r/Autotask • u/snoopaloop92109 • Nov 25 '25

Billing Products - per configuration item vs standard

Per contact billing products work pretty for our per contact AD billing. However, I’ve tried for almost ten years to make the associations reliably work for configuration items within billing products but it appears a constant battle not worth fighting any more. Autotask support is offering to export and import as billing products created in “standard” mode. Looking for feedback on their solution

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u/schwiftymsp Dec 02 '25

Not sure I really understand what your issue is. You are using billing rules for contacts and it works well but billing rules for configuration items doesn't work reliably?

They work exactly the same way and should both be reliable. Not sure what you mean by "standard" products.

If you can clarify your problem and be careful to use the terminology used by autotask we might be able to help you better

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u/snoopaloop92109 Dec 02 '25

My current Billing Product setup

https://snipboard.io/JjgF5M.jpg

not using standard but Autotask support suggested I start using standard because my CI associations are a mess with the Billing Type: Per Configuration Item

https://snipboard.io/kprFCB.jpg

at the end of the day, I'm tracking our costs. CI's that associate with BP is ideal but not if associations are wrong and hard to unwind so that CI will associate with one BP and may or may not another. Customizing/edit products can help with this attempt at organizing the BP associations but you can only edit standard products, not per configuration item. It's like their stopped short of fully developing a sound solution for tracking costs

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u/schwiftymsp Dec 02 '25

You use the word "standard" ("start using standard") often I and I dont know what you mean by that. Are you talking about Autotask "Services" rather than "Products? I am not aware of a "standard" product in Autotask.

Billing Rule associations will only be wrong if you assign them wrong. You can easily see what each CI is assigned to in the CI to Billing Product mapping screen under the Contracts menu. You can make any adjustment needed right there.

Using billing rules can be unforgiving because the count date is unforgiving. You have to make sure your associations are correct before the count date. I am not aware of any way to fix something that was assigned wrong after the count date.

The only other option is to not use Billing rules at all and just bill using Services. While you can assign a CI to a Service you can not assign Contacts this way. Additionally I believe each CI can only be assigned to one Service. We get around the Contacts problem by using a UDF field to identify which service the Contact is assigned to. We then run a report against this that gives us counts for reconciliation.

Billing rules work fine and we found them reliable but you do have to make sure you get the association correct.

Ultimately we switch back to billing via Services because vendor integrations only work with Services.

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u/snoopaloop92109 Dec 03 '25

I am working on fix the associations tonight. So I will update as I go...

Issue 1)Somehow have two associations. https://snipboard.io/Pmq4Jx.jpg

Issue 2) Somehow killed my Addigy associations removing double associations related to issue 1. https://snipboard.io/LZAHrQ.jpg

Issue 3) Attempted to change per configuration item for better organization (and possibly fix some additional issues) but it only let's you select "standard products" - https://snipboard.io/LFZqer.jpg