Copy of How To / Billing of Pre-Paid Subscriptions

Owned by Persia Xenopoulou (Deactivated)
Oct 16, 2015
6 min read

What does this section cover?

Overview

Billing in CRM.COM is used to handle multiple types of billing such as recurring billing and instant billing as well as pre-bill, post-bill and pre-paid billing.

  • Pre-Paid billing is related to services that will be used after they have already been paid, and they can be viewed up until the paid amount is used.
  • Post-Bill billing is related to services that are billed after they have been used, for example a summerhouse subscription, that will be billed after it has been used
  • Pre-Bill billing is related to services that are billed in advance; before they are even used/watched by the subscribers

Prepaid Billing can only be performed on Subscriptions. 

The How To aims to give you a clear understanding of how CRM.COM modules interact between them and provide you with a complete solution for handling and managing billing for a PAY TV business handling pre-paid subscriptions.

How To for Pre-Paid Subscription billing can be found here:

 

Intended Audience & Purpose

Rewards How To's, are intended (but not restricted) to the following audience

  • Potential CRM.COM buyers - Management
    Management personnel will be introduced to CRM.COM OTT concept and how it can be used to meet business requirements.
  • Project Managers, key users, solution consultants
    Administrators will be assisted on understanding architecturally how CRM.COM modules interact between them and how the system can be utilised / configured to produce the desired results

Understanding Prepaid Billing within in CRM.COM

Multiple CRM.COM modules interact between them to provide a complete powerful solution, encompassing all the processes required by a Pay TV business for billing Prepaid subscriptions; from the time that a customer calls to become subscriber to the time time that the subscription is being included in the recurring billing process and paid for.

Read on to find out which modules are these and how they interact between them.

  • Subscription
    Subscription is the collection of services that are provided to your customers. Hardware (such as smartcard and decoder) and services provided to your customers need to be included in the subscription and it is via the subscription that CRM.COM will handle billing as well as provisioning of signals to the customer's TV
     

  • Accounts Receivable
    Pre-paid subscription related account is mainly used as an identifier and keeps the relation between the subscriber and the wallet, as it is via the wallet that money will be deducted for ordering of usage services.
    Additional configuration allows you to keep your account and your wallet synchronised, i.e. deducting money from the account and adding to your wallet and vice versa.
     

  • Wallet
    Think of it as the electronic wallet that keeps all the transactions of your subscription. The wallet for Pre-Paid Subscriptions is like the accounts receivable for normal subscriptions. The way wallets work is that credit is added in advance, kept in the subscription's wallet and then money is deducted daily (or as often as prepaid billing is executed), from the wallet based on the rates of its services. Only if money is available in the wallet, will a customer be allowed to order a usage service.
    Wallet Transactions are used to affect the wallet balance 
     
  • Billing Term
    Think of it as the contract between the customer and your company, including information such as the binding period, how often the subscriber is to be billed, the prices that the subscription will be billed with; but also defines the rules and conditions that should be applied during the billing of the specified subscription
     
  • Billing Term Scheme
    Billing term schemes are used to control the creation or modification of billing terms by providing the allowed options for each input field and by setting the default values, and also to control billing engine processes by providing the billing rules and policies that should be applied during billing runs 
     
  • Price Plan
    Think of them as your price catalogs. Price Plans include the pricing rates of each of your billable products. Price Plans allow you to define standard rates or discounted rates which can be based on various conditions, such as the usage of the product, for example the number of items bought, or the number of boxes a channel is distributed to, or based on the maturity of a service. In addition price plans 
     
  • Prepaid Billing Run
    This is your recurring billing process. Pre-Paid Billing Runs will find all the subscriptions that need to be billed and will bill them accordingly, extracting required information from the subscriptions's billing term and subscription services. This process is a batch process and is executed as often as you would like to bill your customers. It allows you to bill from a single subscription up to millions of subscriptions in just a couple of steps.
    Via Prepaid billing you have the option to turn on additional functions, which can be used to deactivate subscriptions whose related wallet is out of credit, reactivate subscriptions whose related wallet has been topped up as well as perform estimations with regards to disconnection dates based on the amount of money found in the wallet and the services on the subscription
     
  • Rated Billing Items
    Billing will create Rated Billing Items that hold the billing information for the billed items. Rated Billing Items are an intermediate step, before the actual wallet transactions are created;You have the option to amend information on Rated Billing Items even after the wallet transactions are created, if you need to correct erroneous transactions that have been created.
    • Rated Billing Items will in turn create the respective Debit or Credit Wallet Transactions that will be posted against the wallet and affect its balance.
       
  • Wallet Transactions
    Wallet Transactions are used to debit or credit the subscriber's wallet. Debit wallet transactions are usually automatically created via Prepaid Billing Run based on debit Rated Billing Items. Wallet Transactions hold information on the services which money have been allotted to. Credit Wallet Transactions on the other hand, hold information which can act as conditions, on how the money can be allotted. For example use money from specific transactions for paying off specific service or type of service.
     
  • Financial Transactions
    Financial Transactions are used to debit or credit the subscriber's account. In Prepaid billing setup, as the wallet is the main entity keeping billing and payment information, financial transactions will only be created in case that the system is configured in such a way, so that for every wallet transaction the respective financial transaction will be created (opposite sign Financial Transaction) to keep the account balance synchronised with the wallet. 
     
  • Normal Payments  /Voucher Payments
    Payments are transactional entities that will credit the account and deduct from the balance. Payments are used to pay off debits that have been created by Billing and included in Bills sent to the subscribers. CRM.COM supports multiple types of payments that you can use. 
    In terms of Wallets a Payment which is made against the account, it will cause the creation of a Credit Wallet Transaction that will top up the wallet.
    • Normal Payments
      • Credit Card Payments:  CRM.COM has integration with Stripe that allows your subscribers to pay for their products directly within CRM.COM
      • Direct Debit Payments
      • Bank Transfer Payments
      • Cash Payments
    • Voucher Payments 
      • CRM.COM allows you to make payments by using vouchers. Vouchers are prepaid cards that can be used to top up your account with money. Essentially vouchers, is an across module payment method that can be used by your subscribers to make payments

 PREPAID BILLING

Daily Billing of Prepaid Subscriptions

Scenario

Company ZX has just introduced a new subscription offer where customers will be buying 30 day vouchers designated for specific services. Once voucher credits expire the subscriptions will be automatically disconnected unless the subscriber buys a new voucher. 

  • Each Monthly voucher will be related with a single service
  • There are 3 different services included in the offer
    • Platinum: 2 euro per day
    • Gold: 1 euro per day
    • Silver: 0.5 euro per day
  • Voucher Prices:
    • Platinum: 60 euro voucher
    • Gold: 30 euro voucher
    • Silver: 15 euro voucher

Company ZX will issue 1000 vouchers per service and the offer will be available till all vouchers are sold out.

 

CRM.COM Prepaid Subscription Billing Setup

Vouchers

Start by setting up the voucher types. 3 types of vouchers should be set up in the system

  • 30 day Platinum
  • 30 day Gold
  • 30 day Silver

Once the voucher types are created then you will need to create the vouchers

  • Create 1000 Platinum vouchers
  • Create 1000 Gold vouchers
  • Create 1000 Silver vouchers

Now that vouchers are created, they must be sent to the printhouse so that they can be printed on cards.

  • Once Vouchers are printed are now ready to be activated and distributed to POS for sale
    If for any reason there are lost or broken vouchers then you can cancel them and re issue new ones of the specific type 

 Vouchers

Price Plans

Price Plans should be set up (if not already available) including the 3 services with the rates defined with a daily UOT.

 Price Plansd

Prepaid Billing Run

Prepaid Billing Run should be set up

 Prepaid Billing

CRM.COM Prepaid Subscription Usage

Subscription Account & Wallet

Top up Wallet using Voucher

Debit wallet by executing Prepaid Billing Run

Disconnect Subscription by executing Prepaid 

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