Understanding
The “First Invoice" Field During Service Activation
The setting you select for "First Invoice" field controls the
duration of the first invoice that is generated when you activate a new
subscription.
Previous
to now, this field was hidden from view, and always defaulted to the first
option in the list which is "Full Period from Start Date". With this setting, the result has been that
the first invoice would always run from the selected Start Date for the
duration of the selected Billing Period field.
Hence, if you selected a 1-month billing period, the first invoice would
always bill for one month of service exactly.
If you selected a 12-month billing period, the first invoice would bill
for a full year of service, and so on.
Now the “First
Invoice” field is visible and is configurable during subscription activation,
and it includes two new options which allow you to choose alternate timing for
the first and recurring invoices. The
two new options let you force the recurring bill dates to always fall on the
first day of the month at the start of each billing period. The new possible options for the “First
Invoice” field are this:
- Prorated First Month Only – Selecting this option
will cause the first invoice to run from the start date (i.e. by default
is date of “today”) through the end of the current month. Hence, it’s a partial-month bill that
runs from “today” (i.e. the configured Start Date) to the first day of the
coming month, followed thereafter by recurring bills from the first of the
month through the end of a full billing period. To clarify, the first invoice will bill
for the remainder of the current (first) month, and each invoice after
that will have a duration that matches the selected billing period, and will
always generate on the first day of the starting month of each billing
period.
- Prorated First Month
Plus Additional Period – This option will cause the first invoice to cover the
remainder of the current month, plus an additional full billing period. Hence, it bills for the remainder of the
current month (presuming you leave the start date as “today”), and also
bills for an additional billing period (i.e. 1-month, 3-month, 6-month,
12-month, or whatever you selected for the billing period).
Examples
Here are
three examples illustrating the mechanics of each option:
- Full Period from Start
Date - Say you have a client who wants to
commence a one-year subscription from June 1, 2021 start date. To activate this, set the start date to
June 1, 2021, set the Billing Period to Annual, and set the “First Invoice”
field to "Full Period from Today". This would have generated a one-year
invoice from June 1, 2021.
- Prorated First Month
Only –
Say you have a client who wants to commence a one-month subscription starting
on June 15, 2021 but wants to be invoiced on the first of each month in
general. So, this option lets you
control it so that the first invoice bills from June 15, 2021 through the
end of June, and each invoice thereafter generates on the first day of
each month (i.e. July 1, August 1, September 1, etc.) Hence, the first invoice is for a
prorated partial month of June only, and the second invoice will generate
on July 1st, 2021, and on the first of each month thereafter.
- Prorated First Month
Plus Additional Period – Say you have a client who wants to start a one-year
subscription on June 20, 2021 but does not want to be billed on June 20th
each year, but would instead like to receive invoices on July 1st
each year. This option let you
control it so that the first invoice bills from June 20, 2021 through the
end of June, plus on the same invoice also bills for an additional full
year from July 1, 2021 through the end of June, 2022. Hence, the first invoice is for a prorated
partial first month (of June 2021) plus a full additional year (from July
1 2021 through the end of June 2022), and the second invoice will generate
on July 1, 2022, and each year after that always on July 1st of
each year.
Default
Setting
Please note that the default setting for the “First Invoice” field will be Prorated
First Month Only when the current day of the month is before the 20th
of the month, and otherwise, on or after the 20th of the month, the
default setting will be Prorated First Month Plus Additional Period. Feel free to change it from the default
setting to whichever other option accommodates your or your clients’ invoice
timing preferences.
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