Automated Invoicing Function

Table of Content

• General settings of the accounting function
• Settings for financial and bank accounts
• Country-specific settings (e.g.: billing language)
• Settings for automated e-mailing
• Display for verification of the settings made

 

Management of the Automated Invoicing Functions

Automated invoicing allows you to create invoices at the end of the month for the services consumed by your end customers and EMP/CPO partners. The invoices are created automatically and sent to your customers as a PDF document.

Below is an overview of the settings and configurations required to use automated invoicing.

To manage the automated invoicing features, please go to Finance/Tariffs & invoicing/Automated Invoicing. To activate the invoicing function, please click "inactive" and note that the automated invoicing function is subject to a fee.

 

General settings

INVOICE RUN SETTINGS
Here, you can configure your settings for automated invoicing.

 

ENABLE AUTOMATIC INVOICING?
This option activates the automatic invoicing for charging processes, monthly surcharges or any activation costs. The invoices are automatically generated on the last day of the current month.

AUTOMATIC EMAIL SENDING?
By activating the automatic mailing, the invoices will be sent to the respective recipient e-mail stored in the CRM contact.

If this setting is deactivated, invoices are created in the system but not sent.

CREATE INVOICES WITH AMOUNT 0,00
By default, invoices are created only with an amount greater than 0,00 (currency). Activate this field if you want invoices with total costs of 0,00 to be created.

CREATE AGGREGATED INVOICES
To avoid long PDFs, there is an option to create summarized invoices, i.e., to group invoice items together. This function prevents, for example, the creation of individual accounting lines per RFID card. 

Example of non-aggregated invoice

 

In the case of a non-aggregated invoice, one entry line is printed for each identification medium and the monthly costs and the costs for the charging processes that were carried out with the identification medium are listed underneath. As can be seen in the example above, the designation of the identification medium is given position 1, the monthly basic fee position 1.1 and the total costs of the charging processes position 1.2.

If the customer had another identification medium, this would be listed in position 2, and so on.

Example of aggregated invoice

 

In case of aggregated invoices, the identification medium is no longer specified and all monthly basic fees and all total costs for charging processes of this contact (CRM) are aggregated.

 

CREATE YOUR OWN INVOICES PER SUB-ENTITY?
By configuring entity-based invoicing, you allow creation of invoices in your own design or separate conditions of your sub-companies. Assignment of charging stations (based on charging station) or identification media (based on identification media) to the respective entity via the companies management is a must.

In addition, you can decide here whether you or your entities act as CPO - based on charging station - or as EMP - based on authentication media

 

 

Entity based / charging station

Usecase: You are a charging station operator (CPO) and/or have several subsidiary entities who are also charging station operators.

You will receive a credit note from has·to·be for charging processes that run through the be.ENERGISED COMMUNITY. The credit note will be issued to you by has·to·be. If credit notes should also be issued to your sub-CPOs, please use the "CPO Crediting process" function.

However, if you have your own roaming interface (e.g. Intercharge) through which roaming charging processes occur with external EMPs (non-COMMUNITY EMPs), you charge these transactions directly to the EMPs. Using "entity based / charging station" invoicing, you can specify that each of your sub-CPOs acts individually as an invoice issuer, with its own invoice numbers and its own document layout. For this, the ownership of the charging stations must be clearly defined via the entity management.

The invoice layout is linked to the invoice numbers. How to create an invoice number range can be found here. You store the invoice number range in the entity of the sub-CPO.

 

Entity based / authentication media

Usecase: You operate as EMP and have sub-companies which also act as EMPs. Each of these companies should issue its own invoice to the end customers, based on the assignment of the authentication media. The assignment of the authentication media to the respective entity (sub-EMP) is done via the edit menu of the authentication media in the item "Managing contact". Here, you assign the respective company from your entity management.

 

You assign the invoice number range per entity as described above.

 

For COMMUNITY charging processes, the main contact (You) of the instance receives an invoice from has·to·be, not the individual entities.

 

ADDITIONAL SETTINGS

FORCE TAX CALCULATION IN INVOICE RUN
The Force Tax Calculation function is used solely to recalculate all your chargeable transactions for the month. This function should only be activated in exceptional before the invoice run of the current month. Please remember to deactivate it again after the invoices have been created.

INVOICE CONFIGURATION FOR AUTOMATED DOCUMENT GENERATION
This setting defines the invoice configuration (invoice numbers) for the whole instance, unless you want an exact mapping to your entities!

GLOBAL START OF BILLING
Here, you can define the start date from which charging processes will be invoiced. This setting overwrites the "Billing start" (Infrastructure/Access control/Authentication media/Details/Edit) of the authentication media.

 

Finance

The entered data will be used for the "electronic invoicing" (SEPA). You can activate this and can then get the SEPA payload in XML format with the entered data.

This data could also be retrieved via the RESTful API.

However, this data is not used on the invoice.

We recommend that you enter your bank details in the footer of your layout.

 

Internationalization

COUNTRY-SPECIFIC SETTINGS
Here you have the possibility to configure country-specific settings, which will be applied during the automated invoice run.

 

USE CURRENCY SYMBOL
If you set this setting to YES, the respective currency symbol (e.g. €) will be used instead of the ISO currency code (e.g. EUR).

CREATE INVOICES IN THE CUSTOMER'S LANGUAGE?
With this setting, invoices are created based on the correspondence language you have set for your customers. This setting is taken from the CRM contact, where a correspondence language can be set per contact.

INVOICE DEFAULT LANGUAGE
If no correspondence language is stored in the CRM contact of the invoice recipient, you can define a standard language that will be used when creating the invoice.

 

E-Mail delivery

Here, you can configure the settings for sending out invoices by e-mail.

E-MAIL MESSAGE SENT TO CUSTOMERS

Insert your customized text to be included in the e-mail with the invoice. This can contain many variables. An example is provided below:

 

Please do not copy & paste here!

 

In this area, insert the text that you want to appear in the e-mail. This can also contain variables and look like the following, for example:

Dear customer! Enclosed please find the monthly invoice __INVOICE_MONTH__/__INVOICE_YEAR__ for the charging operations carried out. Invoice No. __INVOICE_NUMBER__ Invoice amount: __INVOICE_AMOUNT__ Due date: __PAYMENT_TERM__ In the event of a very small number/duration of performed charging sessions in the past billing period, it may happen that you receive an invoice for a very small amount as our invoicing is fully automated. Best regards!

 

REPLY TO E-MAIL ADDRESS = reply address for comments/questions/complaints.

CUSTOM E-MAIL TEMPLATE = if you would like to use such a template, please contact the has·to·be support. If you have several instances, or have switched from an old instance to a new one and therefore already have a template, you can simply copy the template name and paste it here. This template will then be available to you and will be used accordingly when sending mails.

BCC ADDRESS FOR DOCUMENT SENDING = BCC address for invoice dispatch.

 

If you have any questions about the variables, please contact the has·to·be Support Team.

 

Invoice run validation

In this tab, you will find an automatic system check for all settings required for successful automated invoice run. If the monitor shows an incorrect configuration, please fix it before the end of the month to ensure the invoice run on the last day of the month is accurate.

 

To finish the configuration of the automated billing function, the next step is to create/complete tax settings with the payment terms and number ranges. You will find detailed instructions on how to do this in the article: "Configuring accounts and tax rates".

 

To use the automated billing function, please make sure that you have correctly configured the tax information, payment terms and invoice number ranges in the settings according to the regional specifications and your individual requirements. These settings can be found under Finance/Settings.