In this post, we’ll explore Salesforce Revenue Cloud Billing, a robust invoicing and billing management solution. I’ll guide you through the key setup steps and features, covering how to activate billing, create legal entities, billing policies, and tax policies, and generate invoices.
What is Salesforce Revenue Cloud Billing?
Revenue Cloud Billing is part of Salesforce Revenue Cloud (available Winter ’25 release) and is designed to streamline invoice management. It supports multiple legal entities, integrates with tax engines, and automatically converts negative invoice lines to credit memos, enabling seamless credit application to invoices.
Setting Up Salesforce Billing
To get started with billing, follow these steps:
- Assigning the Right Permissions
- Ensure your user has the Billing Admin and Data Pipelines Base User permission sets.
- You’ll also need the Billing User permission set license. This ensures you can access billing features and create invoices.
- Enabling Data Pipelines
- In Setup, search for “Data Pipelines” and enable it. This feature is essential for managing billing batches and scheduling invoice generation.
- Activating Billing
- In Setup, search for “Billing Settings” and turn billing on. You may need to refresh your setup to see new options like the guided setup menu.
Guided Setup for Billing
The guided setup walks you through several essential steps. Let’s break down a few:
- Create a Legal Entity
- Navigate to Legal Entity in the guided setup. Create a new legal entity by giving it a company name and address. This entity will tie into billing and invoicing operations.
- Create a Billing Policy
- Next, create a billing policy under Billing Policy. Initially, set the status to draft and leave the default billing treatment empty for now.
- Create a Billing Treatment
- Create your billing treatment and associate it with the legal entity and billing policy. Set its status to draft until you create a billing treatment item.
- Billing treatment items define how much of the total order will be billed—whether a percentage, flat amount, or full amount.
- Activating Billing
- Once the legal entity, billing policy, and treatment are created, go back to Billing Settings to define default values like the billing context and order entity mappings.
Tax Policy Setup
Even without integrating a tax engine, you still need a tax policy:
- Create a Tax Policy and Treatment
- In the guided setup, create a tax policy and associate it with your legal entity. Then, create a tax treatment and link it to your tax policy. Once both are in place, you can activate your tax policy.
Generating Invoices
- Set Up Payment Terms
- In the regular Salesforce menu (not setup), search for Payment Terms. Create a new payment term (e.g., “Net 30”). Then, under related items, add the specific term conditions, such as “30 days.”
- Creating a Flow for Billing Schedules
- In Setup, navigate to Flows and activate the standard Order to Billing Schedule flow. This flow will trigger the creation of billing schedules when orders are set to “Active.”
- Invoice Configuration
- After configuring the orders and billing schedules, create an invoice scheduler. Set it to run immediately, or on a recurring basis. Once the scheduler completes, you can review and post the invoices.
Review of Invoices
After invoices are generated, review them under the Invoice Batch Run. Each product tied to the order will have its own billing schedule, which reflects how and when charges are applied. You can view and post the invoices directly from Salesforce.
Conclusion
Salesforce Revenue Cloud Billing is a powerful tool for managing invoicing processes, especially for companies dealing with multiple legal entities and complex billing schedules. In this walkthrough, we covered setting up key components like billing policies, legal entities, and invoice generation.
For more advanced features like credit notes and tax integrations, stay tuned for future posts or refer to the Salesforce Billing Documentation.