BillEase

A service billing SharePoint web application designed for the purpose of intra-organization cost allocation supporting recurring charges.

Background

In a large organization, a support division often provides ongoing services to other divisions. For example, IT department maintains a web site for marketing department. To better keep track of cost allocation, it is often necessary to price the services and charge the client divisions based on certain consumption metrics, similar to what utility companies do to you. It is more so if the support division adopts cost-recovery model. Unlike the case of utility companies, however, implicit trust exists among divisions within an organization. Therefore the requirements of invoicing, payment and collection can be greatly simplified or even eliminated. What's left over are, in essence:

Defining services and rates
Periodical (monthly, for example) metering
Calculating charges based on rates and meter readings at the end of each billing cycle
Providing a customer portal for clients to retrieve their consumption and charges.

BillEase is a service billing web application to support above trimmed down functions. It is not, however, intended to replace a corporate accounting system that tracks the flow of funds from one cost center to another.

Features

Support both recurring and one-time fixed rate charges and credits
Support proration of quantity for fixed quantity recurring charges in the billing cycles covering the begining or end of service period.
Allow overriding calculated line item amount
Prevent altering charge and consumption records of closed billing cycles
Features inherited from SharePoint
- Bulk importing and updating
- Versioning
- Single-Sign-On with enterprise-wide identity management system, assuming the system is Active Directory
- Permission at a granularity down to item level
- Auditing information such as creator, last modifier, creation time and last modified time
- Recycle Bin
- Export to Excel

Overview

BillEase consists of five SharePoint custom lists packaged into a SharePoint site template solution file Service Billing.wsp and a console application called Invoice Run.exe. The custom lists are:

Accounts - contains client information
Rates - defines services, i.e. billable line item types, and corresponding rates
Consumptions - is used to upload meter readings
Fixed Consumptions - contains pre-defined fixed-quantity consumptions to be posted to Consumptions list automatically
Charges - auto-populated line items with amount computed from rates and consumption.

Invoice Run.exe is intended to be put into a scheduled task to run periodically to create consumptions from fixed consumptions, and to create charges from consumptions.

BillEase is intended to be accessed by four types of users with following permissions:

Administrator (owner) from service provider - full control to entire site.
Contributor (member) from service provider - full read access to entire site plus write access to Consumptions list. This type should contain service delivery unit personnel.
Visitor - full read access to entire site. This can be accountants from service provider or external auditors, for example.
Client - read access to security trimmed Charges list.

BillEase requires following manual processes performed by the service provider:

One-time activities - performed first time as initial setup and update only when information changes thereafter by administrator.
1. Populate Accounts and Rates.
2. For each Account, create a SharePoint group named after it. A prefix is allowed. For example, if the account is called Marketing, the corresponding SharePoint group should be called Billing Group - Marketing, assuming prefix is Billing Group -. The prefix has to be consistent. Change the group name whenever account name changes. Don't grant the group any permission to the site.
3. Add client users who are allowed to see charges to an account to the corresponding groups.
4. Setup and adjust permissions as needed. For example, when creating the SharePoint site from solution, by default site contributors have write permission to all lists. To match the access permission described above, you may want to change the default permission to read-only, then grant contributors write access to Consumptions list by breaking the permission inheritance.
5. (Optional) Populate pre-defined fixed-quantity consumptions in Fixed Consumptions list
Recurring activities

Prior to the closing of a billing cycle, all meter readings have to be loaded to Consumptions list. The list can be populated item by item on an ongoing basis using the SharePoint built-in form, or bulk uploaded. To bulk upload
1. stage meter readings except for Fixed Consumptions into an Excel spreadsheet with column order matching the Consumptions list view.
2. Select the range of data in Excel and press Ctrl-C to copy. Open the Datasheet View of Consumptions list in Internet Explorer. click the second column (by default Title) of the last empty row in the Datasheet View marked by asterisk, and press Ctrl-V to paste the data range to the list. This completes the bulk loading process. Data uploaded can be modified as long as the billing cycle is not closed.

Once above activities are performed, rest processings are handled automatically by Invoice Run.exe. Clients can see their charge line items in Charges list. They can export the list to Excel for further analysis.

Components

SharePoint Custom Lists

BillEase depends on lists and containing columns described below to function. Extending a list is allowed as long as documented columns are not deleted. Renaming lists and columns are allowed, however. To rename a list, make sure to supply the new name to Invoice Run.exe documented in section Console Application below.

Accounts

Accounts contain client information. Only Title column is mandatory. Changing the name of an account is allowed. However, the value of Account column in Charges list described below is copied from, not referencing to, the Title column of Accounts list, so the account name change will not propagate to Charges list. Deleting an account is disallowed unless all consumption items associated with the account are deleted.

Rates

Rates define billable line item types and corresponding rates. It has following columns at minimum:

Title - name of the billable line item type. This could be the service name if the line item type is service specific.
Unit Price
UOM - unit of measure
Denominator - a number combined with UOM to form the denominator of the rate. Denominator is used for round-up calculation if enabled by Round Up column described next. For example, let's say the service being provided is data storage, and the price is $10 per 5GB per billing cycle. In this case Unit Price is $10, UOM is GB, and denominator is 5. When priced this way, consumption is rounded-up at increment of 5GB. For instance, 6GB costs $20, as opposed to $12 had the round up been disabled.
Round Up - Whether or not round up consumed quantity to next increment of denominator when calculating amount in charges. Default to yes.

Changing Unit Price or Denominator only affects future charge calculations. Deleting a rate entry is disallowed unless all consumption items associated with the rate are deleted.

Consumptions

Consumptions list is used to upload meter readings. It has following columns at minimum:

Title - consumption title. This becomes the charge line item description.
Account - a reference to the account
Rate - a reference to the rate
Quantity - consumption data. UOM should match that of rate referenced
Cycle - the start of billing cycle. The first day of current month is populated by default.
Amount - used to override calculated amount. This column is useful to post one-off type of charges or credits. When this column is populated, Quantity doesn't need to be populated. Even if Quantity is populated, the quantity will not be used.
Fixed Consumption Ref - if the consumption item is auto-populated from Fixed Consumptions by Invoice Run.exe, this hidden field contains a reference to the Title field of the corrseponding fixed consumption item.
Fixed Consumption Ref:Service Start - if the consumption item is auto-populated from Fixed Consumptions by Invoice Run.exe, this hidden field contains a reference to the Service Start field of the corrseponding fixed consumption item.
Fixed Consumption Ref:Service End - if the consumption item is auto-populated from Fixed Consumptions by Invoice Run.exe, this hidden field contains a reference to the Service End field of the corrseponding fixed consumption item.

Consumption items are modifiable by users with Contribute permission of the list prior to the closing date of billing cycle and read-only thereafter. Consumption items are also modifiable by administrators any time. Deleting a consumption item of a closed billing cycle is disallowed unless the corresponding charge item is deleted.

Charges

Items in Charges list are created by Invoice Run.exe. There is a one-to-one mapping between Consumptions and Charges. Charges contain following columns at minimum:

Title - copied from Consumptions
Account - copied from Consumptions
Cycle - copied from Consumptions
Unit Price - copied from Rates referenced by the corresponding Consumptions item
Denominator - copied from Rates referenced by the corresponding Consumptions item
UOM - copied from Rates referenced by the corresponding Consumptions item
Quantity - copied from Consumptions
Amount - either copied from Consumptions or, in absence of value, calculated using formula Unit Price×Ceiling(Quantity÷Denominator) if round up or Unit Price×Quantity÷Denominator otherwise
Consumption Ref - a hidden field referencing to the corresponding Consumptions item

Notice that except for the hidden Consumption Ref column, all columns are copied from, rather than referencing to other lists. This de-normalization process prevents historical billing records from altering by factors such as account re-naming or price adjustment, resulting in improved accountability.

By the same record-preserving principle, charge line items should be made read-only, except for site collection administrators who have full access regardless of permissions. When a charge item is created, the permission of the item is broken from inheritance. Users who have read permissions defined in the Charges list at the time of broken can still read the item. In addition, users who belong to the "<prefix><account>" group are also granted read-only access. This makes the list security-trimmed and suitable to be exposed as a portal page to clients who can only see the charges applied to their account.

Fixed Consumptions

Fixed Consumptions list is a worksheet used to define consumptions of pre-determined quantities in a set-it-and-forget-it manner. The columns in this list generally match Consumptions list except for

removed columns
- Cycle
- Fixed Consumption Ref
- Fixed Consumption Ref:Service Start
- Fixed Consumption Ref:Service End
added columns
- Service Start - optional start date of the service
- Service End - optional end date of the service
- Prorated - whether or not to prorate Quantity and Amount during the billing cycles that cover the start or end of service period. Allowed values are
  - No
  - Yes
  - Yes and round quantity to integer
  Default to No.

When Invoice Run.exe is executed, a new consumption item is generated for every fixed consumption item with service period [<Service Start>, <Service End>) overlapping the billing cycle by copying columns exist in both lists. Note Service Start is inclusive and Service End is exclusive. Missing Service Start implies a distant past; missing Service End implies a distant future.

Invoice Run.exe will also populate following Consumptions list columns that Fixed Consumptions shouldn't contain:

Cycle is set to billing cycle start date.
Fixed Consumption Ref is set to a reference to the fixed consumption item. Invoice Run.exe relies on this column to avoid generating multiple consumption items in the same billing cycle in case Invoice Run.exe has to be executed repetitively.
Fixed Consumption Ref:Service Start is set to a reference to the Service Start field of the fixed consumption item. Invoice Run.exe relies on this column to delete consumptions items when Service Start field of the corresponding fixed consumption item has been modified to be later than the cycle end date.
Fixed Consumption Ref:Service End is set to a reference to the Service End field of the fixed consumption item. Invoice Run.exe relies on this column to delete consumptions items when Service End field of the corresponding fixed consumption item has been modified to be earlier than the cycle start date.

Item level proration is supported through the Prorated list column. If this field is set to Yes or Yes and round quantity to integer, then the Quantity and Amount fields are prorated by day in the billing cycles that cover the service start or end date. For example, if the service start date is 2018-02-01 and service end date is empty, assuming billing period is quarterly starting January 1 annually, then for the billing cycle 2018-01-01 to 2018-03-31, Quantity and Amount fields are adjusted by a proration factor of 59/90≈0.66 when posting to the Consumptions list. Furthermore, if the field is set to Yes and round quantity to integer, then prorated Quantity field is rounded to integer. This allows Quantity field to be set correctly to accomodate the fact that months have different number of days. In the above example, if Quantity field is 3 (reasonable because rate can be priced as per month and there are 3 months in a quarter), then the rounded prorated quantity will be 2, as opposed to 1.966666666666667 had rounding not been performed.

Console Application

The gem of BillEase is the console application Invoice Run.exe. It provides automation and turns the five SharePoint lists into a workable solution. Without it the SharePoint lists are merely data repository. Each run of Invoice Run.exe affects one billing cycle. Invoice Run.exe is intended to be launched by one or more scheduled tasks on folllowing occassions:

At the close of each billing cycle to process all consumptions for the closing billing cycle. In this case set option is_cycle_open to false, or leave unset since false is the default. This is a mandatory occassion so there must be a scheduled task created for this purpose.
Periodically, say hourly, to process consumptions for the current open billing cycle. In this case set option is_cycle_open to true. This is an optional occassion. If a scheduled task is created for this occassion, then user will be able to see charges in the current open billing cycle. Updates and deletions to fixed consumptions and consumptions will be reflected in consumptions and charges respectively.

If you enable the second optional occassion, then typically there are 3 scheduled tasks of Invoice Run.exe in production. For example, assuming billing cycle is monthly by calendar month and billing cycle closes at the end of 7th day of each month so that service personnel has 7 extended days (day 1-7 of each month) to do meter reading for previous billing cycle. The scheduled tasks would be:

hourly all the time for current open billing cycle
hourly on the first 7 days of each month for previous open billing cycle
once at 12am on the 8th day of each month for closing previous billing cycle

When invoked, Invoice Run.exe performs following tasks:

If cycle is closed and delete_ended_fixed_consumptions option is set to true, then all ended (i.e. Service End < Cycle) fixed consumptions are deleted.
Delete consumptions associated with deleted or out-of-range (i.e. Service Start > cycle end or Service End < cycle start) fixed consumptions.
Delete charges associated with deleted consumptions.
For each fixed consumption item with service period overlapping the affected billing period, either create a new or update an existing consumption item.
For each consumption item in affected billing cycle, either create a new or update an existing charge item. The values of charge item are copied or calculated using data directly or indirectly obtained from consumption item as described in Charges list above. If option incremental is true, then only consumption items modified since last run in affected billing cycle are included.
If the billing cycle is closed, then break the permission inheritance of each consumption item in affected billing cycle if not already done so. Then convert all Contribute permissions to Read.
Reset the permission to the list and then break the permission inheritance of each charge item created in affected billing cycle.
For each charge item in affected billing cycle, grant group "<prefix_of_group><account>" read-only access if not already done so.

Invoice Run.exe expects following call syntax:

"Invoice Run.exe" [options] <URL>

where <URL> points to the site holding the five lists and [options] are

-p|--prefix_of_group=<string>

Prefix of the account groups. The prefix is useful to prevent group name conflicts with other groups defined in same site collection
-b|--billing_period=<string>

Billing period in the form <Integer><UOM>. Default to 1m. Allowed UOMs are <d|m|y> for day, month and year respectively. For example, 1m for 1 month; 14d for 2 weeks; 3m for a quarter.
-d|--cycle_calibration_date=<date>

Billing cycle calibration date in the format YYYY-MM-DD. This is a past date that is known to be the start of a billing cycle. Default value is the first day of the current month the program is running.
-o|--offset_of_cycle=<number>

Offset of billing cycle. Default to -1. For example, if billing cycle starts on the first day of each month and Invoice Run is launched at 12:01AM on the first day of each month, the default offset of -1 is needed for calculation be performed on last month's data.
-a|--accounts_list_name=<string>

Name of accounts list if renamed.
-r|--rates_list_name=<string>

Name of rates list if renamed.
-f|--fixed_consumptions_list_name=<string>

Name of fixed consumptions list if renamed.
-c|--consumptions_list_name=<string>

Name of consumptions list if renamed.
-h|--charges_list_name=<string>

Name of charges list if renamed.
-A|--account_columns_to_copy=<string>

Name of custom column in accounts list to copy over to charges list in the format <source_name>[:<target_name>]. Target name can be omitted if same as source name. The column name is not display name, but rather internal field name which you can find in the Field url query parameter when opening the column definition in list settings. Multiple columns can be defined by adding this option multiple times. The column type in both accounts and charges lists must match. If a column is also copied from rate or consumption list, the precedence of overriding in descending order is: consumption, rate, account.
-R|--rate_columns_to_copy=<string>

Name of custom column in rates list to copy over to charges list in the format <source_name>[:<target_name>]. Target name can be omitted if same as source name. The column name is not display name, but rather internal field name which you can find in the Field url query parameter when opening the column definition in list settings. Multiple columns can be defined by adding this option multiple times. The column type in both rates and charges lists must match. If a column is also copied from account or consumption list, the precedence of overriding in descending order is: consumption, rate, account.
-C|--consumption_columns_to_copy=<string>

Name of custom column in consumptions list to copy over to charges list in the format <source_name>[:<target_name>]. Target name can be omitted if same as source name. The column name is not display name, but rather internal field name which you can find in the Field url query parameter when opening the column definition in list settings. Multiple columns can be defined by adding this option multiple times. The column type in both consumptions and charges lists must match. If a column is also copied from account or rate list, the precedence of overriding in descending order is: consumption, rate, account.
-O|--is_cycle_open=<true|false>

Whether the billing cycle under operation is open or not. If not, then, among other things, all consumptions that have been posted to charges are frozen from updates by contributors. Default to false.
-i|--incremental=<true|false>

Whether or not update charges incrementally. If incremental, only consumptions modified since last run will be fetched. By default, incremental is true if billing cycle is open and false if closed.
-l|--last_run_log_file_name=<string>

Name of last run log file name. Default to billease_last_run.log. If there are multiple scheduled tasks created to run the console application and all scheduled tasks are set to the same working directory, then each should have its own last run log file by supplying a different name for this option.
-s|--auth_scheme=<ntlm|adfs>

Authentication scheme. Default to ntlm if absent.
-S|--adfs_server=<string>

ADFS server such as sts3.mycorp.com. No default value. Required if auth_scheme is adfs.
-P|--relying_party=<string>

ADFS relying party such as urn:sp.mycorp.com. No default value. Required if auth_scheme is adfs. To find out relying party, inspect the http request to ADFS server by opening the browser web debug console. Look for the wtrealm query string parameter as shown
-u|--username=<string>

Login user name. No default value. Required if auth_scheme is adfs. If auth_scheme is ntlm and if this option is not set, then the Windows account running the program will be used for login to SharePoint. The login account should have adequate privilege to modify Sharepoint list items and permissions. Make the account a site collection administrator is recommended.
-D|--domain=<string>

Login user domain. No default value. Required if auth_scheme is adfs. If auth_scheme is ntlm and if this option is not set, then the Windows account running the program will be used for login to SharePoint.
-w|--password=<string>

Login user password. No default value. Required if auth_scheme is adfs. If auth_scheme is ntlm and if this option is not set, then the Windows account running the program will be used for login to SharePoint.
-x|--delete_ended_fixed_consumptions=<true|false>

Whether or not delete ended (i.e. Service End < Cycle) fixed consumptions when the cycle is closed. Default to false.

Examples:

"Invoice Run.exe" -p "Billing Group - " https://mycorp.com/service/billing

Set the prefix of all SharePoint groups used to grant clients accessing the Charges table to "Billing Group - ". Client users from account Marketing, for example, should be placed in a SharePoint group called "Billing Group - Marketing"
"Invoice Run.exe" -o 0 https://mycorp.com/service/billing

Set the offset of billing cycle month adjustment to 0. This is needed if billing cycle starts on the first day of each month and Invoice Run is launched at 11:50PM on the last day of each month, for example.
"Invoice Run.exe" -c Comments -c ServiceDate:Service_x0020_Date https://mycorp.com/service/billing

When creating charges items, copy Comments and ServiceDate columns in consumptons list over to Comments and Service_x0020_Date columns respectively in charges list.
"Invoice Run.exe" -s adfs -S sts3.mycorp.com -P urn:sp.mycorp.com -u foo -D mycorp -w changeMe https://mycorp.com/service/billing

Authenticate to Sharepoint with ADFS

System Requirements and Access Privileges

Site collection administrator level of access to any edition of SharePoint 2013 or above.
Local administrator access to a server with .Net Framework 4.5 installed to run scheduled tasks. The server doesn't need to be the host of the SharePoint site. Windows Server 2008 R2 has been tested working.
Optionally Git client to download package
Optionally Visual Studio 2017 if you want to compile or change source code of Invoice Run.exe

Installation

Use Download Zip button to download the latest version, or use Git client to clone the git repo.
Upload file Sharepoint Solutions\SharePoint 2016\Service Billing.wsp to SharePoint site collection solution gallery and activate it.
Create a site using Service Billing site template contained in Service Billing.wsp. You may need to active certain site collection features first.
Define permissions of each list appropriately. Users from service provider organization, depending on job roles, should have read-only permission to Charges and read-write permission to Accounts, Rates and Consumptions. Don't grant any permission to clients at list level.
Follow manual processes in Overview section to populate lists and SharePoint groups. Create some fake data in Consumptions list in order to verify the function.
Copy all files under /Invoice Run/bin/Debug to a server where Invoice Run scheduled task will be created. The server must have .Net Framework 4 installed.
Manually run Invoice Run.exe on the server with URL of the site created in Step 3. above and optional arguments documented in the Console Application section above. The Windows login account should be a local server administrator. If Sharepoint is ntlm authenticated and no username, domain or password provided in input parameter, then the Windows login acount will be used to login to SharePoint. The account therefore should also have adequate privilege to modify Sharepoint list items and permissions. Make the account a site collection administrator is recommended. If you run from a desktop version of Windows such as Vista with UAC, you have to run Invoice Run.exe from a DOS prompt started with "Run as administrator". If the run is successful, you should see new items created in Charges list with unique permissions. If the run fails, errors are output to both console and Windows event log.
Create a scheduled task to run Invoice Run.exe periodically. The Windows account used to run the scheduled task should be a local administrator. If Sharepoint is ntlm authenticated and no username, domain or password provided in input parameter, then the Windows login acount will be used to login to SharePoint. The account therefore should also have adequate privilege to modify Sharepoint list items and permissions. Make the account a site collection administrator is recommended.

License

The MIT License (MIT)

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

abbr / BillEase