Discounting

Overview

Emersion has many different ways to apply discounts to a customer, a service subscription, a package subscription, a service feature subscription and other objects in the system. When considering what type of discounting you want to apply to your customers and under what circumstances, it is very valuable to have a good understanding of:

• the various types of discounts available in Emersion
• the order in which they are applied (i.e which discounting methods take precedence over other methods)
• the interdependancies for each discount and the effect they may have on each other.
• how they affect subscription periods in both a pro rated or an in arrears plan when customers seel to cancel or migrate.

This article aims to explain those discounts, their rules, and which discounting methods take precedence over others.

Prerequisites

We striongly recommend that you read the following articles first and gain an solid understanding of the related content

• The Emersion billing objects
• billing rules

What Discounts Are there?

The following discounting methods are available in Emersion. We also include relevant billing objects that are relevant to where the discounts are applied. It is important to understand that these are independantly applied, with the exception of the package chain discounts, as we have explained below.

Most of the discounts applied occur at the 'access fee' level of a billing object. These include:

• Package Access Fee
• Service Access Fee
• Service Feature Access Fee

The Contact discounts traverse all underlying subscription it is applied to.

How Emersion calculates the base for access fees in each of the above objects is described in the billing rules article. There are different calculations for the foillowing scenarios:

1. The first subscription period.
2. A 'full' subscription period.
3. The last subscription period.

Each of the above 3 items may be configured to align to the customer's account invoice period. This too, has an effect on how charges are calculated.

Access Fees

The Package Access Fee

Calculation

• Access Fee x PeriodRatio

Defined in

• Package Plan Access Fee
• Package Plan > Access Fee Ratecard (Package Subscription Count)

Used when

• Access fee in the Package Plan is populated and overrides service plan access fees.

The Service Access Fee

Calculation

Product Price x PeriodRatio x Service Feature Multiplier

Defined In (override order, later items take precedence)

• AccessFee x PeriodRatio x QuantityMultiplier
• Service Plan Access Fee Rate Card (Service Subscription Count)
• Service Subscription Rate Override ($ amount)
• Service Subscription Rate Override (% markup on Service Plan Access Fee)

Used when

• the package plan access fee is not used
• the Service Plan Access Fee >= 0 or an override is used

The Service Feature Access Fee

Calculation

• Product Price x Period Ratio x Feature Multiplier

Defined in

• Product Price when the product is defined as a service feature.

Used when

• Product Price > 0 or Cogs Support

Discount Calculations

Package Discount (%)

Calculation

• AccessFee x %Discount (where the access fee is value from the earlier calculation)

Defined in

• The Package Plan

Used for

applying the discount to the package plan access fee applying the discount to the service plan access fee applying the discount to the service feature access fee

Package Chain Discounts

Only one of the following package chain discounts can be applied to a package subscription for a given customer.

• Package Chain Discount ($)
• Package Chain Discount (%)

Another variant of the package chain discount can be applied to both a service subscriptions and service feature subscriptions belonging to the same customer

• Package Chain Discount ($)
• Package Chain Discount (%)

• Contract Discount - Fixed Length ($)
• Contract Discount - Fixed Length (%)

Contract Credits ($)

Package Chain Surcharge/Credit ($)