NetSuite Advanced Billing

NetSuite for Administrators

If you’re a service-based company, then you should check out the NetSuite Advanced Billing feature. With Advanced Billing, you can set up recurring billing schedules for your sales orders, allowing you to send multiple invoices for one service over the course of a period of time. Let’s take a look at how to set up and use the Advanced Billing feature.

Overview of Advanced Billing

The foundation of Advanced Billing is the billing schedule. You start by either (1) creating a billing schedule from scratch and assigning it to a sales order, or (2) creating a billing schedule directly from an estimate or sales order. Then, based on that schedule NetSuite will automatically add each prospective invoice to a billing queue. All you have to do is check in with that queue to create those invoices. If any of the invoices in the process have not been fully fulfilled and billed, then NetSuite won’t add the next invoice to the queue.

Setting Up Advanced Billing

Enable Features and Preferences

You can find the Advanced Billing feature under the Billing section of the Transactions tab in Enable Features. You will also need to have the Sales Orders feature enabled in order to use Advanced Billing. One key preference that you may want to turn on is the preference Invoice in Advance of Fulfillment, which you can find under the Invoicing section of the Order Management tab in Accounting Preferences. For distribution and retail companies that deal in physical inventory, this preference allows you to invoice sales orders before you have fully fulfilled the order.

Create Billing Schedules

Creating billing schedules can be complicated, but we’ll break them down into the highlights, starting with the two ways you can create a billing schedule. To create a new billing schedule from scratch, navigate to Lists > Accounting > Billing Schedules > New.
Create a new NetSuite billing schedule

Another way you can create a billing schedule is directly from an estimate or sales order. To do that, navigate to Transactions > Sales > Prepare Estimates or Transactions > Sales > Enter Sales Orders. On the transaction record, whether an Estimate or Sales Order, navigate down to the Billing subtab and hover over the space to the right of the Billing Schedule dropdown field to make the “New” button icon appear. This will launch the Billing Schedule window.

Create netsuite billing schedule from sales order

Set Up the Billing Schedule

You have a lot of flexibility in the types of billing schedules you create. Do you need to space the invoices out over four payments in a year? Do you need to charge a larger portion of the cost up front and then space out the rest of the payments? Do you need to require specific amounts at set times? Or do you need to set up the schedule so it calculates the amount based on percentages of the total cost? All these scenarios and more are available to you when you create a billing schedule.
As you set up the billing schedule, here are the key fields to be aware of. NetSuite uses the information in all these fields to determine how much of the total cost of the items will be on each invoice and when those invoices should be created.

Name

First, name the schedule something descriptive. Your goal here is a name that either provides an idea of how the schedule works or identifies the situation in which the schedule will be used. This way, individuals in your company will know that they are selecting the right billing schedule when they choose it on sales orders and estimates.

Initial Amount

The Initial Amount is the amount that you will invoice for up front, and it can be either a set dollar amount or a percentage calculated from the total amount due on the transaction.

Initial Payment Terms

Initial Payment Terms allows you to apply preconfigured payment terms to the initial amount that will be due for your customers. For example, if you were to select a payment term like “Net 30,” then the initial payment amount would come due at 30 days, launching the rest of the schedule.

Recurrence Frequency

Recurrence Frequency allows you to specify how often NetSuite will generate invoices for payments. Some of the options are Daily, Weekly, Monthly, and Annually. You can also choose Quarterly, End of Period, and Start of Period. There is also a custom option where you can define your own recurrence frequency.

Repeat Every

If you select the Weekly or Monthly options for the recurrence frequency, the Repeat Every dropdown lets you space out when the schedule will repeat. So, for example, if you selected 2 in this dropdown and a recurrence frequency of Weekly, then the schedule will run every two weeks rather than every week.

Recurrence Count

The Recurrence Count field lets you select the number of times total the schedule will run.

In Arrears

If you select the In Arrears checkbox, then NetSuite will generate the invoice at the end of the period instead of the beginning. The benefit of this is primarily recognized in your first invoice—if this box has not been checked, then the first invoice payment would include both the initial payment specified and the first recurring payment. If you want to space out the initial payment and the first recurring payment, you will need to check this box.

Recurrence Payment Terms

The Recurrence Payment Terms field allows you to specify your payment requirements for all the recurring payments, which excludes the initial payment.

Custom

Let’s circle quickly back around to the Custom option under the Recurrence Frequency dropdown. This option opens up a place at the end of the record where you can add a completely customized billing schedule. If you need to set up your schedule in a way that can’t be tracked by regular intervals or if you need to bill irregular amounts and percentages at each checkpoint in the schedule, this is where you would set that up.
Add custom billing schedule in netsuite
When you have everything for your schedule set up, save the Billing Schedule record. This billing schedule is now available for selection from the Billing tab on sales orders and estimates.

Using Billing Schedules

Before we wrap up, let’s take a look at the final step of billing schedules: actually using them. When a billing schedule has been selected on a sales order, what happens once that first payment has come due? NetSuite will add customer bills that are coming due to the billing queue. You can access this queue by navigating to Transactions > Sales > Invoice Sales Orders. On the header level of this page, use the fields to narrow down the list of results.
invoice sales orders in NetSuite

Then, scroll down to the Orders tab. Here, you can select all the orders that you wish for NetSuite to invoice. Any bills that are coming due based on any billing schedules that you have applied to sales orders will appear on this list. To prompt NetSuite to generate these invoices, select the Invoice checkbox next to the appropriate orders and then hit the Submit button on the page.

generate netsuite invoices from billing queue

Conclusion

The NetSuite Advanced Billing feature provides flexibility in how you bill your orders by providing billing schedules.

If this is a feature you would like to begin using in your account or if you have any other NetSuite needs, SuiteRep would love to come on board and help. Our diverse NetSuite experience enables us to provide NetSuite solutions tailored to your unique needs. Contact us to get the conversation started.