It is now possible to completely automate the billing for managed services based on charging by the device. It makes no difference if the devices are created by an RMM tool, or manually by one of your resources.
Complete the following configuration tasks:
Set up billing products for devices (and contacts, if you offer billing by the user)
The prices for billing by the device or contact are set up on the Products list. These billing products describe per contact or per device services you will perform, and establish the fixed monthly fee you will charge. For a description of the differences between standard products and billing products, refer to Standard products and billing products.
Optionally, you can set up volume pricing or tiered pricing for the billing products. Refer to Setting up volume-based and tiered pricing.
Automatically associate devices with a billing product
You can manually assign a billing product to each device. Refer to Mapping organization contacts or devices to a billing product.
To automate this process, you can create associations, essentially single-purpose workflow rules that fire when a device is added to your Autotask instance (but not when it is edited). If the conditions of the association are a match, the billing product is automatically assigned to the device.
To ensure that all devices are associated with a billing product, you can use the device types and set up billing products for all of them. If you need your pricing to be more granular, you can associate a billing product based on the device product.
Refer to Automated billing product associations.
Create a fixed price contract to set up billing for the customer
To set up this type of billing for a customer, create a fixed price contract without any milestones. This contract type prevents directly billing for labor associated with the contract. Refer to Creating a contract.
To simplify contract setup, you could create a master contract under your local organization that will be copied to all customers as needed, once the billing rules have been set up in the next step.
Add billing rules to the contract
Billing rules are associated with one billing product each, and through the contract with a customer. They close the loop that automates your billing process.
- They define the pricing detail for the billing product (billing options, price & cost, prorating)
- On the selected day, they count the customer's devices that are associated with the billing product and generate the charges
If you are creating a master contract that will be copied, you should add billing rules for every billing product you have set up. In the copied contract, the billing rules will initially be inactive. You can activate all to automate billing for all possible types of devices that might be detected, modify the rules as necessary, or selectively delete them.
Refer to Creating and managing billing rules.
Once charges have been generated, they are approved, posted and invoiced in the normal manner.
Reviewing past and future charges generated by billing rules
Two pages help you review past and future billing charges:
- The Contract Billing Rule Upcoming Instances page lists up to 1,000 upcoming Billing Rule instances. You can post them by selecting Execute Now from the context menu. Refer to Billing Rule Upcoming Instances.
- A Contract Billing Rule History page lists all executed billing rule instances in the date range you select. Refer to Billing Rule History.
