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Overview

Prepaid subscriptions are either billed for a passed period (post-rated) or billed for an upcoming defined period (pre-rated), usually by the prepaid billing run. Once billed, subscribers must pay for the billed services else they will be candidates for deactivation. Post-rated service billing is only handled by the prepaid billing run, however billing of pre-rated services is also done when added to a subscription; if there are not enough funds in the wallet to cover for the whole billed period, the services won't be activated.

Prepaid subscriptions are paid through the subscriber's wallet rather than the account which is used for normal subscribers.

Setting up Prepaid Billing Runs

Configuration required before executing prepaid billing runs is available at Billing Definition at Prepaid Billing Settings tab.

Using Prepaid Billing Runs

Billing > Billing > Perform Prepaid Billing Runs

Prepaid billing run fields

This table contains an explanation of the sections of the normal billing run Data Entry page, a description of the usage of its fields and additional information.

Mandatory Configurable

Main Information
Bill As Of Date : Subscriptions with services whose 'Rated up to' date is equal or before the 'Bill as Of Date' are taken into account. It is set equal to the date the Prepaid Billing Run is performed. Life Cycle State: The life cycle state of the billing run reflects the stage that the billing is at: Draft: The Billing Run was not executed yet Identification and Rating: The Billing Run was executed up to this step Completed: All Billing Run steps were executed successfully Failed: The Billing Run was not executed and no Bills were created Completed with Errors: the Billing Run was executed with minor errors and Bills were created Scheduled Date: This is a Read-only field which is available once a run is scheduled. The date provided shows the latest date that the Run is scheduled to be executed on. Enable Wallet Consumption Estimation Step: Determines whether estimations related to when the money available in the subscriber's wallet will be consumed should be made. It can be automatically set when creating the Prepaid Billing Run, based on the processing settings specified on the 'Active' Prepaid Billing Run Definitions. Skip Estimations: No estimations takes place Re-estimate All: Estimation for all wallets takes place Re-estimate Wallets with changes: The system decides which wallets were modified and makes estimations, only for those wallets. Skip estimation of Wallets for faster execution.
Criteria
You can manage who you are billing by providing specific criteria. Only subscriptions that meet the criteria defined are included in the billing. For example you can choose to bill your employees in one billing run and your commercial subscribers in a different billing run. You can define specific values for 'Billing Term Schemes' and 'Accounts Receivable Classifications'
Filters
As with criteria you can define filters that will be used during billing , to only bill specific specific entities. For example you can select to bill only subscriptions that belong to a group, where that group can represent a geographical area. Filtering can be applied on, 'Accounts Receivable', 'Subscriptions', , 'Groups'
Scheduling Settings
Recurring: Determines whether the billing run takes place once or is recurring. In the case of a recurring, the recurrence is read-only and is set to 1 day
Results
Results are available once billing is completed providing you with information on the bills that were created. Number of Generated Wallet Transactions: The total number of transactions generated by the Run. Start Date: The date on which the Billing Run starts. End Date: The date on which the Billing Run ends. Results Per Step: A table listing all the steps of the specific Billing Run, the wallet transactions created and the entities included.
Exceptions
If any accounts were excluded from billing die to errors then the accounts are shown along with the error

Creating and executing a prepaid billing run

Navigate to prepaid billing run and specify the criteria that match the billing run you are interested in, or click on NEW from the Actions menu to create a new billing run. Provide the mandatory information as defined in the fields table above and save the billing run.
Once you create your billing run you must execute it. Once executed the progress of the run is determined by its life cycle state.

Select Actions > Execute
In the Execute Prepaid Billing Run Modal:
1. Execute Now: Check the box to execute the Billing Run directly.
2. Scheduled Date: Click on the calendar to select a date and time to start the execution. Click DONE when completed.
3. Click SAVE

When a prepaid billing run is executed a series of steps take place as explained below.

Identification

Identifies all the unrated billable (chargeable or creditable) information which is ready to be billed based on the conditions and filters (if any) set on the billing run:

For each subscription the following entities are identified:

Subscription usage detail records that should be billed or credited and have a posted life cycle state
Post-rated services that should be billed or credited (based on their billing directive), are not yet fully rated and their billing effective date is before or equal to the bill as of date
Pre-rated services which have not been rated before or their latest "Rated Up To Date" is equal to or before the billing run's performed date

Subscriptions which belong to terminated accounts are excluded from billing.

Rating

Calculates and applies the rates on each service that has a 'Pending' rating state, for a specific period, by creating debit or credit rated billing items, acquiring information from the subscription service life cycle state periods and billing directive.

If a service is post-rated, then a rated billing item is created from the last "Rated Up To Date" until the prepaid billing run's performed date.
If the service is pre-rated, then a rated billing item is created from the last "Rated Up To Date" plus the period for which the service will be billed in advance as this is defined in the billing term scheme.

Pre-rated services that come out of grace period require customers to pay more than the standard pre-rated amount to include the number of days they were in grace. However, if the 'Decrease the prepaid pre-rated period by the total number of days in grace periods' setting is selected in the billing definition then the customers only need to pay for the pre-rated period from where the days that they were in grace will be deducted.

Changes on price plans or additive discounts made after a prepaid billing run pre-rates a prepaid service, will not affect the billing of these services. I.e. Once you have pre-rated a service,any changes on pricing done after the rating, will not affect the billing. No crediting will be executed. The changed prices will only be applicable in upcoming billing periods that have not already been rated.

Wallet debiting process

Responsible for the generation of wallet debit transactions, based on the amount in the rating step, or already existed rated billing items that were not processed. In addition to the wallet transactions, the 'prepaid state' which is used by the deactivation process to decide whether to deactivate a subscription, is calculated.

A global threshold set in the wallet definition sets the minimum amount that a subscriber's wallet can have. If during billing, the amount in the wallet, after deducting the rated amount, goes below the threshold then, then the prepaid state used to set it as candidate for deactivation is set to 'Invalid' and the service is not rated. If on the other hand there is enough money in the wallet, then the wallet is debited and the prepaid state is set to 'Valid' so that it will not be considered by deactivation.

In cases where a candidate subscription for deactivation exists and the subscriber makes a payment to cover for all of the services before the deactivation then the subscription will not be deactivated. This is handled when crediting the wallet.

Wallet consumption estimations

Estimations are performed only if enabled through the prepaid billing run and it estimates the date on which the wallet balance will be consumed, based on the billing terms and the usage of the subscription services. The maximum estimated time is one year by default, but can be configured for more through 'Prepaid Billing Run Settings' in the billing definitions. Information which is set at this step is the following

Wallets

Estimated Consumption Days: An estimation of the number of days left until the entire wallet amount is consumed
Estimated Consumption Date: An estimation of the date on which the entire wallet amount is consumed

Wallet Product Consumption

Estimated Consumption Days: An estimation of the number of days left until the entire wallet amount allotted for the specified product is consumed
Estimated Consumption Date: An estimation of the date on which the entire wallet amount allotted for the specified product is consumed
Latest date of Estimation: The latest date that the estimation was performed.

Glossary

CRM.COM Term	Definition
Billable entity	Entities which can be billed through the billing engine, i.e. Jobs and Subscriptions
Rated Billing Items (RBI)	Rated Billing Items is information generated by the billing engine during the rating step of the normal billing run, before the financial transaction is created. They store information on the services, physical goods and additional billing period information and give you the chance to make amendments and corrections before the financial transaction which is a legal document is created,
Usage Detail Records (UDR)	Usage Detail Record. UDRs are used to hold raw information describing the use of Usage Subscription Services. For more information view Usage Detail Records.
Service prepaid state	This is a value estimated by the prepaid billing run process which can be valid or invalid. Services with a valid prepaid state are not deactivate when the deactivation run is executed while the invalid ones are deactivated.

Billing of Prepaid Subscriptions