Budget Billing

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A utility company usually bills its services at the end of a supply period. This can be
periodic billing or even annual billing. With the high utility bills customer can generate
even paying the periodic bills takes time for the customers, causing the execution run of
dunning and installment plans. But the utility firm needs cash to maintain its current
business so it can switch to Budget Billing amounts instead of the amount the customer
is expected to owe, so that the utilitys liquidity is maintained. The basis of Budget
Billing is the Budget Billing plan which sets the due dates and the Budget Billing
amounts.

The system can automatically create Budget Billing plans during invoicing or
move-in processing. However, one can create them manually too.

Contracts that have to be invoiced together (joint invoicing) are assigned a

common Budget Billing plan. All other contracts in the contract account can have their
own separate Budget Billing plan. Budget billing amounts can be stored either as down
payments (statistical receivables) or as partial bills (debit entries) in Contract
Accounts Receivable and Payable and are therefore subject to all dunning and
payment procedures.
There are 4 Budget Billing Procedures as mentioned and explained below.
1.

Statistical Procedure

2.

Debit Entry Procedure (Partial Bills)

3.

Payment Plan Procedure

4.

Payment Scheme Procedure

First a bit on the categories of Budget Billing. IS-U/CCS supports Average Monthly
Billing (AMB) and Budget Billing Procedure (BBP) as special budget billing categories
applicable to North America.
In Budget Billing, an average amount is determined either through simulation or
manually. The customer pays that average amount for a period of 12 months. At the
same time, the customers actual consumption is billed, and the results are printed on
the bill. In addition, the difference between the customers actual consumption and the
average amount is calculated, updated monthly, and printed on the bill. In the last
month of the meter reading period, the actual amount and the accumulated difference
are billed.

In Average Monthly Billing, the customer is charged an average amount based on

billings over the last x months (we can define the number of months, including
minimum and maximum number of months, in Customizing). In addition, the
customers actual consumption is billed, and the results are printed on the bill. The
amounts due for later months are calculated using the average of the previous monthly
bills, the current bill and the accumulated difference. That difference is updated
monthly and is printed on the bill.
Parameter Records have a special role to play as they along with the portion which
decides on the BB cycle and the due dates. The due dates for the budget billing amounts
are calculated directly from the portion applicable to the contract and from the
parameter record.
The following data is defined:

The length of the budget billing period (a number of months or a year)

The budget billing cycle, meaning the equal distribution of dates over the period
(one or more months)
However, one can override the preset values from the portion either in the budget billing
plan itself or in a contract. While changes made in the budget billing plan take effect
immediately, entries made in the contract do not take effect until the budget billing plan
is created again.
Every parameter record can contain up to 5 budget billing cycles. One can select the
following values:

00: No budget billing amounts are levied

01: Budget billing amounts are levied every month

02: Budget billing amounts are levied every 2 months

03: Budget billing amounts are levied every 3 months

04: Budget billing amounts are levied every 4 months

06: Budget billing amounts are levied every 6 months

12: Annual payer; one budget billing amount is levied.

When we define a budget billing cycle, we must enter the budget billing cycle as well as
the scheduled print date of the budget billing request or the creation of the partial bill in
the BB req./part. bill field.
In the field Months inv.-1st BB, we define the time between the end of the last billing
period and point when the first budget billing amount is levied.
If we want to use the parameter record to create portions with a duration of days, we
need to enter the number of days after the start of this period that we want the first
budget billing item to be calculated in the field Days to Bud. Bill. The system uses this
number of days to calculate the other budget billing items.

r Record

Paramete

In the portion we have the following fields

BB/Bill Dates (Group Due Date of Budget Billing Items and Bill)
Here, you can define whether you want to group the due date together with the next
budget billing amount or with the next bill.
Dun Due Date (Dun the Last Due Date of a Budget Billing Plan)
This indicator is only used for the statistical budget billing plan procedure. When it is
set, the Cannot Be Dunned in BB Plan field is not set.

Define Budget Billing Cycles

When we select the budget billing cycle, we can specify the number of budget billing
amounts that are charged. If we want to levy budget billing amounts, at least one
permitted budget billing cycle must be set with the number of budget billing amounts.
Budget Billing Cycle
We can define a cycle in the portion as a standard cycle. We can only use budget billing
cycles that are defined in the allocated parameter record. If we do not levy budget billing
amounts, no data is saved in the budget billing data table TE423 (Budget Billing Dates)
when the schedule records of the portion are generated.
If we define more than one cycle, the entries for every cycle are saved in the table
TE423.

Portion
Budget Billing Amount Calculation
The system calculates the budget billing amount on the basis of the expected meter
reading results (Extrapolation). Extrapolation can be based on the following
information: Amounts from the last bill. The extrapolation lines for the budget billing
amounts are generated automatically during periodic billing.

Periodic consumption

Reference value in the rate

Manual specification of the budget billing amounts

The following functions are also available for calculating the budget billing amount:

In the case of an interim billing, one can specify whether the remaining budget
billing amounts are to be adjusted.

In the case of budget billing, one can also perform mass changes.
1.

In case of statistical budget billing procedure, the budget billing amounts

are displayed as a statistical posting (not a posting in general ledger) in the account
balance display.

2.

In case of partial bill procedure, the individual amounts are entered as a

receivable on the debit side after the completed partial bill run. The budget billing
amounts are not displayed in the account balance display immediately after the
budget billing plan has been created unlike statistical budget billing. The budget
billing plan is managed for the partial bill procedure in a shadow table (DFKKMOP
and DFKKMOPW). This is not used by FI-CA. After the report Create Partial Bill
(transaction EA11) has been started, the item is posted in FI-CA (debit entry). This is
an actual posting with VAT.

3.

In the payment plan, the utility company and the customer decide on the
amount to be paid with each bill. So instead of paying the actual bill amount, which
varies according to season, the customer pays the payment plan amount. The utility
company records the difference between the payment plan amount and the actual
bill amount and charges it at a later date. Depending on the category to which the
payment plan belongs, or depending on the settings in the contract, the difference
amount is reimbursed or charged to the customer when the payment plan expires or,
at the very latest, when the customers moves out of the premise. Consumption billing
must take place for every due date of the payment plan. Because of this, the payment
plan is not comparable to a statistical budget billing plan or a partial bill, in which
the relevant amounts are charged in between two periodic bills. Also we can only
create payment plans from category BBP. Payment plans from category AMB are not
actually created but are managed as virtual payment plans in the system based on
the start month or alternative start month defined in the contract. When the monthly
bill is created, the payment plan data is evaluated and included in the calculation of
the payment plan amount.

Pa
yment Plan

4.

The payment scheme is a statistical budget billing procedure. In this

procedure, the system determines the budget billing amounts to be paid based on the
consumption billing amounts of past and current billing periods, and distributes
these evenly across the next billing period. The system calculates the budget billing
amount from an extrapolated portion, which reflects the expected consumption for
the current billing period, and a known portion from the copied consumption billing.
Point to note is that we can only use the payment scheme procedure with the
Customizing setting Tax Determination in Billing. We cannot use the payment
scheme procedure in combination with multi-level tax determination (for example,

Tax Jurisdication Code). The amount of a payment scheme item can never be smaller
than zero. Therefore, a payment scheme cannot have a credit subtransaction.