Cycle management

A cycle is a phase of the fiscal year that is associated with a specific date (cycle date) when routine invoicing, postings, and reporting can occur.

This table shows the key elements for managing cycles:

Element	Description
Contract date	Start date of the customer contract.
Contract termination	End date of a customer contract.
Frequency	Interval of time that is used for billing or posting to the global ledger.
Cycle date	Company calendar date that is used for billing or posting.
Next cycle date	System-generated date on a contract charge. Used by Franchise Billing to validate whether a charge can be changed to a sales entry as a default.
Sales entry	Record containing sales data, such as the net sales amount, sales tax, and the corresponding contract charges, for a given cycle date.
Sales type	Option that indicates on a sales entry whether the data is for an estimate, call-in estimate, or actual invoice.
Estimates	Sales type that represents system-calculated net sales and charges. Used to identify uninvoiced sales charges for a cycle and to predict planned sales charges for a cycle.
Call-in estimates	Sales type that represents customer contract charges verified by phone contact with the sales representative. The purpose of the call-in estimate is to provide data considered more reliable than system-calculated estimates.
Actual invoice	Sales type that represents customer contract sales verified by a customer fax or other official source. Only those sales entries that are defined for the actual invoice sales type are invoiced.