Invoicing and Billing Parameters

Some subscribers (or companies) may wish to have a certain alignment of the payments. For instance it is not uncommon to be paid on the last work day of the month, and subsequently some people think its practical to pay all their bills in the beginning of the month.

Usually the billing and invoicing flow is controlled entirely by the company that sells the subscription, but using the InfoSystems subscription module it is possible to let the subscriber have a small say in the matter.

Updating the Due Day

The simplest operation on the billing flow, is that of adjusting the due day of the invoice. The due date determines at which date the payment must have arrived in order to not late-payment fee, or in some cases a cancellation of the subscription.

Typically a newspaper might opt to do invoicing once a week, and have a fixed due date 14 days in the future, relative to the production day. But if you want your invoice on the 1st this might be a bit impractical.

The webservice method UpdateFixedDueDay can update the due day to achieve just that. Basically all you have to do is choose a day of the month (between the 1st and 31st). For months where the day is out of scope it will be capped (typically if the 31st is choosen and for the last days of Feburary).

   <soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:ns="http://tech.infosoft.no/schemas/2011/10" xmlns:ns1="http://tech.infosoft.no/schemas/2012/08">
   <soapenv:Header/>
   <soapenv:Body>
      <ns:UpdateFixedDueDayRequest>
         <ns:SubscriptionIdentifier>
            <ns1:CustomerNumber>42</ns1:CustomerNumber>
            <ns1:TitleCode>IT</ns1:TitleCode>
         </ns:SubscriptionIdentifier>
         <ns:FixedDueDay>15</ns:FixedDueDay>
      </ns:UpdateFixedDueDayRequest>
   </soapenv:Body>
</soapenv:Envelope>

Adjust the settlement day

The settlement date helps to control the period in which the economy of a subscription should be calculated. So for instance if a subscriber has a term of 1 month (i.e. pays his bill each month), the economy might be calculated from the 5th to the 5th by default.

For whatever reason a subscriber might wish to align the settlement calculation of his or her subscription within fixed boundaries. This can be achieved by using the method UpdateFixedSettlingDate Continuing the example from before, if the default settlement period is from the 5th to the 5th, it is possible to change it to be from the 15th to the 15th by adjusting the settlement day. In a month by month scenario this has little to no consequence (except for the first period after the change), but on longer running terms it might determine when and where an extra fee for vacation periods or whatever is placed.

For subscriptions with a term of one year or longer it is also possible to set the month in which the settlement should be done. For terms less than 12 months, this can be set but will be ignored. For subscriptions with a term above one year, but below the next fixed yearh, for instance 18months or 26 months terms, it is still possible to change the settling date, however a bit weird as it will effectively change the payment term to the nearest whole year.

   <soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:ns="http://tech.infosoft.no/schemas/2011/10" xmlns:ns1="http://tech.infosoft.no/schemas/2012/08">
   <soapenv:Header/>
   <soapenv:Body>
      <ns:UpdateFixedSettlingDateRequest>
         <ns:SubscriptionIdentifier>
            <ns1:CustomerNumber>42</ns1:CustomerNumber>
            <ns1:TitleCode>IT</ns1:TitleCode>
         </ns:SubscriptionIdentifier>
         <ns:FixedSettlingDay>1</ns:FixedSettlingDay>
         <ns:FixedSettlingMonth>6</ns:FixedSettlingMonth>
      </ns:UpdateFixedSettlingDateRequest>
   </soapenv:Body>
</soapenv:Envelope>