Post-Paid Package Configuration

Summary

This article describes the configuration and use of postpaid billing.

Postpaid billing is the act of billing a package / service for the period prior to the current period. For example, if a packages next bill date is April 1st, when billing runs, EngageIP Billing will bill for the period prior, in this case March 1st to March 31st and post those dates on the invoice. The requirement is that the service has been rendered before the bill is created and charged to the customer.
All un-billed usage at time of billing (or package cancellation) will be charged to the account.

Setting up a Postpaid Package

1. Load the Setup page

2. Click on Packages

3. Click on the name of the package that you wish to convert to a postpaid package / add a new package

4. Under the Components heading click the Add button

5. Click on PostPaid

Adding a Postpaid Package to an Account

Adding a postpaid package to a customer is like adding any other package except in this case, the bill now check box won't be used. The system ignores the state of that box (whether its checked or not) when adding a postpaid package.

1. Load the account

2. On the Overview or Packages page click the Add button to add the postpaid package to the account

3. Select an Effective Date of the package (this will be displayed as the 'Start Date' when editing the package). This date will be used to determine when to bill the package

4. Disregard the bill now check box (this is not used when a package is postpaid, billing will occur when the package is billed by EngageIP or manually or canceled - the cancel process initiates a final billing process)

5. Click Save

In the case below the package was added as of June 19th, it shows a next bill date of July 1st since the bill day on the customer is set to 1. The nextbilldate is set this way to allow billing to bill the package that night (if the customer was added today) or on a future date automatically, and use the start date to determine the amount to prorate. Optionally, manually billing the package will execute the same process in terms of a prorated charge

Open

No transactions have been added yet. This will occur when the package is cancelled or billed again (canceling a package will trigger the EngageIP to apply charges for service rendered).

Open

Cancelling / Billing a Postpaid Package

When the service has been rendered (provided to the customer) and you would like to bill for the period used, you 'check' the box beside the package you would like to cancel and bill, and click Cancel.

If the service was added as of June 19th and the customer used the service for only one day the cancel date will be June 20th and the cancelation option 'Specific Date with Prorated Transaction' would need to be selected:

1. Check box beside package and click Cancel

2. Select 'Specific Date With Prorated Transaction'. (the other options will do as they describe and will be detailed below)

3. Select date to cancel the service as of

4. Click Save EngageIP will then bill the service based on the date range specified and bill any usage as well that is unbilled at the same time

Cancel options as they relate to postpaid:

Note that there are no credits applied in a postpaid scenario. EngageIP knows that the service has not been billed yet and using these options will trigger EngageIP to bill the customer and apply a debit based on the option selected below.

• Immediately With Prorated Transaction for postpaid, this will bill the package based on the number of days of rendered service. If you add a service on Jan 1 (today is the 13th), and you cancel the package today, the system will add a prorated debit transaction for the period of Jan 1 through Jan 12 for service used

• Immediately With Full Transaction for Postpaid this will add a debit transaction for the full base fee of the package. If your package was a $30.00 monthly charge, the package was added on January 1,  (today is the 13th) and you cancel the package with this option, a debit of the full $30.00 will be applied (the full package base fee)

• Immediately With No Transaction In a postpaid scenario, this will cancel the package and apply NO charge to the customer. Billing will NOT occur

• Period End for Postpaid, this will schedule the service to be canceled at period end and on that date, EngageIP will cancel the package, and apply a debit equal to the full base fee of the package

• Specific Date with Prorated Transaction - for Postpaid, this will schedule the package to be canceled on a specific date, when that date is reached, EngageIP will calculate the debit based on the number of days the service was used for (between adding the service and the cancel date). The debit will be applied and invoice to the customer

• Immediately With Prorated Transaction as of a Specific Date - for postpaid this will cancel the package immediately but use the 'specific date' to calculate the prorated refund (if the package has not billed yet) or charge (if the cancel date is beyond the next bill date of the package) as of. The cancellation date will be stamped as TODAY, not the specific date on which you selected. This is to reflect when the package was physically cancelled

Usage: when billing is triggered in these cases, any outstanding usage will be determined, billed and added as a debit transaction on the account along with the package charge. The usage charged will be all usage up to the date of cancelation.

In this case, the package was a monthly package priced at $30.00, the prorated transaction for 1 day was $1.00 as shown in the transaction generated by the system below:

This process is repeated for any other postpaid packages that you need to bill on a customer. This functionality is invoked any time a package has the 'postpaid' component on it.

FAQ / Scenarios

Q: I billed a postpaid package, then voided the invoice and I want to re-bill. Can I just update the next bill date and re-bill it?

A: No, you need to update both the next bill date and the start date in order for that package to bill / prorate correctly. The start date is a key value when dealing with postpaid as it flags the initial date from which the package should be charged

Q: Does usage bill if the package on the user is canceled or if the user is canceled?

A: Yes, definitely, as described above, billing occurs when the package is canceled for the base fee of the package, however the usage will be billed when the parent account bills on its bill day. So if today is the 10th and the bill day for the account or the parent is 1, the usage will not bill until EngageIP bills for the first of the month or if you manually bill the account for the first of the month.

Q: Its January 10th and I've added a package to a user, when will they get their January invoice? 

A: EngageIP will bill the package on the next occurring bill day, if the users bill day is the 10th, then on February 10th, the account will have an invoice generated for the January 10 to February 9th period.

Q: If I have a user that has usage for the month of February, (today is March 10th) and I cancel the package or account as of February 15th, what does it bill?

A: The package charge will be prorated from Feb 1 to the 15th, the usage billed will be all unbilled usage to date, so if calls were made after the 15th, the customer would still have to pay for those.

Q: If billing is not occurring nightly and I want to cancel users before or after the bill run, what do I do?

In all the examples below, the date is March 5th and billing either occurred on March 1st or will bill on March 10th specified in the scenario.

• Current month is March, billing period is February, billing has not occurred yet. If you cancel the account as of a date, billing will bill the account for February and set the status to disabled / canceled. When the bill run occurs, nothing further will bill on the account even though the next bill date shows as March 1 because the account was billed when the account was canceled

Note that the period has billed, the account / package is canceled and will not be picked up again by the billing service.

• Current month is March, billing period is February, billing has not occurred yet. If you cancel the account with NO TRANSACTION, no billing / transactions will occur, and the bill run will not pick up and bill this customers packages because the account is canceled

No Image here as no transactions are generated from this. The account or package are canceled and billing will not pick them up or apply any new transactions

• Current Month is March, billing period is February, billing has occurred. If you want to cancel the account so that no charges for March are billed out during the April 1 bill run, cancel the account as of March 1st, OR cancel the account with no transaction. The account in this situation will not bill and no charges will be added. Charges applied by the billing service will stay for the February period and February period invoice

• Current Month is March, billing period is February, billing has occurred. If you want to cancel the account and remove February transactions, cancel the account with as of March 1st (for accounts where Billday = 1, otherwise cancel the account as of their bill day so that the system does not think there are unbilled days since last billing). If you want to remove charges from the existing invoice, open the invoice (click the check box beside the invoice number on the invoices page and click the 'open' button below, then reverse the charges on the transactions page and then close the invoice (click check box beside open invoice on the invoices page and then click the 'close' button)

• Current Month is March, billing has occurred. If for example your billing date is the 1st of the month, a One Time Service that is added in mid-month will prorate correctly.  A One-Time Service to a monthly  package, add a postpaid component on March 15th, 2013, uncheck Bill NOW.  Run the Job Service and Event Service and then use Bill Account to bill for April 1st, 2013