ServicePlans/RateCard

Rate Card

Introduction

A Rate Card is a group of rates. A Rate defines, for a given call type, what the system should charge and also how the system should charge for this usage.

Cumulus is very flexible when it comes to rating usage and allows for either very simple rating (eg Markup, flagfall) or very complex rating (Tiered Rates, Caps).

Rate Cards are bound to Service Plans based on the Telephony and Mobile Service Types (as Rate Cards are applied only to 'Telephony' usage).

Rate Cards can have Time Tables linked to them.

Buy and Sell

Rate Cards are unique amongst the various billing objects in the system (such as Service Plans, Bolt Ons, Package Plans) in that Rate Cards themselves do not have a concept of Buy and Sell. Rate Cards are mapped to Service Plans which are either classed as 'Buy' or 'Sell'.

If you do not understand the concept of Buy and Sell plans, please see this article for further information.

Concepts

Rate Cards have some specific concepts which need to be understood before you will be able to work with Rate Cards effectively.

Tariff

In Cumulus Terms, a Tariff is a usage type with a friendly name (eg UnitedStatesOfAmerica - Mobile). External carriers (such as Telstra and Optus) will make CDRs (Call Data Records) available for Cumulus and other providers to download. Each record will contain a field which dictates what kind of usage the particular service incurred at that instance (eg National Call, Local Call, International Call to the UK etc).

This call type links to our system as a Tariff Key which forms part of a Tariff. A Rate will be linked to a particular Tariff which will generally be mapped to the external Tariff Key - which is how Cumulus is able to group the various call types together.

Rate Groups

Rates contained within Rate Cards are Hierarchical and are grouped together inside Rate Groups.

An example of a Rate Group would be International Calls - whereby all international calls to various countries are contained with the International Calls Rate Group.

Cumulus supports assigning Rates to a particular Rate Group - such that all Rates contained within that Rate Group, that do not have rates specifically applied, are rated as per the charge at the Rate Group.

Consider the following extract of a Rate Card:

* International  - Charged at $4 per minute. $0.50 flag fall
  - UnitedStatesOfAmerica
      o UnitedStatesofAmerica - LandLine
      o UnitedStatesOfAmerica - Mobile - Charged at $1.35 per minute, $1 flag fall

International is a Rate Group containing UnitedStatesOfAmerica. UnitedStatesOfAmerica is also a Rate Group containing the tariffs, UnitedStatesOfAmerica - LandLine and UnitedStateOfAmerica - Mobile.

If a service using this rate card incurs the usage type: UnitedStateOfAmerica - Mobile, they will be charged as per the rate explicitly defined for 'UnitedStatesOfAmerica - Mobile' (as in $1.35 per minute, $1 flag fall).

However, if this same service then incurred the usage type, 'UnitedStatesofAmerica - LandLine' then Cumulus - in attempting to rate this usage - would see that there was no rate defined explicitly for 'UnitedStatesofAmerica - LandLine'. It would then loop up and look at its Parent, 'UnitedStatesOfAmerica' and see that there is no rate there either. At that point, it would loop around again and go to the parent of 'UnitedStatesOfAmerica', which is the Rate Group: 'International'.

In this example, the Rate Group 'International' has a rate associated to it, which is: $4 per minute. $0.50 flag fall. This usage would be rated as per the Rate Group.