An account is one of the fundamental entities in LogiSense Billing and an understanding of the account structure is an essential prerequisite for configuring the system. LogiSense supports a parent and child account hierarchy in a multi level tree like structure. There is no restriction as to how deep an account tree can go. There are 3 distinct tiers of accounts that can be added in the platform.
Parent Account
This is an account that has sub accounts under it. Since account hierarchies can span multiple levels, a parent account can also be a child account of another parent.
Child Sub Accounts
These are sub accounts rolling up into a parent. A sub account can also be a parent account for other sub accounts.
Invoicer Account
This is a type of account that receives an invoice. An invoicer account can reside anywhere in the account hierarchy. As an example a child sub account could receive an invoice for it’s parent.
Scenarios
Customers can leverage this account structure to satisfy different business models. For instance, an enterprise might have customers with different subsidiaries and use parent child relationships to manage these relationships. In another scenario, a customer may support share plans where multiple child accounts share usage. In such a scenario a share plan might be assigned to a parent and the participating services in each share plan assigned to each child account.
LogiSense provides a workflow for account creation which involves configuring account level attributes such as name, type, default bill group, and currency. Each account can have one or more contacts associated with it. Setting up a contact is a necessary part of account creation. Different types of contacts can be associated with an account such as a billing contact, support contact etc. Along with contacts, one can also set up company attributes and relate those to an account.
Several types of accounts are available: prospect, customer and partner to mirror the business classifications that a service provider has with their end customer.
Account level settings determine the accounts bill group, tax and payment settings and invoicer settings. The invoice gets the bill for that account. There are two types of invoicers; subscription and usage. The subscription invoicer receives the invoice for subscription charges while the usage invoice receives the invoice for usage charges. The subscription and usage invoice can be one and the same, or they can map to different accounts. An invoicer can be an account that resides above or below the account in question on the parent tree hierarchy.
Associated with an account profile is its subscriptions. While packages and services and their associated pricing can be defined at the catalog level, LogiSense Billing provides account level mechanisms for overriding subscription details at an account level. This becomes important when a business defines a $10 service at the catalog level but wants to offer it for $8 to a specific account. The default pricing on all accounts would be $10, but the customer rep can initiate $8 pricing on a specific account.
