The interworks.cloud platform offers a wide array of billing and invoicing options for you and your customers. However, as the volume of customer / service / billing combination increases overtime, you may need to adjust your billing settings in order to streamline your billing processes and avoid accounting-related hurdles during the reconciliation of your records with the ones from Microsoft. This is why we advise our customers to align their billing cycles with the ones from Microsoft for easier reconciliation of records. This page explains how to do exactly that, regardless of whether you are a Direct or Indirect CSP.
Billing & Invoicing settings for Direct CSPs
As a Direct CSP, you may want to process the payment the moment your customers purchase a subscription, rather than wait until a specific date to generate the invoice. To do that, you need to adjust the settings for both the accounts and the products.
I. Adjust Ordering Settings for Accounts
In the Edit mode of the account you want to modify, scroll down to the checked Ordering section.
At the Partial Charges Invoicing field, select On order day.
Uncheck the Enable Prorate Billing option to deactivate it.
When you have completed all the remaining information required for your account, click Save to save your changes.
II. Adjust Product Settings
In the Edit mode of the product you want to modify, scroll down to the Pricing section and select the Recurring charge - prepaid option.
At the Billing Date option, select Apply customer's options.
Click Save to save your changes.
That's it! From now on, the system will allow customers to purchase a subscription at any time and will generate an invoice for the remaining days until the subscription renewal. From that point on and at each renewal date, the system will generate one invoice for all the licenses of each specific product.
Let's check out the following example of purchases made by a single customer:
Product | Purchase date | Invoice date | Billing cycle |
|---|---|---|---|
1 seat of Product A | December 6 | December 6 |
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2 seats of Product B | December 14 | December 14 |
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1 additional seat of Product A | December 20 | December 20 |
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Billing & Invoicing settings for Indirect CSPs
As an Indirect CSP, you are probably interested in generating one aggregated invoice to each of your resellers for all the purchases they make within a subscription cycle, instead of flooding them with multiple invoices each time they purchase a service. To do that, you need to apply the following settings at the Accounts and Products modules:
I. Adjust Ordering Settings for Accounts
In the Edit mode of the account you want to modify, scroll down to the checked Ordering section.
Check the Enable Prorate Billing option and choose your preferred billing date (first day of the month, last day of the month, first order day or any day of the month, as per your preference).
Go the Partial Charges Invoicing field and select On billing day.
When you have completed all the remaining information required for your new account, click Save to save your changes.
II. Adjust Product Settings
In the Edit mode of the product you want to modify, scroll down to the Pricing section and select the Recurring charge - prepaid option.
At the Billing Date option, select Exclude from prorata and click Save to save your changes.
Important: please remember to do this for every new product you add.
That's it! You’re done!
To better understand this, let’s take a look at the following examples:
Example A: New subscription is purchased
A customer purchases a subscription on December 6th and the following settings apply:
Account Ordering Settings | Product Pricing Settings |
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In this case, the system will define the subscription period from December 6 to January 5 and will generate an invoice for this period on January 1st.
Example B: New subscription is purchased and seats increase during the same subscription period
A customer purchases a subscription on December 6th and the following settings apply:
Account Ordering Settings | Product Pricing Settings |
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On December 12, the customer purchases two additional seats. In this case, the system defines:
Product | Purchase date | Invoice date | Billing cycle |
|---|---|---|---|
1 seat of Product A | December 6 | January 1 |
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2 more seats of Product A | December 14 | January 1 |
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3 seats of product A | January 6 (renewal) | February 1: one invoice for all 3 seats |
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In other words, as the billing date of the products are excluded from prorata, the system will generate all the invoices on the defined billing day, i.e. on January 1st. From February 1st onwards, the system will generate one invoice for all 4 seats.
As the example shows, this feature allows you to gather and group on one specific date all the invoices from purchases made on various dates for easier reconciliation of your records with the ones from your vendor.