Target Date: the date when the order(s) will be invoiced from, including all previous periods that have not been invoiced yet. Affects the order(s).
Invoice Date: the actual date that the invoice will have. Affects journals and due dates.
Target dates are handled differently depending on the billing period and billing timing. Every example in this article is for an order with a monthly service period, that we want to invoice for June.
Recurring In Advance
If an order is recurring and has billing timing in advance, to capture the coming month we want to invoice for, we just need to have the target date at any day of that month, for example, the first day:
- Target Date: 2019-06-01
- Invoice Date: 2019-05-31
Recurring In Arrears
If an order has billing time in arrears, the month will not be billed until after the month, so we need to choose a target date that is after the month, for example, the first day of the next month:
- Target Date: 2019-07-01
- Invoice Date: 2019-07-01
Usage
Usage always has billing timing in arrears, as all the usage information for the period needs to be gathered before we can invoice for the complete usage of that month. Therefore, the target date choice is the same as recurring orders with billing in arrears:
- Target date: 2019-07-01
- Invoice date: 2019-06-30
One-Off
A one-off charge just has a start date, so only the invoice date is necessary for invoicing such a charge. If the start date of the One-Off is after the invoice date, the charge will be invoiced. For example, if we have a one-off from 2019-06-01, we need the invoice date to be at or after that date:
- Invoice date: 2019-06-01
Customized Target Dates
If we are invoicing one order and it has multiple charges with different billing timings, we can use customized target dates. We can also use this when we are creating a batch with multiple orders that have different billing timings.