Invoices

Every account typically has one or more policies.

When BillingCenter receives information about a policy, it typically comes with billing requirements for that policy. These billing requirements are stored in BillingCenter as charges. A charge is a cost related to a policy (or to the account itself) that must be processed as an individual unit. Most charges are either premium, taxes, or fees.

Some charges are not billed all at once, but rather billed over a period of time. To enable the billing of a single charge over time, BillingCenter never places charges onto invoices. Instead, BillingCenter splits every charge into a set of one or more invoice items. These invoice items are then placed on invoices. When a charge is split into multiple invoice items, each invoice item is typically placed on a different invoice.

Invoices are generated by invoice streams. An invoice stream is an object that creates new invoices when needed and ensures that the invoices are billed or due on a regular cadence. For example, an account may specify that bills are due on the 15th of every month. If a new policy is created on January 1 and the policy is paid in three monthly installments, the invoice stream creates three new invoices with due dates on January 15, February 15, and March 15.

For more information on policies, charges, invoice items, and invoice streams, see the Application Guide.

This topic discusses how you can work with invoice streams and invoices through Cloud API.