Offset item

An offset item is used to “correct” the amounts in a document so that they come out valid and accurate.

The problem is that an item defined as a one-time charge gets created in two different billing accounts instead of only one (because the item is one-time).

For example: a monthly contract that includes a one-time item.

When you bill for January, the January billing account is created with the one-time item correctly.

In the next billing account, for February, the item is created again by mistake, so the system generates an additional item called an offset item in order to offset the amount and reconcile the totals between the items and the sections.

In effect, the offset item is a credit item for the item that was created in June a second time, incorrectly.

While creating the February billing account, the system detected a gap between the total of the items that were created and the total of the sections, so it created an offset item (to “correct” the item total so that it matches the section total).

Because the mechanism matches based on amounts rather than on items, there is no way to know which item has already been created in a given billing account and which has not. With monthly items this is not a problem, because we split by dates in “Create document and associate”, so each month is billed once. With one-time items, however, the system has no way to know whether it is an item that was already created in a billing account or an item that was created later and has never been billed.

To avoid the need to correct documents (and thereby avoid offset items), make sure to place one-time charges in a document separate from monthly charges. Sometimes an additional document type is added alongside the contract, dedicated to one-time charges, so that the items are separated more clearly.