Revision as of 16:41, 30 May 2017

Overview

A Service Plan is a subscription-based billing object that is used to control the billing for a single service. In Emersion, service plans are bound to a single Service Type. Service Plans are then put into Package Plans to be sold to customers. A single service plan may be included in multiple packages. This is handy to know because it helps cut down significantly the number of service plans your company needs to maintain.

For readability, the term package and package plan are used interchangeably in this article. However, the terms 'Service Plan', 'Service Subscription' and 'Service' are to be considered different objects.

The diagram below shows the billing objects and their relationships. The service plan in purple, is in the centre. All other billing objects on the right are linked to the service plan, such as rate cards, product rate cards, etc. When constructing plans, plan builders must ensure the service plan and its related objects are in place before the service plan is finally placed into a package plan and is approved for sale.

For an overview of all billing objects, see the Emersion billing objects article.

Binding Objects

The other billing objects that plan builders must link to a service plan will depend on the service type of the particular Service Plan.

Product Rate Cards

All service plans must have an approved Product Rate Card attached. There are no exceptions to this rule. That said, it is not mandatory to have a product rate in the product rate card. Product rate cards with no rates is a valid plan configuration, and more common than you may think. Product Rate Cards include additional products and charged that can be enabled and disabled against a service. They do not have a usage component, they are simply [ON] or [OFF]. The products in them have been supplied to Emersion and come from the suppliers themselves.

Rate Cards

Rate Cards are for telephony plans. If your service plan is a telephony-based plan, an approved Rate Card must be attached. In addition, Rate Cards must have at least one rate in it in order to be approved.

Bolt-Ons

These billing objects are entirely optional.

Data Allowance

If your plan is a data-based plan, the plan builder needs to define how the usage is to be handled and billed. Technically, a service plan data allowance is not its own billing object. It is a specific set of settings for data plans. Data-based service plans will include a Data Billing sub tab where this information is stored.

Buy and Sell

As with most billing objects, there are BUY service plans and SELL service plans. As you can see from the diagram above, there are several links that need to be established before your customers can subscribe to these plans.

• BUY plans are linked to BUY plans
• SELL plans are linked to SELL plans
• BUY and SELL plans are linked together

Please see the Linking Package Plans and Service Plans article on how to approve ball billing objects and link your plans together.