Billing Term is the agreement between the customer and the company. It provides information with regards to billing, contract dates and billing periods.   Billing Terms are created every time a Billing Term Scheme is added or updated on the Job or Subscription.

The Billing Term determines whether a Subscription will be handled by Normal or Prepaid Billing.

A set of entities which can be billed through the billing engine, i.e. Jobs and Subscriptions.

Concurrent usage-based pricing is used to bill the customer by applying Price Plan rates based on the number of concurrent usage of the Services or the Physical Goods sold and a rate percentage, which is agreed between the customer and the company providing those services.

For example, in a Hotel Subscription, where the subscribed channels are shown in 100 rooms (Concurrent Usage = 100) and the concurrent percentage is set to 80%, if the rate for one subscription is €15, then the total price for the subscription is calculated as such:

Total = 80% * 100 * 15

The estimation of the date that the Wallet balance will be consumed, based on the Billing Terms and the usage of the Subscription Services.

Subscription Services are billed after being used for a certain period (usually on a daily basis), and funds are directly deducted from the Wallet.

A Service that is provided to customers as a one time service and is charged based on the hours spent to complete it.

• • Traceable: Good whose physical location is tracked (i.e. company's warehouse, specific customer)
  • Non-Traceable: Good for which only quantity is tracked.

   

  Cannot be billed via Prepaid Billing Run

The Prepaid Billing is a mechanism in which customers pay in advance for the Services to which they are subscribed.
The value of the Services consumed is deducted from the customer's Wallet.

The Run is usually performed on a daily basis and is responsible to:

• Identify the Service usage
• Rate the used Services
• Debit the related Wallets based on usage

Additional optional actions:

• Stop Subscription Services whose Wallet credit has run out
• Re-Start Services which were stopped due to insufficient Wallet credit which has now been restored
• Estimate the date on which the Wallet amount will be consumed by the Subscription Services, based on existing usage and Billing Term Schemes.

Unlike in the Normal Billing Run, the user cannot select up to which step the Prepaid Billing Run will be executed.

View Understanding Prepaid Billing Run Execution Steps for a thorough description of the Prepaid Billing Run processes.

The Prepaid Billing Run is responsible for billing all Subscriptions executed in a batch mode.

Unlike Normal Billing, where the user has the option to bill individual billable entities, Prepaid billable entities cannot be billed on an individual basis. It is possible, however, to get a bill preview.

• Individual Subscriptions can be previewed via the Subscription Action Bill Subscriber. Refer to Bill Subscriber for a walkthrough of the action.
• Individual Accounts can be previewed via the action Bill Account, which is accessible via the Accounts Receivable details page.

Rated Billing Items is information generated by the Billing Engine during the Rating Step of the Prepaid Billing Run, before the Financial Transaction is created. 
Rated Billing Items 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,

Visit Rated Billing Items for a thorough description of the processes available for handling Rated Billing Items.

Subscription Services supported by Prepaid Billing Term Schemes can be billed in two ways:

• Post-Rate: A prepaid Service which will be rated up to the date that the Prepaid Billing Runs is performed.
• Pre-Rate: A prepaid Service which will be rated in advance for an upcoming period by Prepaid Billing Runs.

Pre-Rated (billed Services) which are amended (removed or cancelled) will be credited through Credit Wallet Transactions during Prepaid Billing Runs as part of this billing adjustment.

Billing of Usage Services, such as PPV movies, ordered by subscribers using the 'Add Service Usage' action results in the direct billing of the services
When adding Usage Services to a Subscription using the Add Service Usage action, the UDR is created, and the Usage Service is rated and billed immediately.Consequently, if there are no funds available in the Wallet of the subscriber, then the Service cannot be added to the Subscription.

Refer to Understanding Normal Billing to see how billing of Usage Services is handled for Normal Subscriptions. 

Wallets are used by Prepaid Billing process to fund Subscriptions. Wallets display the date on which a Prepaid Subscription expires (based on its products and the price plan rates)

Consumption Amount Calculation for long periods

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