Bill Print

Once invoice and statement details have been generated, they must be organised in a manner that is convenient for printing by a third party Of software; a reusable component developed to be either freely distributed or sold by an entity other than the original vendor of the development platform. print bureau. The Bill Print produces an encrypted file that contains subscription A billing entity that incurs a charge. Examples include a network attached device whose usage you want to measure and charge for, or a monthly software subscription invoice charges and statement information. Bill Print organises the invoice and statement details into logical documents that correspond to the artefacts generated by the print bureau. The print bureau collects the file and uses it to generate actual invoices and statements according to subscribers' needs, for example large font or audio files.

Each encrypted file that Bill Print produces has a header section with global data and can include a series of containers known as envelopes. Each envelope represents:

• A distinct document address - for example delivery address or email address.
• Type - for example original or copy.
• Format - for example Braille or large font.

An envelope can contain any of the following sections:

• Statement

  A statement is optional for an account In the Cloud Monetisation Platform, a billing entity that can be used to manage payments on one or more subscriptions or payments for services. An account can hold details such as payments or invoices.. If included, it shows an opening balance, closing balance and a breakdown of transactions (payments and adjustments) for the account at that point in time.

• Invoice

  An Invoice represents a subscriber The end user of a network.'s charges for the current billing period. The invoice is broken into two sections:

  • Account Charges - for example sales ledger adjustments and hardware orders.
  • Subscription Charges - for example monthly line rental and usage The consumption of services, for example a subscriber using call minutes..
• Detailed Bill

  A Detailed Bill shows a breakdown of a subscriber's usage in the current billing period and the baskets from which the usage was consumed. A basket can be:

  • money - for example £5.00
  • kilobytes - for example 1GB of data
  • minutes - 1000 texts

For more detailed information on the files produced, see Bill Print in the CMP Converged Monetisation Platform. The MDS Global product that supports customer care and billing for digital service providers. Batch Jobs and JSON JavaScript Object Notation. JSON is a lightweight format for storing and transporting data, often used when data is sent from a server to a web page. Schemas Guide.

CMP allows the same subscriber to have multiple addresses – for example, the invoice could be sent to one address and the detailed bill to another. This is represented in the file as two distinct envelopes.

Bill Print also handles Copy Requests, where a subscriber rings the Call Centre and requests a copy of a previously issued invoice, detailed bill or a statement. These also result in the creation of distinct envelopes.

Agents can also request a reprint of a bill from within AgentView The graphical user interface of the CMP that is typically used by Customer Service Agents to access CMP customer and billing data. In versions prior to CMP 8.0, this was called the CMP GUI.. This allows agents to request a reprint of a bill on the customer In the context of the Cloud Monetisation Platform, an individual or organisation who has signed an agreement to take goods and services from a service provider. A customer receives a bill associated with one or more subscriptions, and can be a single end user or a large company with many subscriptions assigned to one agreement.’s behalf to which a charge can be applied. The reprinted bill is sent to the address on the original invoice, and can be in a different billing media format to that of the original invoice.

When Bill Print completes successfully, the encrypted JSON file is created in a secure location. An adapter is responsible for taking the file to the print bureau.

Bill Formatting

The billing files generated by the Bill Print process are used to generate the physical and/or electronic bills that are sent out to end customers and made available through the self-care applications and CMP GUI Now called AgentView; the graphical user interface of the CMP that is typically used by Customer Service Agents to access CMP customer and billing data.. As an additional optional component, MDS Global can provide a Billing Formatting solution to generate the PDF bill for distribution and enquiries.

If the customer chooses to include this option, the billing files are automatically sent to the Billing Formatting system at the end of the invoice production and print process. The format of the PDF bills is fully customisable to meet the specific needs of the Digital Service Provider The owner of the infrastructure in which accounts will be created. The Service Provider can host and operate the instance of CMP, or CMP can be provided as a Managed Service. including branding, styling and layout. The Bill Format Designer provides a graphical, flow-based user A person with the capability to log in to the CMP GUI software, such as a customer service advisor or agent. interface to enable data manipulation and formatting to render the bill data within the defined presentation template. MDS Global can provide an example presentation template to use as the basis for the operator-specific bill format.

Once the PDF bills have been generated the Bill Formatting system can automatically email the bills out to end customers based on the email address provided in the bill file. The formatting process also supports generation of PDF bills for printing or distribution in other media types such as Braille or audio.

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