InvoiceProcess

Rating, Billing and Invoicing Process

The Billing and Rating engine provides powerful processing algorithms to calculate charges for your products and services. Combined with the Batch Mediation System (BMS), usage and provisioning information obtained from your systems and your suppliers’ systems can be bound to a customer’s service, and the associated Package, Plan and Rate Card will be used to calculate the correct charges for each Service Information Record (SIR) into your account invoices.

Below is a summary of the Rating, Billing and Invoicing process:

1. Mediation – BMS translates incoming SIRs from upstream carriers and suppliers into formats usable by the system (e.g. telephony service usage CDRs). BMS also assigns a Tariff to the SIR (see below for further explanation).
2. Service Association – BMS associates the incoming SIRs with the correct services ready for the billing and rating engine. From the service, the correct Packages, Plans, and Rate Cards are determined for rating.
3. Bucketing –Usage SIRs are assigned into the correct invoicing period ready for rating.
4. Rating – Individual usage SIRs are rated according to the Rate Cards associated with the Service Plan and the charge profiles set up to create the Rated Amount.
5. Usage Record Manipulation – Any changes to the rated usage SIR’s are handled at this stage based on Plan attributes and special features like Neighbourhood Calls and Free periods (e.g. Optus “Yes‟ time).
6. Service Bolt On Usage – Bolt On rating is then processed to isolate any records relevant to Service Bolt Ons and the Rated Amount and Charged Amount are updated.
7. Charging – Groups of SIRs are aggregated together and package discounts, capping and other billing rules are applied to them. This generates the Invoice Amount for these records.
8. Rounding – Any rounding rules are applied and the Charged Amount and Invoiced Amount for these records are updated.
9. End of Period (EOP) and Start of Period (SOP) Billing – Access Fees and other recurring charges not based on service usage are applied and cardlines are produced ready for the invoicing system.
10. Invoice Generation – Invoices are generated based on the summation of the cardlines generated.
11. Package Discounts – Any package level discounts set up are applied that may alter the invoiced amount by applying discounts (or surcharges) based on the package defined rules.
12. Pending Invoice Generation according to the Account Invoice Period
13. Invoice Approval– The process of reviewing invoices can be performed manually, or the system can be set to be fully automated so invoice auditing is by-passed (see invoice approval settings).
14. Invoice Presentation – Invoice presentation is the rendering of the invoice card lines and bundle discounts together with any payments made, credits, debits, and adjustments made to the account during the invoice period. The Invoice is then created as an Adobe® Acrobat® PDF format document.

The invoice may then be emailed to the customer automatically, printed, downloaded, made available to the Customer to view in the User Portal, or transferred to a mail house for printing and posting to the customer.