Billing And Revenue Management Made Easy For Project-Centric Businesses

Looking for a sophisticated solution that simplifies billing, and streamlines project revenue recognition, but at the same time also complies with the customer’s contract terms and conditions? Then look no further! Because that is exactly what the Billing and Revenue Management solution in Oracle Project Management Cloud offers you.

Project-based businesses greatly benefit from innovative project delivery and smarter project financial management solutions. And while Oracle Project Management Cloud is a great choice for any project-centric business, today we are going to focus on the many features and benefits of its Billing and Revenue Management capabilities – and why it might be the perfect choice for your business.

Billing and Revenue Management promises a supremely flexible approach to project contract-based billing.

It segregates both planning and execution of any project with a comprehensive, intelligent, integrated solution that ensures full control over:

• Client contract terms

• Rates and Limits

• WHEN to recognise revenue

• HOW to generate invoices as per the client’s preferences

Key Features:

As part of the Oracle Project Management solution, Billing and Revenue Management helps your business refine complicated aspects of project billing and invoicing to increase customer satisfaction, ensure delivery deadlines are met, and ascertain increased project value. With its user-friendly features, it allows project managers to focus on more efficient execution and improved project outcomes instead of wasting their time chasing invoices.

Here are some key features of the Billing and Revenue Management Application:

• Comes with integrated Financials and Contracts across the enterprise

• Allows for flexible project-contract relationships based on client needs

• Allows you to bill by contract, which may be independent of project execution

• Also enables effective dating of contract amendments as and when they might happen

• Makes it easy to bill for capital projects

• Flexible enough to bill in a different currency from the contract or transaction currency (if needed).

• Easily handles Pro Forma invoices

• Smart enough to estimate and calculate tax on invoices

• Capable of creating invoices independent of project cost and/or accounting and recognising revenue

• Equipped with advanced billing features and revenue calculation methods

• Offers quick yet detailed insight into revenue trends, which can be filtered by contract and/or project

• Project billing, contract and revenue information reporting done in real-time

• Comes embedded with transactional intelligence that guides business users’ decisions

How Does Billing and Revenue Management Benefit Your Business?

Here is a quick look at the key benefits of this application.

• Reduces DSO or Days Sales Outstanding payments

• Lowers invoice processing costs

• Releases accurate invoices more quickly

• Enforces and automates project contract compliance

• Reduces unbilled payment amount of billable project expenses

• Minimises administrative burden on project accounts and billing specialists

• Lowers error rate for invoicing

• Decreases time spent to close the books each project lifecycle

• Reduces the total number of invoices printed and/or mailed to clients

• Lowers integration costs

• Decreases the annual cost of AR dispute resolution

So, What’s So Special About This Application and Why Should You Invest In It?

We’ve given you a gist of all the handy features and benefits that you can get with the Billing and Revenue Management Application, but let’s discuss some of these in more detail.

1. Quicker and Accurate Invoicing to Recognise Revenue Sooner

Inflexible billing systems with rigid constraints on fund allocation can hamper the execution and timelines of projects. Fusion Projects Billing allows flexibility for customer contract invoicing to become independent of project planning and execution. This means managing costs and revenue through the project lifecycle while enforcing contractual compliance for invoicing purposes becomes easier.

It allows project managers to associate any project or task to a particular contract or line, so following customer billing terms and conditions as per contract becomes easier, which gives more freedom to plan/execute project work independently, making use of client-preferred project management processes, while project costs and progress can still be used as inputs for the billing process.

2. Ensures Compliance Is Met For All Project Contracts

With contract templates, creating customer contracts becomes easier and faster. In-built billing controls that are enforced by the contract ensure that billing is maximized but always in line with the terms and conditions agreed upon with the client.

The application further allows for hard and soft limits to be set at the contract and contract line levels to control what, when, and how much is billed to a customer. Furthermore, contract limits and fund consumption status are highlighted so that billing and accounting departments are always aware when invoices are created and revenue is recognized, regardless of whether project costs are accounted for or not.

Additionally, any active client contract can be amended with date whenever changes become effective – either retroactively or in the future. For example, a billing rate change that affects prior transactions will be automictically adjusted to reflect changes in contract terms as and when effective.

3. Streamlines Revenue Recognition For Project Contracts

Revenue recognition compliance is a critical aspect for project-centric businesses. This application ensures that project contract revenue is recognized as needed, while staying in line with financial accounting regulations, regardless of how clients are billed.

It generates project contract revenue automatically for the scope of work done in accordance with the contract terms – be it external, inter-project tasks, or intercompany revenue. What’s better… real-time business intelligence also allows for graphical comparison sheets of planned vs actual revenue that can be viewed by contract and project, as well as enabling analysis of revenue trends.

This allows project managers and accountants to quickly narrow down any discrepancies in transactions. Key information related to each contract and project is available with a single click of a button throughout the billing and revenue process of a project lifecycle, without having to navigate through copious amounts of data or sheets.

4. Accurate And Timely Billing Improves Cash Flow

Billing and Revenue Management Application offers an exception-based invoice work area which enables project managers to go to a single source to create, view, review or adjust, finalise, and submit their invoices for approval. All billable invoices are presented in a timely fashion, and any exceptions get highlighted in real-time.

Businesses also have the option to bill for contractual milestones through event-based billing, independent of project associations. Clients can also be billed on an item basis, where the item is pre-defined in the contract associated with the billing event. For customers that prefer a single summarized invoice instead of multiple credit memos/invoices, the application supports Net Invoicing. Both capital costs and contract project costs can be invoiced together for the project if that is what a particular client prefers.

The application creates formatted invoices including all tax calculations so project managers can review and approve the invoice before its transferred to Receivables. By creating accurate, detailed, and meaningful invoices that match the preferred needs of each client, this application greatly improves cash flow by supporting faster payments that don’t need clarifications and adjustments after invoices have been submitted.

5. Sophisticated Billing and Revenue Calculation Methods

Billing and Revenue Management comes with advanced billing and revenue calculation and methods, ensuring that your company can accurately report corporate level profitability, without the risk of overstating project contract revenue in the project sub-ledger.

Its project process configurator enables the definition of business-specific calculations to create billing events to

· Recognize advanced fixed price revenue,

· Record cost accrual,

· Calculate progress and fees etc

As a result, customers are billed correctly, and the overall invoice processing time is reduced so revenue can be recognised sooner.

6. Fully Integrated With Financials and Enterprise Contracts

Billing and Revenue Management comes fully integrated with both Oracle Financials and Enterprise Contracts. This ensures accurate and timely billing and revenue management, as well as effective compliance through a centralised enterprise contract model.

Integration with Subledger Accounting assures a highly sophisticated accounting engine that allows enterprises to establish their own accounting rules and/or procedures as well as support multiple accounting representations and currency treatments.

With Billing and Revenue Management capabilities, Oracle Project Management Cloud offer unparalleled project-based financial management solution. It allows for comprehensive project cost management and accounting, as well as project contract billing and revenue management, so you can eliminate integration costs, expedite project delivery, reduce invoice processing time, and close your books faster. And isn’t that what all project-based businesses are truly after?

If you’re interested in knowing more about Billing and Revenue Management and how it can help grow your business and streamline revenue recognition, reach out to us.

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About Projects Expert

Projects Expert is the first-of-its-kind Oracle partner that specialises in Project Centric Enterprise Solutions. We aim to deliver sustainable, robust, and business-friendly Oracle solutions for Projects driven organisations.

To know more about what we can do for you, visit our website at www.projectsexpert.com. Reach out to us on +44 330 330 5154 or drop a note at info@projectsexpert.com