Service Reconciliation in the SonicWall billing tool.

How to use the SonicWall billing tool to streamline service reconciliation.

Overview

Billing reconciliation can be tedious. The SonicWall billing tool reduces the time it takes to validate your SonicWall usage with your recurring contacts in your PSA.  This ensures invoice accuracy without risking missed clicks or typos when manually updating client contracts. The SonicWall billing tool breaks down recurring services into an easily digestible, efficient, and clean single-pane of glass.

Service Reconciliation

When to Reconcile
Steps before Reconciliation
Card View 
List View
Details
Prorate Transactions 
Bulk Approval
Activity Log

When to Reconcile

Billing works best for partners who Bill in Advance, as we will default any changes to the first of the following month. Log in on the last couple of days of the month, reconcile your changes and send invoices out on the first.

If you currently bill in arrears, don't fret. You can bulk approve changes for a specific date, ensuring you can reconcile your usage quickly.

Steps before Reconciliation

Syncing your PSA and the SonicWall integration before reconciliation is recommended to ensure the billing tool has the most accurate information.

1. Perform a full PSA Sync to ensure any changes made in the PSA are reflected within Billing.
2. Perform a manual sync of the SonicWall integration to ensure the imported usage is accurate.

The Basics - Card View 

SonicWall billing tool has two views, and here, we will look at the card view.

This view organizes and groups per service line across all your customers and agreements to quickly and easily streamline billing reconciliation. 

A Service Card represents a Contract Line Item (Service) in your Agreements or Contracts.

Review the cards and Approve/Add, check the Details, or Dismiss if you wish to make no changes. You don't even need to set foot in your PSA. You can update service counts directly to your client contracts with as little as one click. 

As you action each card, the Service Card will be removed from the main dashboard until the following month. You can always find any actioned cards in your Activity Log; however, if you wish to review prior actions taken during that billing cycle.

Do this repeatedly, month over month, to reconcile your SonicWall services before your invoice cycle.

 

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The Basics - List View 

Everything the card view has to offer and more!  A condensed grid-style card view with advanced display options. Reconcile item by item or multi-select. It's up to you! 

With the list view, you can Group by Account, Service, Contract, Unit Type, or Vendor name.  This enables you to see the data in the order that works best for you.

You can filter your data to show specific items by pressing the filters option. You can apply more than one at a time to have granular data control.  A pop-up menu will appear to enable you to filter by: 
Accounts:  Select one or more accounts to filter and show only those items to reconcile. 

Contracts: Select one or more contracts to filter and show only those specific ones. 

Services: Select the desired service(s) to filter. 

Unit Change: See the types of change you want. You can filter by Increase, Decrease, New Revenue, Missing Data, and No change.

Billing Period Frequency: Monthly, Quarterly, Semi-Annually and Annually.  

Cut-off Date: Select the cut-off date by which you wish to filter. Only one can be selected at a time.  Once you have selected the filters you want, simply press save and review your data.  

 
Columns:   Choose the columns you wish to see in the list view.  Select the Columns icon and add or remove columns from your view.   

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Details

When reviewing service cards, there are instances where you will want to review the contract information and make some minor adjustments. If you would like to review contract details, dates, renewal period, cost per unit, or past actions taken, simply click on the Details option on the service card.

A module will open that displays information in four quadrants.

The upper left quadrant displays the contact details for this particular customer. You can see the PSA ID numbers, dates/terms, current vendor quantity, cost, and frequency.

The upper right quadrant displays past actions taken on this contract from the Billing tool.

The lower left quadrant displays the contract's name in both your PSA and your Vendor portal. This allows you to review that contracts mapping at a glance, as well as see how current the sync is for that contracts information. 

Finally, the bottom right quadrant displays the current vendor amount for that contract, along with its listed price in your PSA and a date option that will allow you to forward or backdate the change you are looking to make if you so choose.

 As you make changes to the costs, you will see the summary of change update your profit and revenue estimates in real-time. 

Prorate Transactions

If your PSA supports prorated billing, you can add multiple prorated line items, review the summary of changes, and update your client contracts instantly.

Bulk Approval / Bulk Effective Date

After you've connected, expanding on that service will allow you to bulk-select and approve all the service cards for that service.  You can also use this feature to bulk select the effective date on which the changes will go into effect. 

Before bulk approval, spot-check each service card and address any anomalies. When performing the first Bulk action, you will get a warning modal for either bulk approve or bulk dismiss; if you are confident they do not want to see this warning again, you can select to dismiss the warning. 

Activity Logs

Review a complete history of changes made within the Billing tool; you can review your activity log by navigating to Settings > Activity Log.  You can see the activity for Billing, PSA Syncs, and Vendor Syncs by selecting the options at the top of the screen. 

The activity log data is retained for two weeks. 

If you'd like to view the audit trail for the actions, you can follow this from your within your PSA. Limited to one contact at a time. 

• • For Connectwise Manage users, you can open the agreement and go to the audit trail. 

  • Datto Autotask users can open the contract and click on the notes tab.