Billing Cheat Sheet

Billing Cheat Sheet

The purpose of this article is to list out some common steps that you need to take during a typical month end billing cycle before you start to send invoices.

Add Services.

• If you know there are services that you are receiving usage for, or you plan on billing access fees in advance on the upcoming invoices you should add these services first and foremost before doing anything else.
• Remember to backdate the account date to a date on or before the date of the first usage.
• Do the same for the package subscription.
• Failure to do so will give you some difficulty later on. You cannot backdate a service prior to the account start date.
• The service subscription period must cover the dates of the usage, so it's important to backdate this as well.

Check Usage has been Mediating

• Before you check quarantine, you should check to see whether usage has been mediating correctly.
• You can do this by going to Report -> List -> BMS Tab -> BMS Connector Status Report (note, this is relevant for those that have a direct relationship with a supplier. If you receive usage from an Emersion Wholesaler, this report will not apply).

• In this report it will show your connectors and the last usage file from the relevant supplier it tried to process. In the Last File Processed column it will list the filename. Typically the carrier often has the date of the file in the filename itself. There is also a Date File Processed column. Depending on the frequency at which the supplier delivers usage files, if the date of these files is some time ago, then it would be wise to check to see if there is a problem before proceeding with billing.

Check Quarantine

• Ideally Quarantine should be checked every day, so there should be no surprises here. Nonetheless this is not always possible for everyone, particularly if the carrier only sends usage once a month.

• First of all go to Billing -> Quarantine - > Non Existent Service.
• This tab was designed to give a list of services with the number of flagged quarantine records per service. Non Existent faults will also show in the main quarantine page as well, but here it doesn't list the record one by one, just a row for each service.
• On this section it will show records for Telephony BMS (Usage for Calls), Data BMS (usage for Internet/Broadband/Ethernet type services), and Misc BMS (charges for a service feature, access fees, contract fees, installation charges and the like from the carrier).
• If you haven't added the relevant services you should do so and cleanse quarantine after the service is active.

• You should additionally check other quarantine record types in the main quarantine section, correct and cleanse accordingly.Remember that when you land on this page it will show as blank. You actually have to click search in order for it perform a query.

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Billing Quarantine.

Check Rating Quarantine

• In the same section as the above screenshot, you must ensure you check rating quarantine as well under "Telephony Rating" and "Misc Rating". Rating is a different process and will have it's own errors. Correct errors and cleanse accordingly.

Useful Quarantine Reports

• BMS Quarantine Balance per Carrier and Reason (Summary)
• Quarantine - Rated Misc Quarantine Report (Detail)
• Quarantine - Rated Telephony Quarantine Report (Detail)
• Quarantine - BMS Data Quarantine Report (Detail)
• Quarantine - BMS Misc Quarantine Report (Detail)
• Quarantine - BMS Telephony Quarantine Report (Detail)

Check Usage Rated

• If you have just cleansed quarantine this might take a few hours to cleanse the records, particularly if it's a large quantity.
• If you like you can view the usage against a service subscription and see whether the records have been rated.