date in the Console under Bill management:

• All Bills dated before or on the global lock date are effectively locked and cannot be updated or recalculated.
• However, globally locked Bills can be unlocked - if you change the Global lock date and move the date backwards in time, any Bills previously locked globally but which are dated after the new global locking date will be unlocked.

This topic explains how to work in Bill management to move Bills through their lifecycle:

• Approving Bills
• Auto-Approving Bills
• Locking Bills
• Setting Global Lock Date

Tip: API calls for managing Bill lifecycle?

• Changing Bill Status. You can use the Update Bill Status API call to change the status of a Bill.
• Locking Bills. You can use the Lock Bill API call to lock Bills.

Approving Bills

When Bills are first generated, they have Pending status. For Pending Bills, you can:

• Select Bills directly in Bill management and then approve the selected Bills.
• Approve a set of Bills by a specified invoice date period.

To approve Bills:

1. Select Billing. The Bill management page opens and lists Bills for the default Invoice date setting of the current month.
2. If you want to approve Bills for a different period, use the Invoice date calendar pop-ups to adjust the period accordingly. See Running Bills and Viewing Bill Details.

• If you want to review the details of a Bill before approving it, select the Reference hotlink text to open the Bill.

3. Use the checkboxes to select the Bill or Bills you want to approve.

• Note that if you’ve selected a Bill which is already at Approved status. the Approve selected button is automatically disabled.

4. Select Approve selected. The selected Bills are moved to Approved status and the Lock selected button is now enabled for these Bills.

5. If you want to approve a set of Bills by date range, select Approve bills. The Approve bills modal appears:

6. Use the Calendar pop-ups to select the Invoice start date and Invoice end date to define the date range for Bill approval.

• Note to clarify: start and end dates for Bill approval date range:

• The Invoice start date is inclusive. This means, for example, if you’ve set the Invoice start date for Bill approval date range as April 1st, any Bill with an Invoice date of April 1st or later will be approved.

  • The Invoice end date you select for the date range is exclusive. This means, for example, if you’ve set the Invoice end date for Bill approval date range as April 30th, any Bill with an Invoice date of April 29th or earlier will be approved. However, a Bill dated April 30th will not be approved.

7. Select Approve bills. The modal closes and all Pending status Bills dated within the defined date range are moved to Approved status.

Auto-Approving Bills

You can enable auto-approval for Bills, which allows you to specify a time period ( in minutes, hours, or days) following the Bill date after which Bills will be automatically approved:

• For example, suppose you are using a monthly billing frequency for an end customer Account and Bills are created at 12 midnight on the last day of each month. You then enable Auto-approve bills and set it to 2 hours. Each month’s Bill is approved automatically at 2 a.m. on the first day of the month following.

Warnings!

• Possible Conflict between Auto-Approval of Bills and Scheduled Bill Interval! If a Bill is recalculated because of late-arriving data after being auto-approved, and the bill auto-approval interval is less than 24 hours, then the Bill will revert to a Pending, unapproved state:

• We recommend setting the auto-approval interval to 24 hours or longer when using scheduled bill updates.

  • Please see Understanding the Scheduled Billing Process for more details.

• Auto-Approval tied to Bill date! If you generate a Bill early and before the scheduled Bill date, it will not be auto-approved from the date/time you do this, but only at the specified time after the Bill date.

To set up auto-approval for Bills:

1. Select Settings:

The Organization page opens with the Configuration tab selected.

2. On the Organization configuration details panel, select Edit. The Organization configuration page opens.
3. Under Bill auto-approval use the Auto-approve bills switch to enable auto-approval. Two time period settings fields are activated for Bill auto-approval grace period.
4. Use these two fields to define the time-period following the Bill date you want Bills to be auto-approved:

• Use the drop-down field to select Minutes, Hours, or Days.
• Use the numeric field to enter the number of minutes, hours, or days.

5. Select Update Organization configuration.

Locking Bills

You can only lock Bills that have an Approved status. When you’ve locked a Bill it can no longer be changed and is excluded from any billing runs. To lock Bills:

1. Select Billing. The Bill management page opens and lists Bills for the default Invoice date setting of the current month.
2. If you want to lock Bills for a different period, use the Invoice date calendar pop-ups to adjust the period accordingly. See Running Bills and Viewing Bill Details.
3. Use the checkboxes to select the Approved Status Bill or Bills you want to lock.

• Note that if you’ve selected a Bill which is in Pending status, the Lock selected button is automatically disabled.

4. Select Lock selected:

• The Status on Console screens will show the selected Bills as Approved.
• Since the Bill locked property value has been changed to true, the Locked column will also show the Bill as Locked:

Note that locked Bills can no longer be:

• Selected in the list.
• Unlocked.
• Updated.
• Recalculated.

Important!

• Re-running Billing. If you re-run billing, locked Bills are excluded.
• Deleting Locked Bills. You can delete a locked Bill using the Delete Bill API call. We strongly recommend that you only do this after due consideration since deleted Bills cannot be recovered. This call is made available for removing incorrect or obsolete Bills, and for Bills that have not been sent to customers. Where end-customer invoices for Bills have been sent to customers, Bills should not be deleted to ensure you have an audit trail of how the invoice was created.

Setting Global Lock Date

You can also set a Global lock date, after which all Bills dated before or on the date set will be effectively locked and you won’t be able to update or recalculate them. The global locking capability allows you to impose a cut-off date where all Bills dated on or before the date are frozen - they can no longer be updated and are excluded from billing. However, if you subsequently change the Global lock date for your Bills and move it back in time, any Bills whose date is now after the new global lock date will be unlocked.

To set a Global lock date:

1. Select Billing. The Bill management page opens and lists Bills for the default Invoice date setting of the current month.
2. Select Set global lock date. A Set global lock date modal appears:

• Note that the default date used in the Modal when it’s first opened is dependent on the end date set in Bill management for the Invoice date range - in this example, the end date was set at 04/30/2023 and the default global lock date is set as the following day.

3. Use the calendar popup to select the global locking date for which you want all Bills to be locked and then select Save. The modal closes and the Status on Console screens will show affected Bills as Locked, since a global lock has been has now been set on those Bills in Bill configuration. However, the locked property on these Bills will remain as false, since globally locked Bills can be unlocked in Bill configuration if the global lock date is changed.