Billing Controls

The agreementClosed In the Cloud Monetisation Platform, the entity that holds the instructions for generating the bills for one or more subscriptions. including the addresses and how often the bill is generated. entity of the CMPClosed Converged Monetisation Platform. The MDS Global product that supports customer care and billing for digital service providers. customerClosed 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. hierarchy contains the controls for the frequency, structure and content of customer bills.

For more information, see the Agreement topic.

Key features of billing controls are:

ClosedBill Cycle

The day of the month when cyclical bills are triggered. This can be configured as any day between 1 - 31 days. See also Next Expected Invoice Date.

CMP cyclical billing supports monthly billing based on any day (1-31) of the month. Where a cycle does not exist in a month (e.g. 31 in a month with 30 days) the customer is billed on the last day of the month. Bill cycles other than monthly can be set on a daily basis between 1-999 days.

Cyclical billing can be carried out on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, bi-annual or annual basis and is set and managed via AgentViewClosed 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. at Agreement level.

A customer's billing date defaults to the first cycle date available after their connection date. The bill cycle date can be changed at any time via AgentView.

Any changes to the Bill cycle will apply to all subscriptions attached to the agreement.

In a real-time charging (RTCClosed Real Time Charging. Also known as an Online Charging System (OCS), a system that allows service providers to charge customers in real time, based on their service usage.) environment, when a post-paid subscriptionClosed 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's bill cycle day is changed, the external RTC system creates new allowance and spend capClosed A service for customers that applies a limit to how much usage a customer can consume outside of their allowances or bolt-on extras, preventing spending over a certain amount. records that take effect at the start of the subscription's new bill cycle. These new records must be synchronised with CMP records in order to allow for real-time enquiry of allowance and spend capClosed A limit on a subscriber's service. balances from CMP. Following a bill cycle change, new records generated by the RTC system are stored in CMP. When the new records are due to come into effect, the Bill Cycle Change batch job is triggered to update CMP allowance and spend cap records to refer to the new records.

For more information, see the CMP Batch Jobs and JSON Schemas Guide.

ClosedInvoice Frequency

The number of days or months between bills.

ClosedNext Expected Invoice Date

This is the date the Agreement becomes eligible for invoicing and is a key factor in the selection criteria used by CMP to determine when to generate a bill for a subscriberClosed The end user of a network.. Each time the subscriber is billed, the bill cycle and invoice frequency are used to set the Next Expected Invoice Date to the appropriate future date. CMP automatically adjusts for short months.

ClosedConsolidation Level

The level of the hierarchy at which charges should be grouped for billing. This ultimately determines how many bills are produced for the subscriber and where the debt sits on the customer hierarchy.

Agreements can be logged at the AccountClosed 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. level or higher in the CMP customer hierarchy. The level at which the agreement is logged determines the options available for consolidating charges into bills.

ClosedAccount Level

Agreements logged at Account level can have Subscription-level or Account-level consolidation.

  1. Subscription-level consolidation results in individual bills for each Subscription linked to the Agreement.

  2. Account-level consolidation results in a single bill containing the charges for all Subscriptions below that Account entity that are linked to the Agreement.

    Account-level Logging

ClosedCorporate level

Agreements logged at Corporate level can have consolidation at the Subscription, Account or Corporate level.

  1. Corporate-level consolidation results in a single bill containing the charges for all Subscriptions below that Corporate entity that are linked to the Agreement.
  2. Account-level consolidation results in separate bills for each Account below the Corporate entity that has Subscriptions linked to the Agreement.

  3. Subscription-level consolidation results in individual bills for each Subscription linked to the Agreement.

    Corporate Level Logging

ClosedGroup level

Agreements logged at Group level can have consolidation at the Subscription, Account, Corporate or Group level consolidation.

  1. Group-level consolidation results in a single bill containing the charges for all Subscriptions below that Group entity that are linked to the Agreement.
  2. Corporate-level consolidation results in separate bills for each Corporate below the Group entity that has Subscriptions linked to the Agreement.
  3. Account-level consolidation results in separate bills for each Account below the Corporate entity that has Subscriptions linked to the Agreement.

  4. Subscription-level consolidation results in individual bills for each Subscription linked to the Agreement.

    Group Level Logging

ClosedBilling Media

The media and format to be used outside of CMP for the bills produced, for example e-billing, Braille or audio.

ClosedFirst/Final invoice controls

Govern when first and final bills are produced, either on the normal bill cycle, or a configurable number of days after connection or disconnection.

First and final invoice controls allow first and/or final invoices to be sent on the cycle day or sent off cycle. For example:

Where first/final bills are set to be triggered off cycle, a configurable number of days delay can be set from connection/disconnection respectively. This is configured against a Subscriber’s Tariff.