12 Wholesale Billing Hierarchies

You can manage your customers' wholesale billing hierarchies by using Oracle Communications Billing Care.

To work with wholesale billing hierarchies, see the following topics:

About Wholesale Billing Hierarchies

You use wholesale billing to handle very large billing hierarchies more efficiently. For example, you might use it for a large corporation that is financially responsible for the telco services of ten thousand employees. In this case, wholesale billing would allow you to perform billing and invoicing much faster than if you used a billing hierarchy.

For more information, see "Configuring Wholesale Billing" in BRM Configuring and Running Billing.

Creating Wholesale Billing Hierarchies

Creating a wholesale billing hierarchy involves these general steps:

  1. Open the account that will contain the wholesale billing parent and change its default bill unit into the wholesale bill unit. For more details, see "Configuring Wholesale Business Profile" in BRM Configuring and Running Billing.

  2. Create an account and bill unit for each child under the wholesale billing parent. In the bill unit, set the payment method to the parent’s wholesale bill unit. For more details, see "Adding a Payment Method".

  3. Create a billing hierarchy by associating each child’s bill unit with the wholesale parent’s bill unit. For more details, see "Creating a Wholesale Billing Account" in BRM Configuring and Running Billing.

    Note:

    You do not explicitly identify a bill unit as a parent or child. Instead, they become parent or child bill units when you associate them in a billing hierarchy.

Changing an Existing Bill Unit into a Wholesale Billing Parent

You change an existing bill unit into a wholesale billing parent by setting its business profile to Wholesale Billing.

To change a bill unit into a wholesale billing parent:

  1. Open the account you want to change into a wholesale billing parent.

  2. On the account page, select Actions, then Financial Setup, and then Bill Unit Setup.

  3. In the default bill unit, click the Edit icon:


    Edit Icon

  4. From the Business Profile list, select Wholesale Billing.

  5. Click Apply.

Adding Normal Bill Units to a Wholesale Billing Parent

A wholesale billing parent contains only one wholesale parent bill unit. Charges from all child bill units in the wholesale billing hierarchy are rolled up to this bill unit. Any other bill units that you add to a wholesale billing parent must be normal bill units. These bill units contain charges from the parent account only. You cannot set a normal bill unit in the parent account as a wholesale parent to any other account. For example, a bill unit could contain charges for a service the parent purchases. This helps in tracking the parent’s own charges separately.

To add one or more normal bill units to a wholesale billing parent:

  1. On the wholesale billing parent’s account page, select Actions, then Financial Setup, and then Bill Unit Setup.

    The Financial Setup dialog box appears.

  2. In the Bill Units area, click New.

    The New Bill Unit dialog box appears.

  3. Enter details about the bill unit, such as its name, payment method, accounting type, and billing frequency. See "New Bill Unit Dialog Box" for details.

  4. From the Business profile list, select Not Set.

  5. Click Apply to save the changes.

    The new bill unit is added.

Adding Child Bill Units to a Wholesale Billing Parent

To add child bill units to a wholesale billing parent:

  1. Create a child account or open an existing account.

  2. On the account page for the child account, select Actions, then Financial Setup, and then Bill Unit Setup.

    The Financial Setup dialog box appears.

  3. In the Bill Units area, click New.

    The New Bill Unit dialog box appears.

  4. Enter details about the bill unit, such as its name, accounting type, and billing frequency. See "New Bill Unit Dialog Box" for details.

  5. From the Payment method or Paying Account list, select the wholesale parent’s bill unit.

  6. Click Apply to save the changes.

  7. Add the child’s bill unit to the wholesale billing parent’s hierarchy. See "Adding Nonpaying Children to a Parent's Bill Unit".

Viewing an Account's Position in a Wholesale Billing Hierarchy

You can view an account's position in a wholesale billing hierarchy. For more details, see Viewing an Account's Organization Hierarchy.

The Billing Care account banner shows Wholesale Parent if the account is a wholesale billing parent, and Wholesale Child if it is a child in a wholesale billing hierarchy.