A billing account is a child record on the customer record. It is used to show all billing-specific information for that customer. The billing account record includes billing schedule, default payment terms, the bill to address, and currency. More than one billing account should be created for our customer if the customer has a need to be billed using different billing-specific information– for instance, different payment terms, or bill to address, or currency.
- Billing account records contain the following details:
- The start date, which is the date the billing account becomes active.
- The next bill cycle date is the date the next recurring invoice will be created.
- The last bill cycle date is the date the last recurring invoice will be created, the
- The last build date is the date the latest invoice was created.
- The billing account record also stores a billing schedule. Billing accounts only use charge-based billing schedules. Charge-based billing schedule support two types of recurrence patterns:
- a fixed bill date– The fixed bill date indicates the recurring invoice will be generated on a fixed date basis, defined by the billing schedule recurrence date and recurrence frequency.
- an anniversary bill date– The anniversary bill date indicates the recurring invoice will be generated on an anniversary date basis. This is defined by the billing account start date and recurrence frequency.
To enable Billing Accounts, you must first enable:
- Consolidate Projects on Sales Transactions (Setup > Accounting > Preferences > Accounting Preferences. On the Items/Transactions subtab > Sales & Pricing > Consolidate Projects on Sales Transactions).
- Charge Based Billing (Setup > Company > Setup Tasks > Enable Features. On the Transactions subtab> Billing > Charge Based Billing).
After enabling both prerequisites,
- Billing Account Feature can be enabled by navigating to Set Up> Company> Enable Features (under transactions subtab),> Billing Account
We can access Billing accounts from Lists > Relationships > Billing Accounts or by clicking New on the Billing Account subtab on the Customer record.