Bill segments are the entities that contain the details of how a bill was calculated and how it will be printed on a bill. A bill typically contains one bill segment for every active service agreement linked to its account. A bill segment contains information showing how the segment was calculated and how it should be printed on the customer's bill. The actions taken to create a bill segment are dependent on the service agreement's SA type.
For example, a service agreement that charges for metered service is produced as follows:
The system requests for the amount or usage consumed (or billing determinants) from Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management (e.g., the number of lamps, the number of gallons of water, the peak kW, etc.).
The service agreement's rate is applied to the amount consumed to calculate how much the customer owes for the service. A bill segment and a financial transaction are generated to reflect the results of this calculation. The system has different bill segment creation algorithms for different types of service agreements, such as deposits, adjustments, or flat fees. The bill segment type on the service agreement's SA type determines which algorithm to use. Bill segments are linked to the source information (e.g., service agreement, rate, meter read) and can be modified by changing the source information and regenerating the bill segment. References: Maintaining Bill Segments, Bill - Bill Segments