Billing and Revenue Management

Billing

The CMPClosed Converged Monetisation Platform. The MDS Global product that supports customer care and billing for digital service providers. convergentClosed In the telecommunications industry, a soultion that enables common management of all users and all services for multiple operators. billing engine can calculate and consolidate all chargeable events, mobile, fixed lineClosed Descriptive of a phone that uses a metal wire or fibre optic telephone line for transmission as distinguished from a mobile cellular line, which uses radio waves for transmission. Also called a land line., and/or broadbandClosed A wide-bandwidth data transmission that transports multiple signals and traffic types. related services onto a single 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. bill.

CMP handles a number of different charge types, which cater for most types of service:

The applicable tax is applied to calculated charges, and billing data is output in the CMP Flat File functionality for online display and paper bills to be produced by a third party print vendor.

The CMP 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. determines the eligibility for billing in each invoice production run. The billing task itself is wrapped by pre- and post-bill assurance processes to minimise the risk and impact of billing errors.

Charge Loader

CMP allows for non-usage charges, such as one-off charges and monthly recurring changes, that have already been calculated outside of CMP to be included as part of an invoice with the descriptive text that is provided. These charges can be invoiced immediately or deferred to the next billing cycle.

The external charges are mapped to subscription or account services and are invoiced “as is” directly by the non-subscription aspect of Invoice Production without any additional charge calculation processing by CMP. The charges will be considered for tax (exempt, tax inclusive or exclusive, account tax override) by Invoice Production.

For more information, see the CMP Batch Job and JSONClosed 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. Schema Guide.

Billing controls

The Agreement entity of the CMP customer hierarchy contains the controls for the frequency, structure and content of customer bills.

Key features are the following:

  • 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.

  • The number of days or months between bills.

  • 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.

  • (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.

  • The media and format of the bills produced, for example e-billing, Braille or audio.

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

Consolidation

Agreements can be logged at Account level or higher on 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 Subscription-level, Account-level, or Corporate-level consolidation.

  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.

  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

Tax Calculation

CMP calculates the tax due in line with the tax requirements of national regulators through configurable Service Tax Codes.

Each billable Service has an associated Tax Code reflecting the applicable rate. Where charges exist against multiple tax rates on a single bill, a tax line for each tax rate will be output in the Flat File functionality.

CMP supports, but not limited to, the following tax concepts:

  • Prices are configured in CMP as the VAT inclusive amount. During Invoice Production tax is split out totalled against the configured Inclusive Service Tax Code.

  • Prices are configured in CMP exclusive of tax. During Invoice Production tax is calculated, applied and totalled against the configured Exclusive Service Tax Code.

  • If defined as Tax Exempt, no tax will be applied.

  • If an Account is flagged as eligible for reverse charge taxation, CMP does not calculate and apply tax for that customer. Reverse charge tax must be declared to the appropriate revenue and customs authority. The service providerClosed 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. (seller) must include an acceptable method of notification on an invoice provided to the customer (buyer) stating the amount of tax to be paid. Reverse Charge VAT applies to:

    • business sales where the business is VAT registered
    • goods purchased for a business purpose

    • mobile phones and computer chips

      The invoice must also come to a total of at least £5000 (ex-VAT).

    Override Tax at Account

    a Service Tax Code can be configured against a CMP Account in the Sales Ledger. When the Override Tax Code to A/C flag against the Account is set, the configured Service Tax Code is used to tax all Usage and Non-Usage items related to that Account.

Invoice Production and Print

Customer billing is typically generated daily but can be scheduled according to operational requirements. The one-off, periodic and unit-based charges are collated for each Subscriber deemed eligible for billing, based on their calculated Next Expected Invoice Date.

Charges and Credits are applied based on a CMP Service code. The behaviour of each Service Code is driven by underlying configuration during billing. A recurring service can be configured to charge in advance or in arrears and to prorate when applied or expired. Service configuration also drives how the associated revenue is reported in the ledgers and the tax rate applied to the charge. Tax is calculated against the sum of all charges for a tax code. CMP handles Inclusive, Exclusive, Exempt and Account Override for tax.

CMP collates charges for usage and events against services. It maps each usage classification to a Unit type service, which groups charges on the bill.

CMP creates invoice lines based on the chosen consolidation level where charges or credits exist.

CMP creates invoice lines based on Services for any identified non-agreement driven charges such as adjustments.

Once all invoices have been generated, they are posted to the sales ledger and billing files are generated. These can then be used for a self-care application and/or transmitted to a print bureau.

Bill Formatting

The billing files, generated by the Invoice 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 AgentView.

At the end of the billing process, the billing files are automatically transferred to the Bill Formatting system, powered by Bottomline Technologies, that is responsible for the generation of the PDF bill for distribution and enquiry. The format of the PDF bills is fully customisable to meet the specific needs of the Digital Service Provider including branding, styling and layout. The Bill Format Designer provides a graphical, flow-based user 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.