LogiSense billing provides extreme flexibility to wrap around your creative pricing models. Whether that be subscriptions, usage, one time fees, tiering and more.
Service and Subscription Pricing
Price configuration is a crucial element of subscription management. Pricing can be configured at the catalog level and overwritten at the account level. Three types of pricing are available:
Recurring: This is your recurring charge that can be configured per service and per service state. Recurring charges can be set up to recur at a given frequency; the recurrence interval is defined by the Package Price Frequency. The following price frequencies are supported: Once, Day, Week, Month, Year.
One time: One-time pricing occurs only on state transitions such as a transition from Preactive to Active or Active to Suspended. Note that the charge will be applied each time the state transition occurs. States on services do not have to represent "hardware" states. To represent a one-time delivery charge for instance, a service can be set up with 2 states: Inventory and Delivered and the delivery charge initiated on the transition from Inventory to delivered.
Usage pricing: This is dynamic pricing that is configured based on how much usage was consumed.
Recurring and nonrecurring charges can be directly configured on a service, while usage charges are configured through rate plans and buckets. Rate plans and buckets are separate entities that can be applied to the service.
Pricing can be configured for each service state. As the service transitions to a different state, the MRC for the new state takes over. In a prepay scenario, customers prepay for the package up front for the period. If the service changed states during the period, the charges based on the new state are computed in a prorated fashion and the customer is offered a discount (or surcharge) in the next billing period based on the revised prorated charge.
Associated with service pricing is the currency in which the price will be offered. Prices can be configured for each supported currency to facilitate multi locale and multi-currency pricing. The account currency must map to one of the supported currencies in order for a package to get applied to an account; the subscription price that the account inherits, is the package price matching the currency of the account.
Tiered MRC
Tiered pricing can be set on subscriptions to handle subscription charges based on volume. Tiered charges can be applied to a service to set pricing thresholds based on service volumes. There is no limit to the number of thresholds that can be configured. Tiered charges can be configured through the product catalog and customized at the account level.
Two types of tiered pricing models are supported:
Bracket: The price charged for all counts of that service is based on the price tier that the service number falls into
Progressive: The price charged for all counts of that service is based on a progressive scheme where the first X number of services are charged tier 1 prices followed by the next tier of services charged tier 2 prices etc.
The table below shows a sample calculation of bracketed and waterfall pricing based on tiers.
Tier Threshold | Price |
|---|---|
0-100 | $2.00 |
101-200 | $1.50 |
201+ | $1.00 |
Tier Type | Sample Calculation |
|---|---|
Bracket Pricing : 250 Device Purchase | 250 devices * $1 = $250 |
Progressive Pricing: 250 Device Purchase | (100 devices * $2) + (100 devices * $1.50) + 50 devices * $1 = $400 |
Tiered Usage
Tiered pricing can also be set on buckets to handle scenarios where the rate changes based on usage during that period; for instance, first 5 MB charged at £0.10 per MB 6MB – 10MB charged at £0.07 per MB. Thresholds can be defined on bucket allowances to handle this scenario. Just with the tiered MRC scenario outlined above, there are no limits on the number of thresholds that can be set. Furthermore, the last tier can be set as an uncapped overage tier to handle scenarios where there is no limit to the amount of overage that can be charged.
A single rate plan can be associated with each threshold. The rate plan defines the usage rates the customer would pay when in that tier. One flat fee is allowed per threshold. The flat fee is charged once the usage for that period crosses that threshold. For example, a service provider may offer a plan where their customers pay for their data in blocks of 500 MB. If they use 10 MB, it will be treated as if they use 500 MB. The tier flat charge can be leveraged to set flat charges based on data blocks. A combination of flat charges and rate plans per tier can be configured.
Timed Discounts
The system provides the facility to override pricing at the account level. This allows the administrator to customize pricing for that account and handle discounting options. A discount can be a price override, or handled as a fixed or percentage offset from the catalog price. Furthermore, timeframes can be setup on discounts to handle promotional periods – e.g. 10% off the purchase price for a period of 6 months. The discount term is specified in billing periods; for a monthly package frequency, the discount period will be specified in months while for an annual frequency, the discount time-frame will be specified in years.
Price Plans
Price plans can be defined and customized at an account level. Associated with each price plan are a set of attributes: the name and description of the price plan, packages and when the price plan comes into effect. Pricing rules can be defined for one or more packages on the price plan.
Tiered pricing rules can also be setup to handle account level volume pricing. Note that the price plan only defines the pricing rules for a package or service. The package still has to be assigned to the account in order for pricing to take effect. If an account has a price plan associated with it, the account will be charged the pricing defined in the price plan.
An account that does not have an associated price plan will pull pricing from the catalog by default. If the account has a price plan that expires (i.e. end date associated with it), the account will pull pricing from the catalog after the expiry date.