Many types of service objects have meters. For example, a car has a trip meter, and copying machines meters that register the number of copies printed. A meter is something that measures the usage of an object and the usage should in some cases trigger service or invoicing.
To schedule services based on the usage, you can use Preventive Maintenance actions, which can generate work orders when an object has been used for a certain amount of time, run a certain distance, or printed a certain amount of copies, etc. And in order to invoice a customer for a certain amount of time, distance or number of copies (if for example you and not the customer owns the object), you can use IFS/Metering invoicing.
The main process for Equipment Metering Invoicing starts with creating a parameter (e.g. a meter) in Maintenance Basic Data/Parameters. The parameter indicates what is going to be measured on an object meter. When defining a parameter, the parameter needs to be assigned a value type of either Limit or Accumulated. For metering invoicing purposes the Accumulated value type is the most common.
After the parameter, an Object needs to be created and the parameter connected to the Object in IFS/Equipment. This parameter can be used both in PM actions and Metering Invoicing.
Once the parameter has been connected to the object, conditions for the Equipment Metering Invoicing can be defined. This is done from the object by navigating to the Metering Invoicing page. You can have several meters on the same object, and you can have several metering invoice conditions on the same object meter.
Metering invoicing can either be done at a certain time interval by using the generation type Interval, e.g., once a month or once every six months. It is also possible to trigger invoicing based on usage by using Generation Type Limit, e.g., every ten thousand copies. For both generation types you can define if the charge should be a fixed price, or if the charges should be calculated based on the usage. If the charges should be calculated based on the usage, the system will retrieve the price based on the sales part connected to the metering invoice line. You can either use the sales part's list price, or define a price list from which the system should retrieve the price.
If the Generation Type is Interval, a minimum and maximum value must be defined. For example you can invoice the customer once a month for whatever usage has been reported, with a minimum charge of $100 and a maximum charge of $5000.
To record usage of an object, measurements can be entered against the object parameter(s) from Measurements for Object.
To create Metering Invoices you can either manually create an invoice directly from the Object id's Metering Invoicing page by selecing the meter line and clicking on command Generate Invoice, or from the Generation of Metering Invoices assistant where you can use automatically create invoices for all, or selected customers. You have the option to define if the job should run online (immediately, synchrounous), in the background or if the invoicing should be scheduled to run at a particular time or at a particular time on a regular basis (daily or weekly).
In the assistant you need to specify the Generation Type, i.e., Limit or Interval. You can optionally use Customer as a filter criteria. You need to specify the Site, Maintenance Organization and the Authorizer which will be used to process the Work Orders that are created in the background.
When the invoicing is done, the system will check if an invoice is due according to a defined time interval (if generation type 'Interval' is used), or usage limit (if generation type 'Limit' is used). If an invoice is due, a Work Order will be created (for each metering invoice line that is due), along with a Work Task and a fixed price sales line. The sales line will be transferred to a Customer Order, which is Released. The Work Task and the Work Order is set to status Finished. This is done automatically in the background. If the Order Type used on the Customer Order is defined without stops, the customer order will be processed to status Invoiced/Closed.
To see information about what has been invoiced when, for a particular metering invoice line, you can click on the Meter Line on the Meter Invocing screen and select command Metering Invoicing History. To see an overview of all metering invoice transactions you can go to Metering Invoice History.
You have the option to correct a meter reading, or define an end or start reading for a meter. This is important, e.g., for a rental car where the trip meter should be read before and after the rental period.
Metering Invoice is used in IFS/Service Management.