When setting up subscriber contracts, it is important to follow each step in order. Below you will find a diagram of the individual steps and their descriptions. Following these steps will ensure that the contract is configured correctly.
Quick links:
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1 - Billing period
The timeline of the billing period length. This value is entered in the Billing frequency (months) field.
You therefore need to know whether you want to invoice for a 1-month period (value 1), a quarter (value 3), and so on. It is also important to decide whether you want to bill in advance (for the upcoming period) or in arrears (for the past period). The period will ultimately be reflected automatically in the generated invoice:
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2 - Turnover day + month
The next step is to fill in the turnover day and month.
The turnover day and month define the start of the billing period. If you begin the invoice generation setup from January 1st, fill in the values as shown in the screenshot. If the start of the period is, for example, March 1st, set the Turnover day to 1 and the Turnover month to 3.
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3 - Billing method
The billing method can only be configured in one of two ways:
You can bill either in advance or in arrears.
Choose billing in advance if you want to invoice for the upcoming period (suitable for, e.g., advance/proforma invoices) — if you select the bill in advance option, proceed to step 4.
Choose billing in arrears if you want to invoice for the past period (suitable for, e.g., invoicing regular services) — if you select the bill in arrears option, proceed to step 5.
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4 - Bill in advance - bill days before/after
Pay attention to step 4 if you have selected the bill in advance option.
If you want to generate an invoice 7 days before the billing period, set the value to 7. It is helpful to refer to the diagram and your selected billing period — depending on the start of the period, choose values with a + or - sign.
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Bill in arrears - bill days before/after
Pay attention to step 5 if you have selected the bill in arrears option.
If you want to generate an invoice for the past period (January) and you are triggering generation on the last day of the month (January 31st), you must set billing for the past period (the period ended at the beginning of February 1st) — therefore set the value to -1.
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Tips and closing advice:
Subscriber contracts do not generate fully automatically without configuration. Users need to monitor the day on which they want to generate invoices and manually click the "Generate invoices" button, or submit a command via API.
If you want to test whether your generation settings are correct but do not want to wait until the generation day, you can change the date on your computer to the desired generation day and test your configuration that way.
Have you generated documents for testing purposes only and want to delete them for now and wait until the actual generation day? Adjust the "end of last billing period" date — otherwise, the documents will not be generated again. The end of the last billing period can be found in the contract line item editor under the Details tab:
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