SAP Subscription Billing Testing Strategy

[aleksandrs_antonuks2]

Dear experts,

What would be the best strategy to perform testing in the SAP Subscription Billing system? As far as I am concerned, the bill is generated once the current billing cycle is completed, but if the billing cycle is set to monthly it might take too much time to test several cycles. So I am a bit confused as am a beginner in the Subscription Billing world and need to perform "real life" scenario testing.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Br,
Aleks.

[ralf_rubel · Accepted solution]

Hi Aleks,

in SAP Subscription Billing the generation of bills is not necessarily bound to its billing cycle.

Bills are generated
a) immediately after the creation of the subscription
b) periodically, shortly before its billing cycle starts
c) after changes on rate plan/subscription which do impact a current or past bill cycle

Looking at your example, where the billing cycle is set to monthly and the bill has usage charges or recurring charges to be paid in-arrears. You will find a bill in status "Open" right after the creation of the subscription. Typically the bill remains in status "Open" until the end of the billing cycle.
In status "Open" the bill has kind of draft state. It does consider updates, triggered by usage postings or changes to rate plan/subscription. You can configure a so called billing delay. It keeps the bill in status "Open" for the given number of days. The system default is 2 days.
Once the end of the billing cycle + the billing delay is reached the status of the bill switches to "Closing" and shortly after to status "Closed" Now the bill is considered as immutable. No further changes are considered to closed bills.

All above is describing the lifecycle of "real life" scenario. But for testing you probably don't want to wait a month observing the bill from being created until its final state.

So here are some specific tips for testing the bill lifecycle
- create backdated subscriptions, starting from a month ago. This way the phase of bill in state "open" is reduced
- do all expected updates (e.g. usage posts) to the "open" bill. Once you consider the bill as final use the option to close the bill manually (UI: Change Status - Close Bill Immediately)

And here some more general ones
- use dedicated tenant for testing
- make yourself familiar with the documentation
- do test with near real life master data. So use different customers, different rate plans, different products, different subscription start/end dates
- make use of "billSplitElement" when creating subscriptions to prevent consolidation of multiple subscriptions in one bill

And most important: Have fun testing SAP Subscription Billing

Best regards
Ralf

[aleksandrs_antonuks2 · Accepted solution]

Hi Ralf,

Thank you very much for such a detailed answer! Very very appreciated!

Br,

Aleks.