Minimum Requirements for Using the Synthesize Billing Module

An overview of prerequisites for utilizing the Synthesize Billing Module

It's vital to understand that the purpose of the Synthesize billing module is to facilitate billing reconciliation, ensuring alignment between vendor usage and the recurring services within your PSA. These services encompass a wide range, including but not limited to subscriptions, seats, endpoints, agents, users, licenses, mailboxes, service bundles, service packages, cost of goods sold (COGS), and other managed service offerings.

Minimum Requirements

  1. Manage Recurring Services and Contracts within Your PSA
  2. Associate Recurring Services with Contracts
    1. Considerations for New Services
    2. Considerations for New Contracts
    3. Considerations for Out-of-Cycle Services
  3. Total Cost and Price Calculations
  4. Bill in Advance (Recommended)

1. Manage Recurring Services and Contracts within Your PSA

Effective integration with the Synthesize billing module requires that all recurring services and contracts are managed within your PSA. This step forms the foundation for accurate billing and usage tracking. It's important to keep in mind that this tool exclusively serves billing reconciliation and constitutes an integral component of the billing process. The choice of invoicing through your PSA or a third-party application does not matter.

2. Associate Recurring Services with Contracts

For Synthesize to generate service cards and synchronize usage data, a service must be linked to at least one contract within the PSA. This association guarantees accurate representation of "in-use" services and usage.

Note This is by design to prevent unnecessary data transfer and API limitations. If you come across instances where services may seem to be missing, consider verifying their contract association within the PSA.

Considerations for New Services - New Found Revenue Cards 

As a general guideline, when reselling a new service, you can connect the service to an active contract within your PSA that has a date falling within the current billing cycle or before. After initiating a PSA synchronization within the Synthesize billing module, service cards will be created (usage synchronized) either through a CSV import or by synchronizing usage via an integration.

For accounts where you are reselling this new service but no contract is present, New Found Revenue cards will be created as soon as usage is identified. Following this, you can add these services and associate them with an existing contract.

New Found Revenue cards do not dismiss if the contract has been added via the PSA.  If you have added them in your PSA please dismiss them in Syntheszie. 

Considerations for New Contracts

In instances where there is no existing contract, you can easily create one within your PSA. Afterward, initiate another PSA synchronization in the Synthesize and proceed to assign the New Found Revenue to the newly established contract.

Considerations for Out-of-Cycle Services

Be aware that services dated outside of the current billing cycle will not appear in the Synthesize billing module. The focus is on real-time data representation for the current billing cycle.

3. Active Agreements and Services

Both recurring services and contracts must be in an active status for synchronization. Inactive contracts and services will not be synced, ensuring that only relevant and currently active data is taken into account.

Note The Synthesize billing module displays recurring services within the current billing cycle. Services within the current cycle will be shown, regardless of their billing cycles (such as monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, and annually), ensuring real-time visibility into both usage and billing patterns.

4. Advanced Billing and Other Billing Methodologies

Synthesize Billing is optimized to cater to MSPs who prefer advanced billing. However, we are equally equipped to support MSPs employing various billing methodologies, such as billing in arrears, mid-month billing, billing one month in advance, or any other billing approach you may utilize. Regardless of your preferred method, our platform is adaptable to support your needs.

By default, any usage approvals made in the current billing cycle will still take effect on the first day of the subsequent month. For instance, if today's date is January 1st and you authorize a change, it will become effective on February 1st.

Note that this example specifically relates to the default procedure of approving updates for Autotask PSA users. By default, we will adjust the existing contract line item to take effect on the first day of the subsequent month. 

Tip for more insights into the expected behaviour within your PSA, we suggest getting in touch with your Partner Success Manager or Gradient Support, as this behaviour can vary across different PSAs.

To ensure precision, we recommend conducting your billing reconciliation towards the end of the month and issuing your invoices on the first day of the following month. This practice guarantees the accuracy of data on your invoices across various billing methodologies.