Mastering Business Central Subscription Billing: Automate Your Recurring Invoices

Discover how Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Subscription Billing simplifies recurring invoicing for support contracts, licenses, and services. Streamline billing processes effortlessly.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Subscription Billing functionality is now included natively in the 2024 Wave 2 release. This built-in module eliminates reliance on third-party add-ons, making it perfect for businesses billing recurring services like support contracts, software licenses, or similar services.

How Business Central Subscription Billing Works:

The Recurring Billing Automation functionality:

Automates invoicing for contractually agreed services.
Supports flexible billing periods (monthly, quarterly, annually, etc.)

Below we will go through a basic example of how this feature can be used in Business Central.

Step-by-Step Subscription Billing Setup:

1.Subscription Item Setup Begin by creating an item with the Subscription option selected. In this example, we have a ‘Monthly Support’ item configured specifically for recurring billing.

2. Customer Subscription Contract Creation Next, create a subscription contract for your customer. In our scenario with Trey Research:

Simplified Invoice Generation

To generate subscription invoices effortlessly:

Navigate to Recurring Billing in Business Central.
Apply filters (e.g., SUPPORT Billing Template, period ending 1/31/23).
With one click, generate invoices for all relevant customers.
Review the generated billing proposal, then click ‘Create Documents’ to finalize.

Automated Posting and Revenue Deferral

Invoices can be auto-posted, printed, or emailed directly to customers. With ‘Contract Deferrals’ enabled, invoices post initially to an ‘Accrued income not yet invoiced’ account.

Since the option to Create Contract Deferrals was turned on, this posted the invoice to the ‘Accrued income not yet invoiced’ account:

We can run the routine Subscription Contract Deferrals Release for the month to move the deferred income into the actual revenue accounts:

This will automatically move the deferred income into the Sales account:

This streamlined approach using Business Central Subscription Billing dramatically simplifies recurring billing processes, improves financial accuracy, and enhances operational efficiency.