In Subscription Billing, what is diff between Custom Reference and Field catalogue?

[mnic_17]

Hi Experts,

In Subscription Billing, I want to create a new field which will be received from external source in usage data or subscription. Could you please help me to understand if I shall define such fields in Custom References(Under Business configuration tile) or under Manage Field catalogue tile which is part of price calculation?

There are 3 use cases which I want to implement -

1. Accepting the fields in Usage and use them in price calculation 

2. Accepting the fields in Usage and use them in billing events as informative field(no logics on the field, only pass through)

3. Accepting fields in Subscription through contract creation

Thanks.

[stefan_kiene]

Hi,

some best practices for your scenarios/use cases are:

1. Accepting the fields in Usage and use them in price calculation
   -> use "item fields" in the usage record defined in the rate element on usage record level. They are meant to impact pricing!
   See also https://help.sap.com/docs/subscription-billing/feature-overview/rate-elements?locale=en-US#loio64c02...
   
   
2. Accepting the fields in Usage and use them in billing events as informative field(no logics on the field, only pass through)
   -> Use custom references for the usage records
   
   
3. Accepting fields in Subscription through contract creation
   -> You can use both custom reference (header + item level) or product configuration (only item level) based on your needs. Good description of the impact of pricing can be found here:
   https://help.sap.com/docs/subscription-billing/feature-overview/prices-from-pricing-scheme?locale=en...

Best regards
Stefan

[mnic_17]

@stefan_kiene For second point, I added field in Custom references and have chosen Object type as Usage Record Item. I have not used this field in any price element specification & so as not used in Pricing scheme too. I don't want to implement any logics on it. However, under Pricing Field mapping, I have to chose the pricing scheme to map the newly created field further. Since there is no pricing scheme for this field, I can not map it. Please help. How can I get this field in billing document post rating.

[stefan_kiene]

@mnic_17 The price field mapping is only relevant to pass the values into the pricing scheme during price execution. It doesn't have an impact on the propagation into follow-up documents like the bill or invoices in S/4HANA.
If you want the detailed information from the level of usage records being forwarded, you have to enhance the integration flows.
The data can be picked right from the bill model.

Generic GET for bills
https://api.sap.com/api/BillV2_APIs/path/get-bill-by-id
Bill -> billItems -> charges -> usage records

Or using the special endpoint for usage records linked to a bill only
https://api.sap.com/api/BillV2_APIs/path/get_bills__identifier__billItems__itemId__charges__chargeId...

Best regards
Stefan

[mnic_17]

@stefan_kiene I am not able to access the links which you have shared. It says Page Not Found. Could you please recheck again

[stefan_kiene]

@mnic_17Links work for me. Based on the URLs you should be able to navigate the right place in SAP Business Accelerator Hub