This article describes the billing preferences that can be configured at the account level on the Settings>Financial>Billing Preferences page. These settings are used as the defaults for all customers except those where the settings have been specifically overridden at the customer level in the customer settings.
The following billing preferences can be set:
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Automatic posting of draft invoices (on/off)
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Posting of ready draft charges on renewal (on/off)
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Automatic payment collection using the customer's default payment method (on/off)
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Default net terms (the number of days before payment is due)
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Customer acquisition cost in dollars
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Automatic statusing of customers as suspended or cancelled when the specified conditions are met
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Inclusion of $0 charges on invoices (on/off)
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Earning (financial recording) of usage-based revenue in the previous period for end-of-period charges (on/off)
Tip
For information about overriding these settings at the customer level, see:
For information about configuring billing period preferences, see:
Note
If you adjust your billing preferences, be sure to click Save to retain your changes.
By default, Fusebill creates a draft invoice for you to review and manually post if the invoice is correct. Depending on the number of customers you have, this may be too labour-intensive. If you turn this setting on, every invoice will automatically be posted.
This setting can be overridden for individual customers by accessing Payment Option Settings through the Customers Dashboard.
When turned on, ready draft charges are posted on renewal, including all ready draft charges from renewals, subscriptions, and purchases.
This setting can be overridden for individual customers by accessing Payment Option Settings through the Customers Dashboard.
When auto-collect is turned on, payment will be automatically collected against the customer's default payment method when payment comes due. If the system is unable to collect payment against this payment method, the Dunning process begins.
When auto-collect is turned off, you must manually add payments to customers.
This setting can be overridden for individual customers by accessing Payment Option Settings through the Customers Dashboard.
Threshold Billing
When auto-collect is turned on, you will also need to specify threshold billing rules.
"When balance is below" is the minimum amount a customer can have in their account. When the account balance falls below this amount, Fusebill will attempt Gateway collection to bring the customer's account balance back up to the "Bring balance back to" amount.
If you turn on "use minimum balance of $__ for Dunning", the customer's accounting status will be set to "poor standing" and flagged for Dunning the moment the customer's balance falls below the "When balance is below" amount.
This setting can be overridden for individual customers by accessing Payment Option Settings through the Customers Dashboard.
Default net terms control the due date of a posted invoice, which in turn controls when automatic credit card collection is triggered, and when the accounting status of a customer changes to "poor standing". For example, Net21 means that the invoice must be paid within 21 days of the invoice date.
If the majority of customers will be paying automatically by credit card or ACH, the default setting of Net0 is appropriate.
In addition to the Net Terms Net0, Net5, Net7, Net 10, and so on, you can select Specific Day of Month and enter a day, for example, "18". This means that payment is due and will be automatically collected on the day specified, for example, the 18th day of each month. The due date that appears on the invoice is also automatically set to this day.
This setting can be overridden for individual customers by accessing Payment Option Settings through the Customers Dashboard.
Customer acquisition cost is refers to the average amount of money spent to attract a new customer. The amount set here is point beyond which this cost has been recouped and the customer is associated with profits.
The value can be over written on an individual customer. If the average customer acquisition cost is known for your organization then this value can be set, otherwise, the value can safely be set as $0 and the Fusebill system will simply track the net profitability of the customer without considering Acquisition cost.
This setting can be overridden for individual customers by accessing Accounting Settings through the Customers Dashboard.
This group of settings controls the conditions that must be met to automatically status a customer as suspended or cancelled.
Default Grace Period
The default grace period is the number of days a customer can be in "poor standing" before their service status is changed to suspended. For example, if the default grace period is 30, the customer has 30 days beyond the payment due date to pay before their service status is changed to suspended. If the default grace period is 0, the customer’s service status will change to suspended the moment an invoice moves from "due" to "overdue".
When Customers are Automatically Un-Suspended
This setting controls what happens when a suspension is removed. Controls whether missed periods are charged following a customer unsuspension.
The default behavior of the Fusebill system is to include $0 Dollar charges on customer invoices in order to clearly inform customers of all services they have provisioned even when they are not incurring a fee for these services. In some instances, it may be desirable to not display $0 charges on customer invoices in order to prevent large invoices or minimize customer confusion. By checking the Show $0 Charges setting to “Off” you configure the system to always suppress charges that have either a 0 Quantity or a $0.00 unit Price value. There is an override at the Customer level settings that will allow you to override this setting on a by-customer basis.
If you have charges which bill at the end of a period, you can choose this accounting default setting to have those charges' earned revenue appear in the period in which the service was delivered. This is a common requirement for customers who bill on the first of the month but need the usage fees to be earned in the previous month.
Note: This feature only works with the "Auto post" setting enabled. If a ready draft invoice is posted manually, the charges will earn in the period the invoice was posted and not the previous period.
Consider the example of a usage fee that is charged at end of period and the bill date is the 1st. The current month is April and the amount of usage that was incurred in April was $30. If this setting is enabled:
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The charge ($30) for the usage fees will take place just after midnight on May 1st. Note that if there are any start of period charges, they will be combined together on the same invoice (e.g. monthly fee for May + usage fees for April).
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If the account is set to auto-post/auto-collect, the cash amount of $30 will be collected on May 1st and show up in May's cash collection numbers.
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However - the earned revenue for that service - $30 - will be recorded as earned revenue at 23:59:59 on April 30th. This reflects the fact that the usage fees represent a service which was delivered in April and therefore needs to be recorded as earned revenue in that period.
Keep in mind that the cash collected and the revenue earned are two separate things, and in this case, will be recorded in two different months.
In the first month that you enable this setting, you will "double-count" the revenue earned for these end of period charges. The system does not apply the change retroactively, meaning that the previous month's charges have already been recorded this month, and then this month's charges will also be recorded in the same month. From that point forward, the revenue will be earned once only and in the same month as the service was delivered.
This is an account-wide setting; all end of period charges will earn based on this setting and there is no individual charge or customer override. Your Accounting team should advise on which way you would like to earn revenue on these charges and set the account default accordingly.
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