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Alan Williamson wrote:
Re: Usage billing
From: Shawn Hogan
Date: Tuesday, February 3, 2004
Time: 1:05:33 am
> For some time, we've been doing a fair bit of manual work to manage excess
> usage charges. I've been looking for ways to automate things, but I've run
> into some difficulties. I thought it was time to bring my problems here and
> see what suggestions I could get. Maybe we'll find some enhancements for you
> to make Shawn, since you seem to have so little to do of late... :)
>
> We have a number of dial-up plans. All are offered on monthly, quarterly or
> annual billing. We want to, wherever possible, combine invoicing of the
> billing cycle items and excess charges onto a single invoice (and this bit, we
> have working fine). We also want to raise off-cycle invoices for excess usage
> charges, (ideally) limiting those invoices raised to $20+ and letting smaller
> amounts carry over to the next or later months.
>
> To make life easier, we've now pro-rated all accounts to expire on the 1st of
> the month, and we raise invoices 21 days earlier (8th - 11th). As I said,
> we've got usage charges adding to these regular invoices fine, and charges for
> the current month (if any) are left off since the month isn't complete. This
> bit's "just peachy". Last month I tried to figure out how to raise the
> off-cycle usage invoices. I started by turning on the "Create separate usage
> invoices" option, but when "Generate invoices" still said there was nothing to
> do, I also turned on "remind to invoice for excess usage".
>
> When I said "Yes" to the dialog box ("Some customers have ... invoice them
> now?") I got a list of the excess usage to be billed. I have two problems
> here:
>
> 1. If you "Omit" any of these items, OG sets the "Billed" flag for that usage
> even though it hasn't been billed. (I guess "Omit" in this case means "Forget
> this one" or "Omit forever")
Correct...
> 2. The list includes current month usage, even though the month isn't
> complete. This is despite the "Usage invoicing delayed when in current
> month" option being set to yes. This would appear to be a bug to me.
The "delay" setting applies to usage that is automatically added to the
customer's generated invoice. Although, I changed it so it applies to the
manual usage billing as well (for 3.3.2).
> So... What I need is to be able to generate usage-only invoices mid-month,
> after I've done my regular invoicing (which will include excess charges as
> applicable for some customers). At the moment, I have no automated way of
> doing that because the list on offer includes current month charges that
> shouldn't be billed. Ideally, we would generate usage-only invoices only for
> amounts above the $20 threshold, but I'm guessing the chances of this aren't
> good. (We'll have to settle for putting up with customers who ignore the "If
> the balance due is less than $20, please don't pay now" notes I guess ...)
Well, instead of doing it based on a dollar amount, why not raise their
allowed limit?
> Basically, the only reason for raising these off-cycle invoices is to make
> sure that the customer is aware of the bill they're racking up, and to get
> them thinking about a change of service plan.
- Shawn
----------------------------------
Shawn D. Hogan
President, Digital Point Solutions
http://www.digitalpoint.com
(858) 452-3696
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