Billing Methods and Options

There are several options that you have when it comes to billing. Below are the potential pros and cons to each option.

Frequency

Monthly - Billing monthly allows you to get paid more frequently compared to quarterly or annual billing. While this does require you to go through the billing process workflow more often, you will have the opportunity to learn the Orion billing system faster.

Quarterly - Requires you to only complete four billings a year. However, you will get paid only four times a year so it may require some careful budgeting.

Annual - This may be a great option for specific accounts such as trusts but may be very difficult to budget for if you have all accounts set to this frequency.

Valuation Methods

Period End Value - The system will look at a designated day of the account’s value to use as the billed market value. This is typically a quarter or month-end date depending on your billing frequency. The potential downside is cash flows may not be accurately reflected in the bill market value. For example, if the client has $500,000 all quarter but withdrawals $400,000 on the second to last day of the quarter you will only be billing on the remaining $100,000 even though you were managing the entire balance for the majority of the quarter.

Average Daily Balance - The system calculates the average daily balance based on the average value for each individual asset within the account. It sums the end-of-day balance for each asset and divides each asset’s total daily balance by the number of days that the account had value. It adds each asset’s average balance together to determine the average daily balance of the account. This method allows you to capture cash flows more accurately but can be difficult to understand the billing audit files at a glance since the Billed Market Value will never match the Account Market Value.

Average Monthly Balance - The system calculates the average monthly balance based on the value for each individual asset within the account on the last day of the month. It sums the end of the month values for the period and is divided based on the number of months. This method allows you to capture cash flows more accurately but can be difficult to understand the billing audit files at a glance since the Billed Market Value will never match the Account Market Value.

Bill Style

Arrears: Billing for the prior period (ex. Q1 Billing processed in Jan is for the time period Oct - Dec). Prior quarter/Month cash flows are automatically captured depending on the Valuation Method.

Advance: Billing for the upcoming period based on the assumed values from the last period (ex Q1 Billing processed in Jan is for Jan - March). If you would like to bill on mid quarter cash flows from the prior period you will need to manually mark the transactions as either New Money (positive values that need to be billed on such as Starting Values and Contributions) or Advance Bill ( negative values that you are providing a credit on such as Distributions and Taxes Withheld).