Billing Concepts

Rating and Billing
Billing Concepts
Release 2.2
Copyright © 1999–2006 Convergys. All rights reserved.
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Infinys 2.2 Service Pack 3. Document version 6.
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Table of Contents
About This Document .............................................................................................................................. ix

Document Conventions......................................................................................................................... ix
Characters Versus Bytes ....................................................................................................................... x
Spelling and Terminology....................................................................................................................... x
1 Overview ............................................................................................................................................... 1
Audience ................................................................................................................................................2
Before You Begin ...................................................................................................................................2
2 Bill Types .............................................................................................................................................. 3

When Bills Are Produced .......................................................................................................................4
Bill Suppression ............................................................................................................................... 4
Managing Bill Requests ................................................................................................................... 5
Periodic Bills........................................................................................................................................... 5
Interim Bills.............................................................................................................................................7
Credit Notes ........................................................................................................................................... 7
Initiation Bills ..........................................................................................................................................7
Final and Post-Final Bills........................................................................................................................7
Suspension Bills..................................................................................................................................... 8
Account Status .....................................................................................................................................10
Accounts Requiring Receivables Analysis .................................................................................... 13
Billing Status ........................................................................................................................................14
3 Copy Bills, Reissued Bills, and Summary Statements................................................................... 15

Copy Bills ............................................................................................................................................. 15
Reissued Bills.......................................................................................................................................15
Summary Statements........................................................................................................................... 17
Summary Statement Reissues ......................................................................................................19
4 Budget Centers ..................................................................................................................................21

Budget Center Start and End Dates.....................................................................................................22
5 Billing Event Information...................................................................................................................25

Event Itemizations................................................................................................................................ 25
Breakdown of Information.............................................................................................................. 29
Event Summaries.................................................................................................................................30
Creating ......................................................................................................................................... 31
Applying ......................................................................................................................................... 31
Rounding Event Totals.........................................................................................................................32
Cost Centers ........................................................................................................................................33
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Billing Concepts
6 Service Provider Billing.....................................................................................................................35

Invoicing Companies............................................................................................................................36
Partitioning Catalogs by Invoicing Company ................................................................................. 37
Invoicing Company Parameters .................................................................................................... 37
7 Billing Modes...................................................................................................................................... 39
Production Bills ....................................................................................................................................39
Selecting the Bills to Produce ........................................................................................................39
Test Bills...............................................................................................................................................40
8 Adding Charges at Billing Time........................................................................................................43
9 Bill Suppression.................................................................................................................................45
Small Bills............................................................................................................................................. 45
Zero Activity Bills..................................................................................................................................46
10 Exceptional Bills ................................................................................................................................ 49
11 Bill Dates............................................................................................................................................. 51
Nominal Bill Date..................................................................................................................................51
Actual Bill Date.....................................................................................................................................52
System Tidemarks ...............................................................................................................................52
Freeze Date ......................................................................................................................................... 53
Past and Future Product Details Changes...........................................................................................53
Late Events .......................................................................................................................................... 54
12 Canceling Bills ................................................................................................................................... 55

Unbilled Event Totals ........................................................................................................................... 57
Suspension, Skipped, and Suppressed Bills........................................................................................58
Suspension and Skipped Bills ....................................................................................................... 59
Suppressed Bills ............................................................................................................................60
Hierarchy Bills................................................................................................................................ 60
Rebilling ...............................................................................................................................................61
13 Bill Formatting....................................................................................................................................63
Internal .................................................................................................................................................63
Overview........................................................................................................................................64
Configuring Formatter Information................................................................................................. 64
Creating a Template ......................................................................................................................66
Configuring Bill Styles.................................................................................................................... 66
Configuring the Bill Data Writer .....................................................................................................67
Configuring the Bill Renderer ........................................................................................................68
External ................................................................................................................................................ 68
Overview........................................................................................................................................68
Configuring Formatter Information................................................................................................. 69
Creating a Template ......................................................................................................................70
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Table of Contents
Configuring Bill Styles.................................................................................................................... 71

Creating Tag Translations ............................................................................................................. 71
Configuring the Bill Data Writer .....................................................................................................75
Configuring the Managed File Importer .........................................................................................75
Configuring the File-based Database Updater ..............................................................................76
Bill Inserts ...................................................................................................................................... 76
Handling Codes ............................................................................................................................. 77
Styles and Templates........................................................................................................................... 78
Viewing Bill Templates ..................................................................................................................78
Marketing Messages .....................................................................................................................79
Viewing Bill Images .............................................................................................................................. 79
14 Receivable Classes............................................................................................................................81
Revenue Code .....................................................................................................................................82
Invoicing Company...............................................................................................................................82
15 Introduction to Product Charging .................................................................................................... 85

Invoicing Companies............................................................................................................................86
Product Status...................................................................................................................................... 86
16 Price Changes ....................................................................................................................................89

In-Arrears Charging.............................................................................................................................. 89
In-Advance Charging ........................................................................................................................... 91
17 Charge Types, Periods, and Synchronization................................................................................. 95

Charge Types.......................................................................................................................................95
Charge Periods ....................................................................................................................................96
The Billing Window ........................................................................................................................97
Synchronization....................................................................................................................................98
18 Contract and Override Prices .........................................................................................................105

Contracts............................................................................................................................................105
Early Termination Surcharges ..................................................................................................... 105
Fixed Versus Variable Contracts ................................................................................................. 107
Override Prices ..................................................................................................................................107
19 Parametric Products, Packages, and Subscriptions .................................................................... 109

Parametric Products........................................................................................................................... 109
Price Plans ..................................................................................................................................111
Divergent Parent and Child Price Plans ......................................................................................112
Changes in Parametric Quantity.................................................................................................. 114
Packages ........................................................................................................................................... 118
Package Savings......................................................................................................................... 118
Parametric Products in Packages ......................................................................................................119
Subscriptions......................................................................................................................................122
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Billing Concepts
Subscriptions Versus Packages ..................................................................................................122

Subscription Information .............................................................................................................. 122
Subscription Ownership............................................................................................................... 123
Subscription Output ..................................................................................................................... 123
20 Volume Product Discounts .............................................................................................................125

Charge Periods Versus Discount Periods..........................................................................................126
COSTEDEVENT Records.................................................................................................................. 127
Charge Types .............................................................................................................................. 130
Charge Flag ................................................................................................................................. 130
21 Split Product Charging ....................................................................................................................131

Split Product Charging Rules .............................................................................................................131
Event Charges .............................................................................................................................131
Initiation/Periodic/Final Charges .................................................................................................. 131
22 Prorating, Refunding, and Charging in Advance/Arrears ............................................................133

Prorating.............................................................................................................................................133
Proratable Charging ....................................................................................................................134
Non-Proratable Charging.............................................................................................................137
Refunding........................................................................................................................................... 138
Charging in Advance/Arrears .............................................................................................................140
In-Advance Charging ...................................................................................................................140
In-Arrears Charging ..................................................................................................................... 142
23 Output ...............................................................................................................................................147
BILLDATA Table ................................................................................................................................147
BILLPRODUCTCHARGE Table.........................................................................................................148
iv Confidential and Proprietary

Table of Figures
Figure 1 Example Billing Processing Sequence (Using Bill Formatting Engine)..................................... 1

Figure 2 Example Billing Processing Sequence (Using Third-Party Formatting Engine)........................ 1
Figure 3 Summary Statement Concatenation Rules ............................................................................. 18
Figure 4 Example Budget Center Structure .......................................................................................... 22
Figure 5 Nominal and Actual Bill Dates................................................................................................. 52
Figure 6 Possible Product Status Transitions ....................................................................................... 88
Figure 7 In-Arrears Prorated Charging..................................................................................................90
Figure 8 In-Arrears Non-Prorated Charging .......................................................................................... 90
Figure 9 In-Advance Charging
(BILL_PROD_FUTURE_CHANGES_BOO set to F [false]) ....................................................92
Figure 10 In-Advance Charging (Product Canceled) ..............................................................................92
Figure 11 In-Advance Prorated Charging
Figure 12 In-Advance Non-Prorated Charging
Figure 13 Charge Periods for In-Advance and In-Arrears Charges ........................................................96
Figure 14 Billing Window for Charging in Advance ................................................................................. 97
Figure 15 Effect of a Billing Window........................................................................................................98
Figure 16 Synchronized Product Charge with Start Date......................................................................100
Figure 17 Synchronized Product Charge with Specified Date .............................................................. 101
Figure 18 Synchronized Product Charge with Start of Month ...............................................................102
Figure 19 Effect of BGearlyTermProRateAlignment .............................................................................107
Figure 20 Decrease in Quantity of a Parametric Product......................................................................115
Figure 21 Increase in Quantity of a Parametric Product .......................................................................116
Figure 22 Charge Period Versus Discount Period ................................................................................127
Figure 23 Proratable Charging with Changing Price Plan..................................................................... 136
Figure 24 Non-Proratable Charging ......................................................................................................138
Figure 25 Product Charge in Advance and Prorated ............................................................................140
Figure 26 Product Charge in Advance and Non-Prorated..................................................................... 141
Figure 27 Product Charge in Advance with a Billing Window ...............................................................141
Figure 28 In-Arrears Product Charging ................................................................................................. 142
Figure 29 Product Charge In Arrears and not Prorated (Type 1) ..........................................................143
Figure 30 Product Charge In Arrears and not Prorated (Type 2) ..........................................................144
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Figure 31 Product Charge In Arrears and Prorated .............................................................................. 144

Figure 32 Output of the Billing Engine...................................................................................................147
vi Confidential and Proprietary

Table of Tables
Table i Document Conventions............................................................................................................ ix

Table ii Symbols and Graphics ............................................................................................................. ix
Table 1 Bill Type Suppression ............................................................................................................... 4
Table 2 Account Status and Billing Engine Actions ............................................................................. 10
Table 3 Account Status at Nominal Versus Actual Bill Date, Initiation Bill,
Periodic Bill, Interim Bill, and Credit Note ...............................................................................12
Table 4 Account Status at Nominal Versus Actual Bill Date, Suspension Bill...................................... 12
Table 5 Account Status at Nominal Versus Actual Bill Date, Final Bill.................................................13
Table 6 Account Status at Nominal Versus Actual Bill Date, Post-Final Bill ........................................13
Table 7 Example Direct-Dialed International Calls...............................................................................27
Table 8 Example Direct-Dialed Local Toll Calls ................................................................................... 27
Table 9 Example Direct-Dialed Long Distance Calls ...........................................................................27
Table 10 Example Operator-Connected International Calls................................................................... 28
Table 11 Example Event Summary........................................................................................................30
Table 12 Bill Formatter Properties .........................................................................................................65
Table 13 Example File Classifications for Bill Formatting Engine .......................................................... 65
Table 14 Example Bill Template Structure............................................................................................. 66
Table 15 Formatting Details for External Formatting System ................................................................ 69
Table 16 File Classifications for External Formatting System................................................................ 70
Table 17 Mapping Between Infinys Rating and Billing Tags and External Formatter
Tags as set up in the BILLDATATAGMAP Table.................................................................... 71
Table 18 Example DOC1 Tag Structure for Mapping ............................................................................72
Table 19 Example Bill Insert Settings .................................................................................................... 76
Table 20 Product Status Effect on BILLDATA Output............................................................................87
Table 21 Example of when Synchronization is Possible........................................................................98
Table 22 BGsyncDatForProductChargesMode......................................................................................99
Table 23 Example Parametric Prices...................................................................................................109
Table 24 Example Non-Marginal Parametric Price Plan......................................................................111
Table 25 Example Child Non-Marginal Parametric Price Plan.............................................................112
Table 26 Example Child Non-Marginal Parametric Price Plan Discounts............................................113
Table 27 Example Parametric Product Base Price Plan......................................................................120
Table 28 Example Parametric Product Packaged Price Plan .............................................................. 120
Table 29 Base Versus Package Price Plan Savings............................................................................121
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Table 30 Subscriptions Versus Packages............................................................................................122

Table 31 COSTEDEVENT Records..................................................................................................... 127
viii Confidential and Proprietary

About This Document
This section describes the conventions, symbols, and terminology used in this
documentation.
Document Conventions
Table i and Table ii describe conventions used to help you recognize instructions, system
messages, and other special information in this document.
Table i Document Conventions
Convention Description
Andale Mono Computer input and output text.
blue Linked cross-references to chapters, sections, and other reference points.
bold Figure and table information in captions; names of window components such
as command buttons, option buttons, text boxes, check boxes, drop-down
lists, group boxes/panels, and menu options; directory paths and names; file
names and suffixes; parameter names; permission and user IDs; script
names; server names; and tab and subtab names.
Note: Values that are not window components, such as values in a
drop-down list or a view-only value for a text box, are shown in normal text.
CAPITALS Key names, key combinations, and database table and column names.
italics Word emphasis when defining a term and nonlinked cross-references to

other documents.
“Quotation References to chapter titles and section titles.

Marks”
strikethrough Items such as function arguments that have been removed between
releases.
Table ii Symbols and Graphics
Symbol/
Graphic Description
> A menu path to a window.

For example: Billing > Cycle activities > Cycle initiation
Confidential and Proprietary ix

Billing Concepts
Table ii Symbols and Graphics (continued)
Symbol/
Graphic Description
An information note.
Information notes help you select options, make decisions, or understand the
indirect results of a particular action.
A warning note.
Warning notes tell you that the action you are about to perform could create
an undesirable change or condition. However, you can continue the process
or select other alternatives.
A critical note.
Critical notes tell you that the action you are about to perform will cause the
system to lose all or part of its data or to shut down. You should contact a
system administrator or the Help desk.
A note relating to functionality that is available only in the Infinys Rating and
IRBEE Billing Enterprise Edition.
Characters Versus Bytes

Infinys Rating and Billing supports multibyte character sets. As a consequence, the
maximum length of an entry field is typically given in bytes rather than in characters. The
number of characters that can fit in a field will depend on their size in bytes. For example,
non-accented, English, alphabetical characters usually require one byte, whereas
accented characters and simple Chinese characters usually require two or more bytes.
Spelling and Terminology

The English version of this documentation uses U.S. English spellings. For example, the
documentation uses the words check rather than cheque, net rather than nett, and catalog
rather than catalogue.
In addition, this documentation uses U.S. English terminology. For example, it uses the
terms dunning notice rather than dunning letter, final bill rather than termination bill, and
price plan rather than billing tariff. If any U.K. English equivalents of U.S. English
terminology are used, they are referenced in the Glossary.
x Confidential and Proprietary

1 Overview
Billing is the aggregation of all non-recurring, periodic, and chargeable events, on an

account by account basis. It is also the calculation of all outstanding charges and available
discounts and bonuses.
The output from billing is a stream of tagged bill data that can be used to create a bill on
paper, disk, or any other media.
IRBEE Billing can be performed in a distributed environment, with the billing being
carried out on one or more billing hosts that are separate from the database
server.
Refer to Infinys Rating and Billing Distributed Revenue Processing Concepts for
details.
This guide covers the production of bills, including:

y Modes of billing
y Types of bills that can be produced
y Suppression of bills
y Grouping of the information and formatting of the bill data
In addition, it describes how charges are calculated during the billing process.
The billing process starts with the Billing Engine and then follows one of two sequences of
processing which can be represented as follows:
Invoice Bill
Billing Bill Managed Formatting Bill
Number
Engine Data Writer File Modifier Engine Renderer
Generator
Figure 1 Example Billing Processing Sequence (Using Bill Formatting Engine)
or:
Invoice Third-party
Billing Bill Managed Managed
Number Formatting
Engine Data Writer File Modifier File Exporter
Generator Engine
Figure 2 Example Billing Processing Sequence (Using Third-Party Formatting Engine)
Confidential and Proprietary 1

Billing Concepts
Refer to Infinys System Processes for Rating and Billing for detailed information on the
individual Infinys Rating and Billing billing system processes that form the billing process.
Product Charging
Product charging is a part of the billing process and is carried out by the Billing Engine and
the Accruals Extract Generator. This guide covers the various terminology and
functionality relevant to product charging. See Chapter 15, "Introduction to Product
Charging," for details.
Audience
This guide provides an overall reference to all aspects of billing and product charging in
Infinys Rating and Billing. It is designed to be read by the person(s) with responsibility for
the daily operation of Infinys Rating and Billing. It is not intended to be a tutorial.
Before You Begin

Where appropriate, references are made to other guides that provide full details of how
particular aspects of Infinys Rating and Billing are set up and applied. Readers who are
not familiar with the Infinys Rating and Billing system are advised to read through the
Infinys Rating and Billing Overview first to obtain an understanding of the complete system
and how billing works alongside the other features.
2 Confidential and Proprietary

2 Bill Types
Infinys Rating and Billing can bill any combination of different products and services,
whether or not they are related. They may be billed on a single, convergent bill, or on
separate bills depending on the Infinys operator’s (and the customer’s) preference.
Infinys Rating and Billing produces the following bill types:
Initiation bill Normally only requested as the first bill on an account.

Includes product charges and adjustments, but no events.
Periodic bill Produced at regular intervals. Includes all periodic charges,

events, and adjustments.
Interim bill An extra bill that contains charges due to events processed
for the account since the last bill. Includes all events and
adjustments, but no periodic charges.
Suspension bill Sent when an account has been suspended. Includes all
periodic charges, events, and adjustments.
Final bill Sent when an account has been terminated to bill all
outstanding charges that are due. Includes all periodic
charges, events, and adjustments, along with any refunds,
for example, the return of a deposit.
Post-final bill Sent when a terminated account has receivables

outstanding after the production of a final bill. Includes any
post-termination events and adjustments, but no periodic
charges.
Credit note An extra bill that contains all adjustments in the customer’s
favor generated since the last bill.
Bills are produced either automatically, or on request. The following bill type is produced
automatically by Infinys Rating and Billing:
y Periodic bills
The following bill types have to be manually requested via the Account Billing view of
Customer Account Maintenance:
y Initiation bill
y Interim bill
y Post-final bill
y Credit note bill

Billing Concepts
y Suspension bill
A suspension bill can only be requested at the time an account is suspended.
A final bill can be produced automatically or can be requested on the Bill Requests tab of
the Account Billing view of Customer Account Maintenance. If the final bill is produced
automatically it is issued after a configured period of time (defined by the
BGterminationBillDays system parameter) after the account's termination date.
Refer to Infinys Rating and Billing Customer Account Maintenance Help for more
information.
When Bills Are Produced
Bill Suppression
If multiple bill types are requested/scheduled at the same time, then Infinys Rating and
Billing determines which bills are sent to the customer (rather than all), and also which bills
are suppressed, that is, are not sent to the customer. See Table 1 for details on bill type
suppression.
The Billing Engine updates the BILL_REQUEST_STATUS field in the

BILLREQUEST table to “2” (that is, Processed) from “1” (that is, Created) for bills
that are suppressed.
Table 1 Bill Type Suppression
Bill Type Bill Types that Are Suppressed
Final bill Final bills suppress:

y Interim bills.
y Periodic bills.
y Initiation bills.
y Suspension bills.
Periodic bill Periodic bills suppress:

y Interim bills.
y Initiation bills.
Suspension bill Suspension bills suppress:

y Interim bills.
y Periodic bills.
y Initiation bills.
Credit note Credit notes do not suppress any other type of bill and may
be sent to the customer at the same time as another bill,
depending upon when they are requested.

2 – Bill Types
If multiple bills of the same bill type are generated at the same time, then only the
latest bill of that type is sent to the customer (the older bill is suppressed).
Infinys Rating and Billing also suppresses bills for accounts with zero or very little activity.
See Chapter 9, "Bill Suppression," for details.
Managing Bill Requests

All of the bill requests that have been produced for an account are displayed and
managed on the Bill Requests tab of the Account Billing view of Customer Account
Maintenance.
Bill requests are listed in reverse date order; that is, most recent first, and the currently
selected bill request is highlighted. However, if no bill requests exist, the table is blank.
The bill requests are color-coded according to their status and a color key is given in the
bottom left corner of the tab.
You can add requests, view request details, and delete bill requests on the Bill Requests
tab.
Bill requests cannot be added to accounts that:

y Have a bill that is pending cancellation or has been canceled.
y Are currently suspended.
Bill requests can be modified and deleted provided that the bill status is Pending.
When deleting bill requests, the No. column becomes non-sequential as the
numbers of the deleted requests are missing.
information.
Periodic Bills
Periodic bills are bills that are produced at regular intervals, such as monthly or three
monthly, depending on the bill period specified for the account.
This can be configured via the Billing Details tab in the Billing Details dialog box. This in
turn is accessed via the Billing tab in the Details for account dialog box of Customer
Account Maintenance.
Billing can be synchronized with a particular date (for example, always bill from the 5th of
the month to the 4th inclusive) or with the next bill date for the account.
By default, the Billing Engine attempts to produce periodic bills for all accounts where all of
the following apply:
y A periodic bill is due.

Billing Concepts
y The ACCOUNT_STATUS column in the ACCOUNTSTATUS table is set to one of the

following:
o OK – live/active
o TA – awaiting final bill
In Customer Service Management, the account status is viewed under Account
information on the Account details tab.
Where Infinys Rating and Billing is deployed in a standalone installation, you

should use Customer Account Maintenance to view the account status. This
can be viewed on the Account tab in the Details for account dialog box of
Customer Account Maintenance. Refer to Infinys Rating and Billing
Customer Account Maintenance Help for more information.
y The BILLING_STATUS column in the ACCOUNT table is set to one of the following:
o OK – billable
o OV – override exceptional bill on next run
o RR – rebill requested
o XY (under certain conditions) – billing has failed for another account in the bill
hierarchy
In Customer Service Management, the billing status is viewed under Billing
information on the Account details tab.

should use Customer Account Maintenance to view the billing status. This
can be viewed on the Finance tab in the Details for account dialog box of
Customer Account Maintenance. Refer to Infinys Rating and Billing
Infinys Rating and Billing bills customer accounts according to the bill period of the
account. When an account becomes billable, the Billing Engine accesses all information
related to that account and generates an invoice. At the same time, Infinys Rating and
Billing produces a statement for the account and outputs this information in a section of
the bill data, for:
y Balance forward – frequency of bill production is fixed.
y Open item – frequency of bill production is configurable.
If the account is owned by a customer using customer hierarchy billing, then all
accounts within the hierarchy are billed at the same time as the root of the
hierarchy.
Refer to Infinys Customer Service Management Help for more information on how to view
the account and billing status and Infinys Rating and Billing Customer Account
Maintenance Help for more information on how to configure billing details.

2 – Bill Types
Interim Bills
Sometimes it is desirable to produce extra bills for specific accounts at times between the
normal periodic bills. For example, a customer may request an extra bill to check the
usage on his or her telephone or the Infinys operator may want to send extra bills to
customers who have such high usage that they have exceeded their credit limits. These
extra non-periodic bills are initiated by creating a bill request.
Interim bills do not alter the generation of periodic bills. The next periodic bill still occurs on
the expected date according to the customer’s billing day.
Credit Notes
Credit notes are normally issued to correct a previously invoiced item, for example, for
goods that are returned or not supplied. They can be formatted and presented in a
different way to an invoice, for example, by printing on different colored paper, or using
different headings and titles. Like an invoice, a credit note is a tax ID reference.
When the Billing Engine is run, if a credit note has been requested, any adjustments in the
customer’s favor that are waiting to be billed are included on it. If a credit note has not
been requested but a bill is due, these adjustments are included on the bill instead as a
negative amount.
Initiation Bills
Initiation bills are bills that are requested, either when a new account and its first set of
product instances are initiated, or as an interim bill after there have been significant
changes to the product instances on an account (this also includes the addition or
termination of product instance sets). Initiation bills contain only non-usage charges,
including any adjustments perceived at the date of the bill (taking into consideration when
the account is due to be billed next).
Initiation bills are requested on the Bill Requests tab of the Account Billing view of
Customer Account Maintenance.
information on requesting initiation bills.
Final and Post-Final Bills

Final bills are bills that are requested when an account is terminated to bill all outstanding
charges that are due. Post-final bills are extra bills produced to cover receivables which
appear unexpectedly on accounts that have already had final bills produced.

Billing Concepts
To produce final bills the BGterminationBillDays system parameter is used to specify the
number of days after account termination that a final bill is produced. The value entered
should be set to an integer of one or above. If not set (that is, is set to null), no final bill is
produced when the account is terminated and the Infinys operator has to produce a final
bill manually, if they choose.
After the Billing Engine produces a final bill for an account, it changes that account’s status
from Awaiting Termination (TA) to Terminated (TX). This can be viewed via the Account
status field of the Account tab in the Details for account dialog box of Customer Account
Maintenance. The Billing Engine does not bill terminated accounts unless a post-final bill
is requested.
Post-final bills may be requested if events arrive for a terminated account (perhaps due to
delays in mediation). Post-final bills have the same content as interim bills and are the
only bills that can be requested for terminated accounts.
Post-final bills can only be requested for terminated accounts (see "Account Status,"
page 10 for details) which have already had a final bill (that is, have an account status of
Terminated). Post-final bills are used if the decision has been made to chase receivables
outstanding on an account after the issue of a final bill.
If the optional system parameter BGignoreCondsForTermBillsBoo is set to T (true) then

the following fields in the EXCEPTIONALBILLCONDITIONS table are ignored when
deciding whether or not a bill is exceptional:
y MINIMUM_BILL_MNY
y MIN_NEG_BILL_MNY
y MAX_NEG_BILL_MNY
y INCREMENT_BILL_DATE_BOO
This is the case for final, post-final, and suspension bills.
If the BGignoreCondsForTermBillsBoo system parameter is set to F (false) then the fields

listed above are used when deciding whether or not a bill is exceptional.
Suspension Bills
Suspension of an account for a period effectively means suspension of billing for the
period. However, a suspension bill may be requested when suspending the account,
allowing the customer to “tidy up” outstanding charges at the start of the suspension
period.
An account suspension may be:

y Effective from a given date and to a given date, that is, for a defined period.

2 – Bill Types
y Effective from a given date, for an indefinite period.
Suspension bills can only be created when suspending an account. Suspension

bills are displayed on the Bill Requests tab of the Account Billing view of
Customer Account Mantenance, but cannot be manually requested. Refer to
Infinys Rating and Billing Customer Account Maintenance Help for more
information.
It is therefore not possible to request an initiation bill, interim bill, or credit note with a
request date that falls within a suspension period already configured for the account.
When an account is suspended, you have the option of also suspending all
products assigned to that account. A suspended account may incur charges (for
suspension, periodic suspension, and/or reactivation) that have been defined as
part of the product prices.
If a dispute is accepted (for example, relating to a suspension bill) during a period of

account suspension, the Infinys operator is not given the option of creating a credit note
request; instead a warning is given that the account is suspended.
Suspension bill requests must coincide with the start of the suspension period. If this
period is modified the bill request date should be moved accordingly.
Charges for the products continue to accrue over the account suspension period and
appear on the first bill produced after the suspension has ended. In a similar way, charges
for products for which the account is being charged but does not own also continue to
accrue over the account suspension period. (However, if the products are suspended as
well as the account, the accrued charges may be at a different suspension rate for the
product.)
The product charges on a suspension bill are similar to those that would be due on a final
or initiation bill of the same date. Some extra product charges may have become due
since the last periodic bill and, if there have been any changes, certain product charges
may be refunded and rebilled, for example, to reflect a changed price plan.
Event charges are generally billed for all events up to the actual bill date. However, if the
suspension bill is suppressing a periodic bill or skipped periodic bill and nominal billing is
to be used, events will be rated as far as the current nominal bill date. This scenario is
unlikely to cause problems if billing is run regularly.
A BILLSUMMARY record is produced but due to the account being suspended (for
example, for a skipped periodic bill) a bill is not sent to the customer. The processing
performed by a periodic bill still occurs, that is:
y Budget payment plan payment requests due are created.
y The next bill due date is moved forward.
Other areas of billing affected by an account having a suspended status are:

y Discounts.
Discounts belonging to a suspended account are not considered, even where they
would normally apply to other accounts if the account was being billed.
y Donated discounts.

Billing Concepts
Suspended accounts clearly do not create donated discounts, as any donated

discounts that a suspended account is due to receive are stored in the
DONATEDDISCOUNT table. These are automatically applied when the suspended
account is next billed.
y Split product charges.
Parts of a charge allocated to billable accounts are billed, parts allocated to
suspended accounts are billed when the account is reactivated.
Account Status
The status of the account determines whether bills can be produced for the account and
which bill types it can produce. An account can be:
y Pending (PE)
y Live/Active (OK)
y Suspended (SU)
y Awaiting final bill (TA)
y Terminated (TX)
The action taken by the Billing Engine is affected by the account status at the start of the
nominal bill date (if a periodic bill is due) and the account status at the date and time the
Billing Engine is run:
Table 2 Account Status and Billing Engine Actions
Account Status at Account Status at

Nominal Bill Date Actual Bill Date Billing Engine Action
<none> PE No further action by the Billing Engine as account

is still pending.
PE <none> This is not possible; first bill date must be after

account is made active.
OK OK The Billing Engine will continue to process a

periodic bill as normal.
SU OK The Billing Engine will process a skipped periodic

bill.
TA or TX OK Account termination was rescinded. This is treated

as OK/OK by the Billing Engine.
OK SU The Billing Engine will continue to process a

periodic bill as normal (but may be suppressed by
suspension bill).
SU SU The Billing Engine will process a skipped periodic

bill (but may be suppressed by suspension bill).

2 – Bill Types
Table 2 Account Status and Billing Engine Actions (continued)
Account Status at Account Status at

Nominal Bill Date Actual Bill Date Billing Engine Action
TA or TX SU Account termination rescinded then account

suspended. This is treated as OK/SU by the Billing
Engine.
SU TA The Billing Engine will process a skipped periodic

bill (but may be suppressed by suspension or final
bill).
OK TA The Billing Engine will continue to process a

periodic bill as normal (but may be suppressed by
final bill).
TX TA Termination rescinded and re-requested. This is

treated as OK/TA by the Billing Engine.
TA TA This is treated as OK/TA by the Billing Engine.
TX TX Post termination – the Billing Engine only produces

a post-final bill if requested.
The combination of the account status at the nominal bill date and the account status at
the date and time the Billing Engine is run determine which types of bill can be produced.
The possible account status and bill type interactions are detailed in Table 3 through
Table 6.

Billing Concepts
Initiation Bill, Periodic Bill, Interim Bill, and Credit Note
Table 3 Account Status at Nominal Versus Actual Bill Date, Initiation Bill,
Periodic Bill, Interim Bill, and Credit Note
Account Status on Nominal Bill Date
PE OK SU TA TX
Account PE N N/A N/A N/A N/A

status on
actual bill OK N/A Y N Y Y
date
SU N/A Y N Y Y
TA N/A Y N Y Y
TX N/A N N N N
Suspension Bill
Table 4 Account Status at Nominal Versus Actual Bill Date, Suspension Bill
PE OK SU TA TX

status on
actual bill OK N/A Y Y Y Y
date
SU N/A Y Y Y Y
TA N/A Y Y Y Y
TX N/A N N N N

2 – Bill Types
Final Bill
Table 5 Account Status at Nominal Versus Actual Bill Date, Final Bill
PE OK SU TA TX

status on
actual bill OK N/A N N N N
date
SU N/A N N N N
TA N/A Y N Y Y
TX N/A N N N N
Post-Final Bill
Table 6 Account Status at Nominal Versus Actual Bill Date, Post-Final Bill
PE OK SU TA TX

status on
actual bill OK N/A N N N N
date
SU N/A N N N N
TA N/A N N N N
TX N/A Y N Y Y
Accounts Requiring Receivables Analysis

Before an account is billed by the Billing Engine the Debt Escalation Engine should be run
to create a correct representation of the account receivables.
The system parameter BGenforceDebtAnalysisBoo can be used to tell the Billing Engine
not to bill accounts marked for receivables analysis.
The system parameter works in conjunction with the

DEBT_ANALYSIS_REQUIRED_DTM field in the ACCOUNT table. This field is
populated as a consequence of other actions, for example, if there is a failed
payment, PR Write populates the DEBT_ANALYSIS_REQUIRED_DTM field
accordingly.

Billing Concepts
The system parameter can be set to one of the following:

y T (true) – the Billing Engine produces the bill only when the
DEBT_ANALYSIS_REQUIRED_DTM field in the ACCOUNT table is null. If the
DEBT_ANALYSIS_REQUIRED_DTM field is a non-null value the Billing Engine does
not produce the bill, but generates an appropriate error message within Infinys Rating
and Billing.
y F (false) – the Billing Engine applies the default behavior and bills the account as
normal, regardless of the value of the DEBT_ANALYSIS_REQUIRED_DTM field.
Billing Status
The billing status is used by the Billing Engine to determine whether an account is billable.
The billing status also indicates failed billing activity and is used to prevent further billing
attempts.
You can prevent an account from being billed by setting the billing status to XX, thus
marking the account as unbillable (if the status is left as XX, the Billing Engine will never
bill the account). The status can only be changed by directly altering the BILLSTATUS in
the ACCOUNT table, therefore preventing it from accidentally being changed via the user
interfaces.
If the billing status is altered to XX, an entry should be entered into the Billing
Engine log file to explain why it was changed.
Refer to Infinys System Processes for Rating and Billing for more information on billing
statuses.

3 Copy Bills, Reissued Bills, and
Summary Statements
In addition to master bills the following bills can be sent out to customers:
y Copy bills – contain the same information as the master bill, but may have different
formats (including language)
y Reissued bills – replacement bills that are produced at the customer’s request
y Summary statements – provide an overview of the periodic bills for all accounts in the
billing hierarchy
Copy Bills
Copy bills are duplicate bills that are produced at the same time as the original (master)
bill and may be sent to additional customer contacts. Copy bills are added to an account
on the Copy Bills tab of the Account Billing view of Customer Account Maintenance.
For each account it processes, the Billing Engine checks if copy bills have been requested
(each request is held as a separate entry in the ACCHASCOPYBILL table). If entries exist
for the account, the Billing Engine processes these records to produce separate bill data
records and formatting requests for each copy bill.
Copy bills are produced in the appropriate language for the contact specified as their
recipient.
information on adding copy bills to an account and refer to Infinys Rating and Billing
Customer and Account Concepts for more information on producing copy bills for a
particular account.
Reissued Bills
Reissued bills are replacement bills that are produced at the customer’s request. For
example, a customer may request that a bill be reissued if they lose the original, or if the
original was mailed to an incorrect address because the customer did not inform the
Infinys operator of a change of address.

Billing Concepts
Reissued bills can use a different bill template to the original and may be sent to a different
address from the original.
Reissued bills are not the same as copy bills.
Copy bills are produced in the same billing run as the original master bill and
have their own separate entries in the BILLDATA table. Copy bills can be
produced in any language.
Reissued bills are produced in a subsequent billing run to the original and use the
same bill data record as the original bill. Reissued bills can only be produced in
the language of the original bill.
The Bill Reissuer can reissue both master and copy bills.
The Bill Reissuer is a UNIX system process designed to run under System
Monitor/Task Master control. During execution, the Bill Reissuer can be stopped,
paused, and resumed. Refer to Infinys System Processes for Rating and Billing
for more information.
Bill reissue requests are created via the Bills tab of the Account Billing view of Customer
Account Maintenance and are stored in the REISSUEREQUEST table.
All of the bill reissue requests for an account are displayed on the Reissue Bill tab of the
Account Billing view of Customer Account Maintenance and are listed in reverse date
order; that is, most recent first. The currently selected bill reissue request is highlighted.
Bill reissue requests can be modified provided that the reissue request status is
Requested.
The Bill Reissuer produces replacement bills by referring to requests held in the
REISSUEREQUEST table. The data to be reissued is then extracted from the BILLDATA
table.
The Bill Reissuer does the following for each entry in the REISSUEREQUEST table:
y Locates the BILLDATA record for the requested bill
If the reissue request status of a bill is set to Requested, the Bill Reissuer
attempts to reissue it. However, if there are no formatting requests or bill data
relating to this bill an error is raised. Therefore the Bill Reissuer reissues old
bills as well as the most recent one assuming the relevant data exists in the
database.
y Retrieves the bill style specified by the REISSUEREQUEST table and updates the bill
data accordingly
y Updates the bill recipient details
y Populates the reissue date field in the bill data
y Creates a formatting request with the BILL_PURPOSE field set to 3

3 – Copy Bills, Reissued Bills, and Summary Statements
y Outputs the updated bill data to a file, ready for the Bill Formatting Engine or Managed
File Modifier to process
Any tags listed in the BILLDATATAGDELETE table that relate to the formatter for
the bill data/budget center report data/dunning notice/summary statement being
processed are removed from the data and therefore not output to the managed
file.
information on initiating a reissued bill.
Summary Statements
A summary statement can be produced for a customer-driven billing hierarchy. It can
summarize all bills produced by all accounts below the customer it is associated with.
Optionally, they can also concatenate all the bills into a single statement. These
concatenated bills are included in the summary statement rather than sent out individually.
This allows, for example, all the bills for the accounts of a family to be sent out in a single
summary statement.
Summary statements are only produced during hierarchy billing and are not
produced if a customer’s accounts are billed via account billing.
Non-periodic bills (for example, initiation bills, or interim bills) are not included in
summary statements.
A summary statement shows the gross, net, and tax totals for a given bill and provides
aggregate totals over bills, broken down by currency.
The summaries to be produced for a customer’s billing hierarchy are set up on the
Summary Statement tab in the Customer/Company dialog box of Customer Account
Maintenance (the Summary Statement tab is only available if the customer is part of a
billing hierarchy).
information on setting up summary statements.
Concatenation
A summary statement can optionally concatenate the periodic bills it has incorporated so
that they are appended to the summary statement. This is selected via the Concatenate
bills check box on the Summary Statement tab in the Customer/Company details dialog
box of Customer Account Maintenance (that is, the CONCATENATE_BILLS_BOO field of
the CUSTOMER table).
The check box is only available if contact details have already been entered for
the summary statement.

Billing Concepts
If the Concatenate bills check box is:

y Selected (that is, the CONCATENATE_BILLS_BOO field is set to T [true]) – the
summary statement concatenates all the bills for the accounts in the billing hierarchy.
As a result, individual bills will not be produced for the hierarchy accounts and the bills
will only be sent as part of the summary statement.
Only one customer within a hierarchy may receive a summary statement that
includes concatenated bills. If a customer is receiving concatenated bills and
another customer higher in the hierarchy turns on bill concatenation, the
previous record is overridden, and only the higher customer receives the
concatenated bill.
y Not selected (that is, the CONCATENATE_BILLS_BOO field is set to F [false]) – the
summary statement does not concatenate all the bills for the accounts in the billing
hierarchy, and individual bills are still produced for the hierarchy accounts.
When a summary statement is concatenating the periodic bills, all data is output to the bill
data as usual, but the contact is replaced with the summary statement contact. Hence the
bill template is chosen using the summary statement contact, not the billing contact.
During billing the Billing Engine produces a formatting request for the bill. If no
concatenation is taking place the formatting request is of type “created.” If concatenation
is to take place then the formatting request is of type “subdocument.” This decision is only
made for a periodic master bill. Other types of bills, copy bills, and budget center reports
are unaffected by bill concatenation.
Not every customer can have a concatenating summary statement. The rule is that if a
customer has a concatenating summary statement, then none of its descendants/
ancestors can have a concatenating summary statement. See Figure 3 for details. The
customer C1 has a concatenating summary statement on it. The crossed out customers
are those that cannot also have a concatenating summary statement.
C C C1
C C C C1 C C
C1 C C C C C C C C
Figure 3 Summary Statement Concatenation Rules
If this rule is broken, the Billing Engine aborts billing of the billing hierarchy, and marks all
accounts within it with the XX status.

3 – Copy Bills, Reissued Bills, and Summary Statements
Viewing Summary Statement Images

Summary statement images can be viewed via the Summary Statement tab in the
Customer dialog box of Customer Account Maintenance (the Summary Statement tab is
only available if the customer is part of a billing hierarchy).
You can only view summary statement images if the internal formatter is being
used.
The Details tab in the Bill Formatter dialog box is used to define the application to be used
to view the images, and, if the viewing application cannot be found, a standard Microsoft
Windows Open dialog box is displayed to allow you to locate it. The Bill Formatter dialog
box is accessed via the Formatter tab of the Bill Formatting view of System
Configuration.
Refer to Infinys Rating and Billing System Configuration Help and Infinys Rating and
Billing Customer Account Maintenance Help for more information on viewing summary
statement images.
Cancellation of Summary Statements

When a billing run for a particular billing hierarchy is canceled, all the bills and summary
statements produced are also canceled. The bill data and statement data remains
untouched, but the formatting requests are deleted and any tables that have been updated
in the database are reset to their original state prior to the commencement of billing. In
short, summary statements are canceled when the bills produced with them are canceled.
If a subsequent rebilling takes place the bills are regenerated, with identical account
number and bill sequence, but with an incremented bill version. Similarly, the summary
statements are also generated again, with identical customer reference and statement
sequence, but with an incremented statement version.
Summary Statement Reissues

Summary statement reissues are instructions to the Billing Engine to reissue a specific
summary statement for a customer.
Summary statements can be reissued via the Summary Statement tab within Customer
Account Maintenance (the Summary Statement tab is only available if the customer is
part of a billing hierarchy).
The Bill Reissuer produces summary statement reissues by referring to requests held in
the CUSTOMERREISSUEREQUEST table. The data for the summary statement reissue
is then extracted from the STATEMENTDATA table. The process that the Bill Reissuer
uses to produce reissues of summary statements is similar to that used for reissued bills.

Billing Concepts
However, the CUSTOMERREISSUEREQUEST table is used in place of the

REISSUEREQUEST table and the STATEMENTDATA table is used in place of the
BILLDATA table. See "Reissued Bills," page 15 for details.
The actions that you can perform on customer records depend on your
authorization level. For example, you may be able to edit customer records, but
not create them. Your authority depends on how your installation of Infinys Rating
and Billing has been configured. If you are unsure of your authorization level,
check with your system administrator.
information on reissuing summary statements.

4 Budget Centers
Budget centers are reporting entities for accounts. Budget centers can be grouped
arbitrarily into budget center groups (in addition to being formed into a hierarchy) and
summaries based upon these groupings.
Each product on an account can be allocated to a budget center.
For a particular summary, a product can be:

y Allocated to a budget center, which is in turn allocated to a budget center group for the
summary. The label used for expenditure relating to the product is that of the budget
center group.
y Allocated to a budget center, which is not allocated to a budget center group for the
summary. The label used for expenditure relating to the product is held by a system
parameter and is set by your system administrator – the default is Other.
y Not allocated to a budget center. The label used for expenditure relating to the product
is held in a system parameter and is set by your system administrator – the default is
Unallocated.
If budget center groups do not exist then they can be set up via the Budget Center tab in
the Budget Center for Account dialog box of Customer Account Maintenance (select Edit
> Add Budget Center... from the tool bar).
Each budget center group pertains to a particular budget center summary. Each budget
center may belong to no more than one budget center group within a budget center
summary. However, it may belong to different groups on different summaries.
All of the budget center groups that have been added for a particular budget center
summary are shown via the Budget Center Details tab of the Account Setup view of
A tree view of budget center groups included in the summary selected is shown, allowing
you to expand or contract nodes.
The summaries produced are broken down by charge type (that is, initiation charges,
periodic charges, final charges, usage charges, and other charges, for example,
adjustments) so that this information is available for outputting on the bill if required.
information on the setting up and configuration of budget centers.

Billing Concepts
Example
Consider the following structure:
Account
Central
Branch 1 Branch 2 Central Sales Marketing
(BC1) (BC2) (BC3) (Bc4)
Branch 1 Branch 2
Branch 1 Sales Marketing Branch 2 Sales Marketing
(BC5) (BC6) (BC7) (BC8)
Figure 4 Example Budget Center Structure
With this structure it would be possible to get, for example, a summary of spending by
branch, using the hierarchical structure in place:
y Branch 1; that is, Branch 1 + Branch 1 Sales + Branch 1 Marketing
y Branch 2; that is, Branch 2 + Branch 2 Sales + Branch 2 Marketing
y Other; that is, Central Sales + Central Marketing
or a summary of spending by function, using an arbitrary grouping:

y Marketing; that is, Branch 1 Marketing + Branch 2 Marketing + Central Marketing
y Sales; that is, Branch 1 Sales + Branch 2 Sales + Central Sales
y Branches; that is, Branch 1 + Branch 2
Budget Center Start and End Dates

Budget centers can have start and end dates, which are configured when setting up or
modifying a budget center.
If a new start date and/or end date is specified, then it must not be earlier than the
account's last bill date. Additionally, a child budget center’s start and end dates must not
extend beyond the parent budget center’s start and end dates (in other words, the child
budget center can only be active while the parent budget center is active). If this occurs,
an error message is displayed.
Budget center start and end dates are entered via the Budget Center tab in the Budget
Center for Account dialog box of Customer Account Maintenance (select Edit > Add
Budget Center... from the tool bar).

4 – Budget Centers
information on how to set up budget center start and end dates.

Billing Concepts

5 Billing Event Information
Billing event information can be grouped in various ways to provide flexibility in how the
bills are produced and presented to the customer. The information can be grouped as:
y Event itemizations – shows a detailed breakdown of the events on the bill. You can
define the itemization override behavior and the order of the itemization.
y Event summaries – shows a statistical summary for the rated events to be displayed
on a bill. Each event type can have summaries defined for it.
Event Itemizations
Event itemization provides a means of breaking down one or more items of the invoice so
that only selected details are shown on the bill, for example, a list of requested films from
a pay-per-view television channel.
To help with the grouping of billing information you can modify the following:
y Itemization overrides – specifies the threshold that determines whether an amount is
shown as itemized on a bill. For example, you may not want any items under the value
of five cents to be shown on the bill for the event.
y Itemization order – allows you to change the order in which the events of this type are
itemized, such as itemizing by product or by price plan.
The setting of the itemization order and itemization threshold against an

individual event type is carried out via the Modifying Event Type Details dialog
box. This dialog box is accessed via the Event Types tab of the Rating view in
the Product Details for Customer dialog box of Customer Account Maintenance.
information.
Overrides
In general, whether an event is itemized is determined by whether or not its cost is greater
than a particular threshold value. This threshold value is specified on a per account basis
and is carried out via the Modifying Event Type Details dialog box (accessed via the Event
Types tab of the Rating view in the Product Details for Customer dialog box of Customer
Account Maintenance).
However, you can introduce exceptions to this basic rule, for example:
y Never itemize – events that are never itemized, for example, telephone calls to help
lines
y Always itemize – events that are always itemized, for example, free calls to certain
information services

Billing Concepts
y Itemize anonymously – events that are itemized but made anonymous by having a
number of characters replaced, for example, the identifiers of callers to free telephone
numbers
This is carried out via the Itemization Override tab of the Bill Formatting view of System
Configuration.
Itemization overrides can only be deleted if their start date is after today’s date.
If two or more itemization overrides apply to a single event, the priority given to them is:
never itemize, then always itemize, and finally itemize anonymously.
For example, if two records apply and one is “always itemize” and the other is “never
itemize,” the event is not itemized.
Itemization overrides can only be modified if they have not ended, that is, if their end date
is either empty or on or after today’s date. If an itemization override is selected which has
already ended, the information is read-only.
The rules determining which fields can be modified are as follows:

y Event Type, Attribute Name, Attribute Value, and Start date cannot be modified
y The end date cannot be modified
y All other fields can be updated irrespective of the Start date but a warning is given
that previous bills might be invalidated
information on specifying the itemization threshold value and Infinys Rating and Billing
System Configuration Help for more information on setting up itemization overrides.
Orders
Itemization orders allow events to be listed by any of their event attributes, or combination
of attributes, in ascending or descending order and to be grouped by one or more event
attributes. For example, telephone call events can be ordered by duration (descending) or
by cost (descending) and grouped by cost band and call type.
Whether events are itemized is determined by a threshold based on their cost –

other attributes cannot be used to determine this.
The Itemization Order tab of the Bill Formatting view of System Configuration is used to
set up and configure itemization orders.
You can define the itemization orders available to be selected when event-generating
products are purchased via Customer Account Maintenance.
Each itemization order must have at least one itemization order action with an
Action Type of either Order ascending or Order descending.

5 – Billing Event Information
When event-generating products are purchased via Customer Account Maintenance, you
are able to select any of the currently available itemization orders (for the appropriate
event type) for outputting the events generated by this product when the account is billed.
Example
An itemization order by cost descending, grouped by type and cost band could produce
the following results:
Itemized calls for New York 555-1234 before discounts.
Direct-Dialed Calls
International
Table 7 Example Direct-Dialed International Calls
Date Time Dialed Number Duration Cost ($)
04/02 10:32 011-44-1223-xxxxxx 11:26 2.16
03/02 15:10 011-44-1223-xxxxxx 07:30 1.45
Subtotal: 3.61
Local Toll
Table 8 Example Direct-Dialed Local Toll Calls
04/02 01:19 214-xxx-xxxx 20:34 3.81
05/02 00:20 214-xxx-xxxx 36:29 3.34
04/02 05:37 214-xxx-xxxx 12:27 2.35
04/02 20:21 214-xxx-xxxx 08:18 1.60
Subtotal: 11.10
Long Distance
Table 9 Example Direct-Dialed Long Distance Calls
03/02 18:53 1-603-xxx-xxxx 40:15 39.42
04/02 17:00 1-603-xxx-xxxx 34:24 6.30
Subtotal: 45.72

Billing Concepts
Operator-Connected Calls
International
Table 10 Example Operator-Connected International Calls
03/02 22:13 011-44-207-xxxxxxx 13:20 3.50
Subtotal: 3.50
Total itemized calls: 63.93
Calls not itemized: 0.000
Total: 63.93
Subtotals are output to the bill data with the itemization data for each grouping.
For example, in the output described, subtotals are given for direct-dialed
international calls and direct-dialed local calls.
If a grouping does not contain any events, the section is omitted entirely from the
bill. For example, in the output described, the long distance and local toll
sections within the operator-connected calls group are not shown.
Groupings are ordered alphabetically. For example, in the output described, the
order is direct-dialed calls followed by operator-connected calls and within each
of these international, local toll, and then long distance calls.
The basic itemization order consists of a name, description, and the event type to be
itemized. Each itemization order is associated with a number of itemization order actions
which specify the event attributes to be used, and the type of action to be performed on it.
Refer to Infinys Rating and Billing System Configuration Help for more information on how
to set up and configure itemization orders.

Breakdown of Information
The following system parameters control how rating time discount and pre-itemization
discount information for each itemized event is to be displayed within an event summary.
BGitemiseDiscountInfoBoo Determines whether to overload the bundletext field of

the Event tag in the bill data with discount information.
y If set to T (true) – the bundletext field is overloaded
with a concatenation of rating time discount
information and pre-itemization discount information.
y If set to F (false) – the bundletext field is not
overloaded.
If the system parameter is not set (null), the default

behavior persists. That is, the Billing Engine will not list a
breakdown of rating time and pre-itemization discounts for
each itemized event, and the new summary of
pre-itemization discounts is not given in the bill data.
The default is null.
BDdiscFieldSeparator Defines the field separator to use between each field of the
discount information that is output to the bundletext field
of the Event tag in the bill data (output only if
BGitemiseDiscountInfoBoo = T [true]).
If the system parameter is not set (null), the default value

of "," (comma) will be substituted by the Billing Engine.
BDdiscInfoSeparator Defines the separator for each set of discount information

that is output for an event to the bundletext field of the
Event tag in the bill data (output only if
BGitemiseDiscountInfoBoo = T [true]).
If the system parameter is not set (null), the default value

of ";" (semi-colon) will be substituted by the Billing Engine.
Refer to the Infinys Rating and Billing Bill and Statement Data Interactive for more
information on bill data.

Billing Concepts
Event Summaries
Event summaries allow the rated events to be displayed on a bill in various formats.
All events on the bill, whether or not they are itemized, are included in the
summaries.
The costs used for summaries are the rerated costs.
An account may have zero, one, or many event summaries for each event type. In
addition, a particular event summary may be associated with an account more than once,
with different summary levels.
Example
For example, an event summary totaling the number of calls, duration, and cost grouped
by call type and band, could produce the following results:
Table 11 Example Event Summary
Type Band Number of Calls Total Duration Total Cost
Direct-dialed: International 24 1:05:32 25.641
Local 4123 43:23:23 66.343
Mobile 145 14:23:56 122.425
National 142 13:23:42 17.232
Premium rate 1 13:21 13.420
Subtotals: 4435 85:37:33 245.061
Operator-connected: International 31 2:26:33 35.644
Subtotals: 31 2:26:33 35.644
Totals: 4466 88:04:06 280.705
Subtotals are output for each grouping subsection, and totals for the table as a
whole.
If a grouping is empty, the row is omitted from the bill. For example, in the output
described, no row is produced for the Local, Mobile, National, and Premium rate
bands within the Operator-connected calls group.
Groupings are ordered alphabetically. For example, in the output described, the
order is Direct-dialed followed by Operator-connected and within each of these
International, Local, Mobile, National, and then Premium rates.
A null value in a summed attribute is treated as zero.

Creating
The basic event summary consists of a name, description, and the event type to be
summarized. Each event summary is associated with a number of event summary
actions, which specify the event attributes to be used in the summary and the type of
actions to be performed on them.
Event summaries are created in the Event Summary dialog box on the Event Summary
tab of the Bill Formatting view of System Configuration.
Each event summary must have at least two event summary actions:
y One with an Action Type of Group
y One with an Action Type of Sum
Event summaries that are missing one, or both, of these actions are ignored by the Billing
Engine and are not used.
When deleting event summary actions, ensure that you leave at least one action
with an Action Type of Group and one with an Action Type of Sum.
Additionally, deleting an event summary deletes all actions and groups as well.
Refer to Infinys Rating and Billing System Configuration Help for more information on
creating event summaries.
Applying
If an appropriate account does not exist, you must first create an account in Customer
Service Management on the Add account tab.

should use Customer Account Maintenance to create the account. This is carried
out via the Add Account Wizard of Customer Account Maintenance. Refer to
information.
The Event Summaries dialog box on the Itemization tab of the Account Billing view of
Customer Account Maintenance is then used to select the event summaries to be added
to individual accounts and to define how the event data for them is to be aggregated. The
Itemization tab is also used to modify and remove event summaries associated with the
aggregation level.
You can select any of the currently available event summaries (for the appropriate event
type) for output when the account is billed. For each event summary associated with an
account, you specify a summary level which determines how the events are grouped
together to produce a single set of figures:
y All events (of the given type) for a single account
y All events from a single product
y All events from the products within a single package

Billing Concepts
y All events from the products taken by a single customer

y All events from a single event source
Each event summary applies to just a single event type. However, an account may have
many summaries for a given event type added to it to allow the same information to be
summarized in different ways. It may even have the same summary added multiple times
with different aggregation levels.
All of the event summaries being used by an account are displayed under Itemization
Summaries on the Itemization tab in Customer Account Maintenance.
Each entry must be unique. You cannot select the same event summary with the
same aggregation level as an existing entry in the Itemization Summaries list.
The itemization summaries are displayed in chronological order of the date/time they were
added to the account. The currently selected item is highlighted. If multiple languages are
being used, items are shown in the current display language..
If you set the Aggregation Level to by Product, the product label cannot be null.
Itemization summaries can be deleted from an account at any time. After an itemization
summary is deleted from an account, it is removed from the list and not used in any future
bills.
Refer to Infinys Customer Service Management Help for more information on how to
create an account and Infinys Rating and Billing Customer Account Maintenance Help for
more information on applying event summaries.
Rounding Event Totals

When producing bills, it is generally desirable (for presentation purposes) for the event
totals that are output to the bill to be rounded (to the minor currency), rather than output at
the accuracy held within the Infinys Rating and Billing database (tenths of the minor
currency). However, if the bill/statement data is to be subsequently post-processed
(involving aggregation of these event totals), this presentational rounding can introduce
errors into the aggregated figures.
Infinys operators may want to post-process the bill/statement data for some invoicing
companies, but not others. It is therefore desirable to be able to control the rounding
precision of event totals on a per invoicing company basis.
The system parameter BGeventTotalGreaterPrecisionBoo is used to set the rounding

precision of event totals in bill/statement data. This system parameter can be configured at
both system and invoicing company level.
Billing hierarchies that contain accounts with multiple invoicing companies such
that there are inconsistent values for BGeventTotalGreaterPrecisionBoo are
marked as unbillable. As a result, an error is generated by the Billing Engine.

The system parameter can be set to:

y T (true) – calculates and outputs to tenths of the minor currency level.
y F (false) – calculates and outputs to minor currency level.
The event total values output to the bill and statement data vary in meaning
depending on the value of the system parameter
BGeventTotalGreaterPrecisionBoo. Therefore event totals in the bill and
statement data entries may have different meanings depending on the invoicing
company of the account to which they are attached. This may have downstream
effects on systems post-processing the bill and statement data.
Cost Centers
Cost centers allow the billing information for a single account to be split and subtotaled
under separate headings. Cost centers are nominated by the customer and are a
classification of events for a single product. Infinys Rating and Billing can then (if
requested) detail the use of an event product by customer-nominated cost center.
The headings could represent, for example, different users of the account, with each
person’s telephone calls being listed and subtotaled separately. (If cost centers are used
there is still only one final bill total.)
For example, for a telephony product, you might nominate a dialed prefix of 1 for business
calls, 2 for home calls and 3 for calls made by children. Infinys Rating and Billing will then
provide summaries on the bill of calls divided by these groupings, providing the customer
uses the additional cost center numbers when dialing.
All of the cost centers belonging to an account are displayed on the Itemization tab in
Customer Account Maintenance. The cost centers are displayed in ascending order of
cost center number. The currently selected item is highlighted.
The Itemization tab is also used for the creation, modification, and deletion of cost
centers which are held on a per account basis.
information on the management of cost centers.

Billing Concepts

6 Service Provider Billing
In a situation where there are a number of service providers in operation, it is essential

that the bills that are sent on behalf of the service providers can be accounted for, and the
revenue reconciled between each service provider.
Infinys Rating and Billing allows multiple service providers the opportunity to provide
branded offerings to customers within a single instance of Infinys Rating and Billing,
thereby allowing service providers to offer their services under their own brand identity,
without the service providers having to build the necessary infrastructure in house to
support them. Infinys Rating and Billing takes control of the implementation and ongoing
operation of the service and transparently provides the service under the service
provider’s private brand.
Ownership of a customer database and billing system can be important to an Infinys

operator, allowing them to generate revenue from third-party service providers via the
medium through which the Infinys operator provides its own services. The Infinys operator
can provide billing, and possibly accounts receivable management, to these other service
providers.
The following service provider billing situations are determined by the commercial
relationship of the Infinys operator, the service provider, and the customer:
y Service provider owns the credit risk, but the Infinys operator manages it on the
service provider’s behalf, including collecting payments and chasing any unpaid
receivables. All payments are made to a bank account owned by the service provider.
y Infinys operator owns the credit risk and pays the service provider their share. The
Infinys operator produces bills and accepts payments in the normal way, but makes
payments regularly to the service provider depending upon their share of the
business.
y Service provider owns the credit risk, which it manages outside Infinys Rating and
Billing. The Infinys operator produces bills on behalf of the service provider, but the
customer pays the service provider directly.
Infinys Rating and Billing splits incoming events into primary and secondary events. The
primary events are directed to the customer account, whereas the secondary events are
directed to the service provider’s account. This is configured via the Multi-Party Event
Type tab of the Event Definition view of System Configuration.
Refer to Infinys Rating and Billing System Configuration Help for details and Infinys Rating
and Billing Event and Rating Concepts for more information on multiparty events.

Billing Concepts
Example
An Infinys operator operates a service provider business model, delivered over the GSM
network, and has one customer with the following three products:
y An electricity meter which sends readings to the electricity company via GSM
y An automatic alarm system
y An automatic domestic heating system
These three products might be provided by three different companies, but the Infinys
operator would bill the customer on their behalf and then settle with each of the three
companies individually.
Invoicing Companies
For service provider billing to operate within Infinys Rating and Billing each holding
account must be associated with a particular invoicing company. This allows automatic
payments to be made directly from a customer to the invoicing company related to the
customer's account.
It is not possible to create an automatic payment authorization from a customer's

account to a holding account belonging to a different invoicing company.
Infinys Rating and Billing allows you to choose which invoicing companies use which
payment methods, and which holding accounts they use. You can also mark each
invoicing company as managing receivables inside or outside Infinys Rating and Billing.
All accounts associated with an invoicing company use the invoicing company’s
tax model. Refer to Infinys Rating and Billing Tax Concepts for more information
on tax regimes and tax configuration.
In Customer Service Management create the account for the invoicing company on the
Add account tab and then set up the related products for the account on the Product
catalog tab.

should use Customer Account Maintenance to create the account and also to set
up the related products on that account. This is carried out via the Add Account
Wizard and Add Product Wizard. Refer to Infinys Rating and Billing Customer
Account Maintenance Help for more information.
You can then use the Invoicing Company tab of System Configuration to set up each
invoicing company and then link the invoicing company to a customer account number.
The tabs under the Payment view are then used to modify or add a new holding account
and to configure the payment system.
create an account and Infinys Rating and Billing System Configuration Help for more
information on setting up and linking invoicing companies.

6 – Service Provider Billing
Partitioning Catalogs by Invoicing Company

For situations in which branded resellers act as channels for the Infinys operator’s
services, Infinys Rating and Billing allows catalogs to be partitioned at the invoicing
company level. This functionality allows service providers:
y Some independent control over their catalogs.
y Access and management of their price plans, catalogs, and customers.
The Infinys operator would then deliver the service and own the infrastructure involved,
and also restrict user access to specific catalogs.
A billing catalog or rating catalog is associated with an invoicing company on the Save
Catalog As dialog box in Billing Catalog Maintenance or Rating Catalog Maintenance
respectively (Select File > Save as... from the toolbar).
Refer to Infinys Rating and Billing Rating Catalog Maintenance Help and Infinys Rating
and Billing Billing Catalog Maintenance Help for more information on associating a catalog
with an invoicing company. Refer to Infinys Rating and Billing Product and Catalog
Concepts for more information on catalog partitioning.
Invoicing Company Parameters

System parameters can be specified at invoicing company level as well as at the system
level. This does not result in contention between “conflicting” parameters as, if a
parameter is present at both invoicing company and system level, the invoicing company
level system parameter takes precedence (for that invoicing company only). To
summarize:
y An equivalent system parameter does not need to exist in order for an invoicing
company parameter to be defined at invoicing company level.
y Where an invoicing company parameter is specified, the equivalent system parameter
is overridden. If no invoicing company parameter is specified, then the value is
inherited from the equivalent system parameter.
y Invoicing company parameters can be used to provide settings that are specific to
invoicing companies, and for which no equivalent system parameter exists. In this
respect, invoicing company parameters act as an extension of the
INVOICINGCOMPANY table.
Refer to Infinys Rating and Billing System Parameters Interactive for more information on
invoicing company parameters.

Billing Concepts

7 Billing Modes
The Billing Engine can create bills in two different modes:

y Production (live) billing mode – used to produce normal production bills. This is the
default mode for the Billing Engine.
y Test (what if?) billing mode – used to produce formatted test bills whilst leaving the
database unchanged.
The Billing Engine is a UNIX system process designed to run under System
Monitor/Task Master control. During execution, the Billing Engine can be
stopped, paused, and resumed. Refer to Infinys System Processes for Rating
and Billing for more information.
Production Bills
When producing production bills, the Billing Engine does the following:
y Outputs the bill data as structured ASCII text within the database. This bill data
contains the information content of the bill.
y Populates the BILLDATA and BILLPRODUCTCHARGE tables. See Chapter 23,
"Output," for further details.
y Creates a formatting request in the database.
Selecting the Bills to Produce

By default, the Billing Engine bills all appropriate accounts for which one of the following is
true:
y A periodic bill is due
y An initiation bill, interim bill, final bill, post-final bill, or credit note has been requested
y A rebill of a previously canceled bill has been requested
Accounts that are not billed include:

y Internal accounts.
y Terminated accounts (except for post-final bills).
y Accounts that have a rerating request with a status of request Pending or the bill
period.
You can also select subsets of accounts to bill. This is useful when, for example:
y Some bills need to be held back without delaying others.

Billing Concepts
y Some bills need to be sent out at short notice before others are required.
y Some accounts require billing independently.
Billing can be restricted to:

y An individual account.
y An individual customer.
y Account-driven bills only.
y Customer hierarchy-driven bills only.
y Periodic bills only.
y Requested bills only.
y Rebill previously canceled bills only.
y Customers of a particular type only.
y Customers with a particular credit class only.
y Customers with a particular bill style only.
y Bills of a particular type only.
y Accounts in a particular currency only.
y Customers of a particular provider only.
y Customer hierarchies where the customer has a particular value for one of the
user-definable customer attributes. Where customer has <val> as the value for the
customer attribute <att name>.
y Conditions can be negated, for example to search for all customers whose bill type is
not final.
The required subsets are specified using parameter values passed to the Billing Engine on
the command line.
Test Bills
Test or what if? bill runs can produce formatted bills whilst leaving the database
unchanged. Test bills can be useful, for example:
y To test after making significant changes to the billing catalog.
y To test after making changes to bill templates.

7 – Billing Modes
y To help look at problem accounts.
When running the Billing Engine in test mode, commits are not made to the
database. The end date of the current billing period is not passed back to the
Active Rating Engine which means that any events rated after the Billing Engine
has started continue to be added to the current bill. This also affects rating
discount bucket totals.
When the Billing Engine is run in live mode, the end date of the current billing
period is passed back to the Active Rating Engine and events rated after the
Billing Engine started are added to the next bill. Rating discount bucket totals are
as expected.
It is also possible (by giving the appropriate parameter to the Billing Engine) to select a
subset of accounts for test billing rather than generating test bills for all due bills.
When running the Billing Engine in test mode with customer hierarchies, a failure
in one account’s bill results in the previously processed bills for the hierarchy
being output to managed files. This is not a problem with live billing as rollbacks
ensure that the data is managed correctly.
To run billing in test mode, the following parameter must be specified in the process plan
that runs the Billing Engine:
-test
When creating test bills, the Billing Engine does the following:
y Makes no changes to the database.
y Creates the data as files in the managed file area.
Each bill style specifies which formatter is to be used to format the data. Each
formatter in turn specifies which type of file should be used for test bills.
The bill data contains an extra tag, BILLTEST, to indicate that test data is being
created. A corresponding tag can be used, for example, in the template’s header/
footer to mark each page of the bill as being a test bill.
y Creates a job to accompany the managed file.
If the bill data is not to be customized, the job type is:
o Managed File Exporter – if the formatter to be used is an external one.
o Test Bills – if the formatter to be used is the internal one.
If the bill data is to be customized, the job type is:
o Managed File Modifier.
The system parameter BGbillDataReadyBoo is used to allow customized processing to

take place between the Billing Engine and the formatter.

y T (true) – sets the BILL_DATA_READY_BOO field in the FORMATTERREQUEST
table to T (true), indicating that the bill data for the formatting request is ready for
processing.

Billing Concepts
y F (false) – sets the BILL_DATA_READY_BOO field in the FORMATTERREQUEST

table to F (false), indicating that the bill data for the formatting request is not ready for
processing.
You can use the Bill Formatting Engine to format test bills even if the real
production bills for that account are formatted by an external formatter.
To do this, you need to specify that the different bill types for the external
formatter have different file types. Each of these file types should be defined to
go through the Managed File Modifier. The Managed File Modifier does not need
to actually customize them, but should be configured so that it creates a job for
the Bill Formatting Engine for test bill file types and a job for the Managed File
Exporter (for external formatting) for production bill file types.
If two test bills are being produced for the same account in the same test bill run
(for example, both a credit note and another type of bill are due) then the second
bill takes no note of the first. This means that credit adjustments, payments, failed
payments, and refunds appear on both bills.
Depending on the method used for invoice numbering, test bills may have
different invoice numbers from their production bill counterparts.
Refer to Infinys System Processes for Rating and Billing for more information on how to
use the system processes to manage test bills.

8 Adding Charges at Billing Time
It is possible to include additional non-recurring and variable charges on a bill, for example
to cover the costs of printing and postage (which are dependant on the size of the bill). A
customizable Billing Engine plug-in, the billing charge plug-in, enables Infinys operators to
implement their own algorithms to calculate these charges at billing time. These charges
can then be added to the bill for which they have been calculated.
As accounts within a customer hierarchy do not have to belong to the same invoicing
company, it is therefore possible within a customer hierarchy for some accounts to have
billing time charges calculated by the billing time charge plug-in, while others do not. For
those accounts that do, the billing time charge plug-in can use different algorithms to
calculate the billing time charge based on the invoicing company.
The BGbillTimeChargePluginPath system parameter controls whether a billing time

charge plug-in is called by the Billing Engine and, if so, where the plug-in is located. If the
system parameter is absent, no billing time charge plug-in is in use.
The billing time charge plug-in is called by the Billing Engine once per bill, after product
and event charges have been calculated but prior to taxing.
The following limitations and restrictions apply to the use of the billing time charge plug-in:
y Since the use of a plug-in affects the performance of the Billing Engine it is the
responsibility of the Infinys operator to ensure that the code for the plug-in is as
efficient as possible.
y The Billing Engine does not provide the billing time charge plug-in with any details of
the database connection. If a database connection is required by the plug-in, it must
establish its own.
y The information provided by the Billing Engine does not enable the billing charge
plug-in to identify if a bill is to be included in a summary statement or a concatenated
summary statement.
y The billing time charge plug-in is not granted any access to the Infinys Rating and
Billing internal libraries. In addition, any database changes must be made by the
Billing Engine.
y The Bill Reissuer does not support the billing charge plug-in, therefore reissued bills
cannot generate billing time charges to appear on (later) master bills. If a bill includes
billing time charges, the Bill Reissuer cannot pass details of those to a third-party
application.
y It is not possible to add billing time charges to a replacement bill. However, a charge
can be generated for a replacement bill, stored and included on the next master bill for
that account.
y It is not possible to add billing time charges to dunning notices.

Billing Concepts

9 Bill Suppression
Infinys Rating and Billing can stop bills being sent out by suppressing bills for accounts
with zero (zero activity bills) or very little value (small bills).
Final bills cannot be suppressed - they are always produced.
An account billed as part of a hierarchy can be suppressed only by zero activity, not
because it is a small bill (if one or more, but not all accounts in a hierarchy are small, they
are marked as exceptional and are not billed, see Chapter 10, "Exceptional Bills," for
details). However, in the situation where all accounts are small, then all accounts can be
suppressed as small bills.
An account billed on its own can be suppressed due to small bill conditions or zero activity.
If small bill conditions do not include zero, a zero active account-level bill is still
suppressed if zero activity suppression is activated for the system.
Bills are also suppressed if multiple bill types are requested/scheduled at the same time.
Infinys Rating and Billing prioritizes and suppresses the bills accordingly, therefore
preventing unnecessary bills from being sent to the customer. See "Bill Suppression,"
page 4 for details.
Small Bills
A small bill is a bill that falls between the range defined by the minimum positive bill
amount and the maximum negative bill amount exceptional bill conditions. Small valued
bills are produced and then removed from the billing process, so that they are not sent out
to customers.
Small bill suppression is only activated if the following are set on the Exceptional Bill
Conditions tab of the Finance & Billing view of System Configuration:
y The appropriate maximum and minimum exceptional bill conditions
y The Increment bill date for small bills check box is selected
When a small bill is detected (and suppression is activated) the account update is rolled
back. However, the billing status of the account is not affected (that is, the
BILLING_STATUS field in the ACCOUNT table remains OK).

Billing Concepts
A summary of the bill is produced for the suppressed bill (stored in the BILLSUMMARY
table), and the events that appear on the suppressed bill are moved to the next event
sequence. The following also applies:
y Period closure and account updates are not reversed
y Suppressed bill charges are carried over to the next bill
y The sum of the basic prices of the rated events and the number of events rated for this
account, invoice, rating process group combination are also adjusted (that is,
RATED_EVENT_MNY and RATED_EVENT_COUNT fields in the
ACCOUNTRATINGSUMMARY table)
The suppression of small valued bills is only supported for customer hierarchies if
all bills in the hierarchy are found to be small. If this is not the case, small bill
accounts are marked exceptional and consequently account update rollback
cancels billing updates for all accounts and billing fails for the hierarchy.
to activate small bill suppression.
Zero Activity Bills

An account is defined as having zero activity during a bill period if it has:
y No product charges.
y No event usage.
y No discounts applied.
y No adjustments applied.
Zero activity suppression functions in a similar manner to small bill suppression for
account level billing.
The system parameter SYSsuppressZeroActivityBillsBoo specifies if zero activity bill

suppression is active. The system parameter can be set to:
y T (true) – activates zero activity bill suppression.
y F (false) – deactivates zero activity bill suppression.
When a zero activity account is detected (and suppression is activated):

y Only updates for the account in question are canceled in account update.
y A summary of the bill is produced (stored in the BILLSUMMARY table).
y Invoice numbers are not generated for zero activity bills.
y The required cancel bill records are created using the same logic that produces
cancel bill records for suppressed small bills.

9 – Bill Suppression
A customer may have several accounts modeled within a billing hierarchy in order to make
use of customer level discounting, etc. During a bill period any number of those accounts
may have activity, and any number may have no activity. Infinys Rating and Billing
provides the ability to suppress the generation of the bills for these zero activity accounts,
while still generating the bills for the other active accounts within the hierarchy.
If a zero activity account is identified within a billing hierarchy:

y Billing continues as normal for the remaining accounts in the hierarchy.
The performance of the Billing Engine is not affected when zero activity
suppression is in use.

Billing Concepts

10 Exceptional Bills
Infinys Rating and Billing allows you to define the exceptional characteristics of a bill.
These bills are then dealt with accordingly by the Billing Engine. Examples of possible
exceptional bills are unusually high bills or bills which exceed the account’s credit limit by
a set multiplier.
Exceptional bills can be formatted by the Bill Formatting Engine even if the real
production bills for that account are formatted by an external formatter.
The Billing Engine performs some basic checks on the bill data that it produces. These
involve testing the total being billed to ensure that the following conditions are met:
y The bill total is greater than the minimum negative bill amount
y The bill total is less than the maximum positive bill amount
y The bill total is less than account’s credit limit multiplied by the credit limit multiplier
These conditions can be set up to any values appropriate for your system. They are stored
in the EXCEPTIONALBILLCONDITIONS table, and are configured via the Exceptional
Bill Conditions tab of the Finance & Billing view of System Configuration.
The following system parameters can be used to override exceptional bill and suppression
conditions:
y BGallowNegNonCreditBoo – defines whether bills of a type other than credit note may
be generated with a negative total (a refund).
o T (true) – allows bills of a type other than credit note to be generated with a
negative total (a refund).
o F (false) – all bills other than credit notes must be for (>=0), regardless of any
exceptional bill conditions for the account currency.
y BGallowCreditNoteSuppressionBoo – defines whether credit notes obey the normal
exceptional bill conditions for the currency.
o T (true) – credit notes obey the normal exceptional bill conditions for the currency.
o F (false) – credit notes which are small enough to be suppressed by the
exceptional bill condition will still be produced (that is, the exceptional bill
condition will be overridden).
If any of the listed checks fail, there may be a problem in the billing process. As a result,
the Billing Engine does the following:
y Makes no changes to the database other than to mark the account as exceptional by
setting its billing status (the BILLING_STATUS column in the ACCOUNT table) to EX.

Billing Concepts
y Creates the data as files in the managed file area.

Each bill specifies which formatter is to be used to format the data. Each formatter in
turn specifies which type of file should be used for exceptional bills.
y Creates a job to accompany the managed file:
If the bill data is not to be customized, the job type is:
o Managed File Exporter – if the formatter to be used is an external one.
o Exceptional Bills – if the formatter to be used is the internal one.
If the bill data is to be customized, the job type is Managed File Modifier.
Exceptional bills do not go via the Bill Data Writer. One of the functions of the Bill
Data Writer is to perform the tag translation that is necessary for external
formatters, which expect fixed-length tags rather than the variable-length tags
produced by the Billing Engine. For these bills, the tag translation should be
performed by the Managed File Modifier. (The tag translation data is held in the
database in the table BILLDATATAGMAP.)
Exceptional bill data is identified by an additional tag EXCEPTIONALBILL.
configuring exceptional bill conditions.

11 Bill Dates
There are two main types of bill dates within Infinys Rating and Billing. These are:
y Nominal bill date – the date a bill created via the Billing Engine was scheduled or
requested to be produced.
y Actual bill date – the date a bill created via the Billing Engine was actually produced.
These dates may differ by several days if billing is run late or infrequently.
The actual or nominal bill date can be used to define the billing behavior on a per invoicing
company basis, allowing Infinys Rating and Billing to handle multiple regulatory
requirements in a single Infinys Rating and Billing instance.
Other dates of relevance are:

y Payment due date – the date on which payment of the bill is due.
y Collections start date – the date when collections start. This is calculated as being a
certain length of time after the payment due date. The age of receivables is zero on
the collections start date.
y Tax point date – this is used for tax purposes showing when a bill is considered to
have been produced. It is either the nominal bill date or the actual bill date. Refer to
Infinys Rating and Billing Tax Concepts for more information.
However, for a bill which is pending cancellation or has been canceled, the following dates
are also shown:
y Cancellation request date – the date on which the cancellation request was created
y Cancellation date – the date on which the bill was actually canceled
The in-advance charges that are billed on a date also depend on the
configuration at the invoicing company level that specifies a billing window
forward of the nominal bill date (must be populated with the product charge).
Nominal Bill Date

The nominal bill date is the date on which the bill is deemed to have been generated. This
is the date that appears on the invoice and statement portions of the Infinys Rating and
Billing bill.
Billing using the nominal bill date allows event/adjustment/discount/product charges to be

included only if they occurred before the nominal bill date. The behavior can be defined for
each type of charge that appears on the bill.

Billing Concepts
Example
March April April May

1st 1st 15th 1st
time
nominal nominal actual

date of bill date bill date
last bill
Figure 5 Nominal and Actual Bill Dates
Any reference to the last bill date refers to the last nominal bill date.
Actual Bill Date

The actual bill date is the date on which the bill was generated. This is not output as part of
bill data. See Figure 5 for an example of an actual bill date and a nominal bill date.
System Tidemarks
System tidemarks record the limit of some form of processing. The tidemark parameters
can be set to either the actual bill date or the nominal bill date. System tidemarks apply to
both system parameters and invoicing company parameters.
The following system parameter and invoicing company parameter tidemarks are
available:
y SYSeventTidemark
y SYStransactionTidemark
y SYScreditAdjustmentTidemark
y SYSdebitAdjustmentTidemark
y SYSpointsTidemark
y SYSproductTidemark
y SYSdiscountTidemark
Using the SYSdiscountTidemark as an example, the parameter can be set to either:

y ACTUAL – discounts are billed up to their actual billing date.
y NOMINAL – discounts are billed up to their nominal billing date.
If a bill is canceled, appropriate account and customer information, including

product charging tidemarks, is reset. Any changes that have been made since
bill generation but prior to bill cancellation are preserved.

11 – Bill Dates
the list of system tidemark parameters.
Freeze Date
The freeze date is the date on which product details are frozen for billing purposes.
The freeze date is controlled by the Bill Future Changes for Products check box in the
Invoicing Company dialog box (that is, the BILL_PROD_FUTURE_CHANGES_BOO field
in the INVOICINGCOMPANY table).
The check box can be:

y Selected (that is, the value of BILL_PROD_FUTURE_CHANGES_BOO is set to T
[true]) – the day before the next nominal bill date is the freeze date.
y Unselected (that is, the value of BILL_PROD_FUTURE_CHANGES_BOO is set to F
[false]) – details are frozen on the nominal bill date.
The Invoicing Company dialog box is accessed via the Invoicing Company tab of the Tax
view of System Configuration.
All changes up to the freeze date are honored.
controlling the freeze date.
Past and Future Product Details Changes

The Billing Engine can be configured to consider product details changes. These can:
y Include changes in the price plan. See "Price Changes," page 89 for further details.
y Occur after the customer has been billed.
y Occur in the past or the future, as long as they fall within the billing window.
They may give rise to refunds/recharges on the next bill. To enable the Billing Engine to
recognize past and future product details changes, the Bill Future Changes for
Products check box in the Invoicing Company dialog box must be selected (that is, the
BILL_PROD_FUTURE_CHANGES_BOO field in the INVOICINGCOMPANY table must
be set to T [true]).
Refer to Infinys Rating and Billing System Configuration Help for more information on past
and future product details changes.

Billing Concepts
Late Events
Late events are events that occur within a bill cycle but are not entered into the Infinys
Rating and Billing Database until a following bill cycle. It is possible to distinguish late
events from non-late (that is, normal) events using a rating attribute.
Whether or not an event is late is determined by the rating attribute “Late Event Indicator
(219)” that can be bound to one of the COSTEDEVENT event attributes. The rating
attribute is a string with possible values of T (true) for late events and F (false) for non-late
events. It is calculated by comparing the event’s COSTEDEVENT.EVENT_DTM against
the account’s ACCOUNT.EVENT_BILLED_TO_DTM.

12 Canceling Bills
Infinys Rating and Billing uses the Bill Canceller to cancel the last bill produced for an
account, or last bill for each account in a billing hierarchy. Bills other than the last bill for
the account or hierarchy cannot be canceled.
The Bill Canceller is a UNIX system process designed to run under System
Monitor/Task Master control. During execution, the Bill Canceller can be stopped,
paused, and resumed. Refer to Infinys System Processes for Rating and Billing
for more information.
The Bill Canceller uses the BGretainCancelBillDataBoo system parameter to specify

whether the Billing Engine stores information about bills that will allow those bills to be
canceled.

y T (true) – the required information is stored, and the Bill Canceller can cancel bills.
y F (false) – the required information is not stored, and the Bill Canceller is not able to
cancel bills.
Bills are canceled via the Bills tab of the Account Billing and Account Finance views of
Before a bill is canceled, you must ensure that the Bill Data Writer has been run
or bill data will not be deleted by the Bill Data Deleter.
The Bill Data Writer generates entries in the BILLARCHIVELOG table, which in
turn is used to drive the Bill Data Deleter. Without an entry in the
BILLARCHIVELOG table, the bill data for the canceled bill is not removed.
When a user cancels a bill, the bill’s status changes to Pending Cancellation. Bills that are
Pending Cancellation or which have been canceled are treated as follows:
y Payment requests cannot be entered for them.
y Payments cannot be allocated to them.
Whether the cancellation request affects a single account or an entire billing hierarchy is
determined as follows:
y If the account uses account level billing, only the last bill (of any type) for this single
account can be deleted.
y If the account is part of a billing hierarchy and the last bill:
o Is periodic (that is, was produced with bills for the rest of the hierarchy), then the
last bills for the entire billing hierarchy are canceled.

Billing Concepts
o Is not periodic (that is, interim, initiation, final bills, post-final bills, and credit
notes), then only the last bill for this single account is canceled. The exception to
this is if bills were produced for every account within the hierarchy on the same
date.
If two bills were produced at the last bill run (that is, a credit note was generated
at the same time as a periodic bill), both bills are canceled.
The Bill Canceller is driven by entries in the CANCELBILLREQUEST table (populated via
the Request Bill Cancellation for Account dialog box, which is accessed via the Bills tab of
the Account Billing or Account Finance views of Customer Account Maintenance). By
default all entries in the CANCELBILLREQUEST table are processed but restrictions can
optionally be entered via command line parameters.
Bills for open item accounts cannot be canceled if they have had payments
allocated against them.
If the CANCELBILLREQUEST table contains a large number of records (for example,

100,000) the BCcancelBillRequestBatchSize system parameter can be used to prevent
query failures. The value of this system parameter determines the number of records read
from the CANCELBILLREQUEST table when queried by the Bill Canceller.
The Bill Canceller can do any of the following:

y Cancel a single bill (the latest) for a single account. This account is specified on the
command line.
y Cancel a single bill (the latest) for every account in a single customer hierarchy. This
customer hierarchy is specified on the command line.
y Cancel a single bill (the latest) for a number of unrelated accounts. These accounts
are specified by entries in the CANCELBILLREQUEST table.
Canceling a bill involves the nullification of all information generated during the production
of the bill. This is not the same as simply reverting the database to the point before the bill
was generated – subsequent changes to the database may have been made which need
to be preserved.
information on how to cancel a bill and Infinys System Processes for Rating and Billing for
detailed information on how the Bill Canceller cancels a bill.
Rescinding Bill Cancellations

If a bill has status Pending Cancellation and has not yet been fully canceled, the
cancellation request can be rescinded. This is carried out via the Bills tab of the Account
Billing or Account Finance views of Customer Account Maintenance.
information on rescinding bill cancellations.

12 – Canceling Bills
Unbilled Event Totals

When dealing with unbilled event totals the Bill Canceller operates in the following way:
y The Bill Canceller only updates rating totals (as stored in the
ACCOUNTRATINGSUMMARY table) when the Bill Canceller updates costed events.
y If any costed events are moved between invoices (identified by the EVENT_SEQ
field), the Bill Canceller updates the rating totals accordingly (as stored in the
ACCOUNTRATINGSUMMARY table).
The SYSincludeEventsOnRebill system parameter specifies whether eligible (as yet

unbilled) events should automatically be included on a bill when the bill is regenerated.

y T (true) – events are automatically included on the bill.
y F (false) – events are not included on the bill.
When dealing with unbilled totals the SYSincludeEventsOnRebill system parameter must
be set to T (true).
The date to which events are processed by the Billing Engine depends on the
SYSeventTidemark invoicing company parameter.
The invoicing company parameter can be set to:

y NOMINAL – events are processed with respect to the nominal bill date. See "Nominal
Bill Date," page 51 for details.
y ACTUAL – events are processed with respect to the actual billing date. See "Actual
Bill Date," page 52 for details.
When costed events are moved to, or from invoices, the Bill Canceller selects the
appropriate rating totals (that is, the ACCOUNTRATINGSUMMARY record with matching
ACCOUNT_NUM and EVENT_SEQ, and EVENT_PROCESS_GROUP with a value of -2
[Billing Engine]).
For the invoice which the events are being moved from:
y The record of the number of entries stored in the COSTEDEVENT table for this
invoice (that is, the COSTEDEVENT_REC_COUNT field) is decreased by the number
of costed events moved.
y The record of the number of events rated for this invoice (that is, the
RATED_EVENT_COUNT field) is decreased by the number of costed events moved
with a fragment number of 1 or null (as indicated in the FRAGMENT_NUMBER field in
the COSTEDEVENT table).
y The record of the sum of the basic prices of the rated events for this invoice (that is,
the RATED_EVENT_MNY field) is decreased by the cost of each moved event before
any rating discounts have been applied.

Billing Concepts
For the invoice which the events are being moved to:
y The record of the number of entries stored in the COSTEDEVENT table for this
invoice (that is, the COSTEDEVENT_REC_COUNT field) is increased by the number
of costed events moved.
y The record of the number of events rated for this invoice (that is, the
RATED_EVENT_COUNT field) is increased by the number of costed events moved
with a fragment number of 1 or null (as indicated in the FRAGMENT_NUMBER field in
the COSTEDEVENT table).
y The record of the sum of the basic prices of the rated events for this invoice (that is,
the RATED_EVENT_MNY field) is increased by the cost of each moved event before
any rating discounts have been applied.
The Bill Canceller automatically creates any records that do not exist.
If Oracle Advanced Queuing is to be used to propagate data from the Infinys Rating and
Billing database to the event database, then the RATEqueueBoo system parameter must
be set accordingly.

y T (true) – rating places costed and rejected events into an Oracle Advanced Queue.
y F (false) – rating inserts costed and rejected events directly into the COSTEDEVENT
and REJECTEVENT tables.
Suspension, Skipped, and Suppressed Bills

If an account is suspended, for example, a customer moves abroad for six months and
wants to recommence service upon their return, a suspended bill may be sent out to cover
any remaining charges. However, during this period no other bills are generated until the
customer’s account is made active, that is, the periodic bills are skipped and suppressed
by the suspension bill.
Account suspension can be:

y Open-ended from now.
y From now until a specified date.
y Open-ended from a specified date.
y Within a specified date range.
Account suspension also defines a period for which billing will not be performed (although
a periodic charge can still accrue).
If an account that is suspended is part of a customer hierarchy then the cancellation of a

bill within a hierarchy may not be allowed by Infinys Rating and Billing.

Suspension and Skipped Bills

Once an account is suspended, no bills can be generated. However, a suspension bill
may be requested when suspending the account, allowing the customer to “tidy up”
outstanding charges at the start of the suspension period. If during the suspension period
a periodic bill is due, it will be skipped. This is referred to as a skipped bill, and as a result:
y No periodic bill is produced.
y The next bill date (that is, NEXT_BILL_DTM) is incremented by one bill period.
When a bill is skipped, even though no bill is produced, a bill summary record is
still created.
The Bill Canceller recognizes no difference between records that represent physical bills
and those that represent skipped. This applies to both single account and hierarchical
cancellations. Therefore:
y For a single account cancellation, the Bill Canceller processes suspension bills as it
would bills of other requested bill types (it allows them to be canceled).
y For a hierarchy cancellation, a suspension bill can only be canceled if it was produced
as part of periodic billing. This is because the suspension bill would have suppressed
the periodic bill and must be treated in the same way as a periodic bill. It is not
affected by the production of a credit note at the same time as the periodic bill.
y For a hierarchy cancellation, if a suspension bill is produced in between periodic billing
(that is, a situation could occur where not all accounts were billed), it must be treated
as any other requested bill, and the cancellation for the whole hierarchy fails. For
example, a hierarchy is billed as normal. One account in the hierarchy is then
suspended, requesting a suspension bill. The suspension bill is produced by the
Billing Engine, but before the next periodic bills are due for the hierarchy. In this case,
the hierarchy cannot be canceled because one of the accounts has been billed
without the rest of the hierarchy. This is similar to the situation when an interim bill is
produced for an account in the hierarchy.
If the last expected periodic bill was skipped it is not possible to cancel any actual bills for
this account, but it is possible to cancel the skipped bill processing.
The effect of suspension or skipped bills when an attempt is made to cancel a billing
hierarchy can be summarized as follows:
y A suspension bill or skipped bill that suppresses a periodic bill is treated in the same
way as a final bill that suppresses a periodic bill, that is, it does not stop the hierarchy
cancellation. This is because the whole hierarchy has been billed in one operation.
y A suspension bill that is not suppressing a periodic bill is treated in the same way as
an interim bill and stops hierarchy cancellation.
Suspension bills can only be created when suspending an account. Suspension

bills are displayed on the Bill Requests tab within Customer Account
Maintenance, but cannot be manually requested. Refer to Infinys Rating and
Billing Customer Account Maintenance Help for more information.
Refer to Infinys System Processes for Rating and Billing for further information on the
system processes used for suspension and skipped bills.

Billing Concepts
Suppressed Bills
Suppressed bills are bills that are:
y Overwritten by another bill type. See "Interim Bills," page 7 for details.
y Suppressed due to zero or very little activity on an account, that is, it is not worthwhile
for a bill to be sent out to the customer. See "Bill Suppression," page 45 for details.
Suppressed Bills Within a Hierarchy

If an attempt is made to cancel billing for a customer hierarchy, and one or more account’s
bills were suppressed by the Billing Engine, then the following applies:
y The suppressed bill is canceled along with the other bills in the hierarchy.
y The summary record for the suppressed bill is updated (that is, the BILL_STATUS
field in the BILLSUMMARY table is set to 3 [canceled]).
y The next bill date and the current value of the billing and rating event sequence (that
is, NEXT_BILL_DTM, BILL_EVENT_SEQ, and RATE_EVENT_SEQ) for the relevant
account and account rating records are decremented.
Hierarchy Bills
Whether a bill within a hierarchy can be cancelled or not depends upon the configuration
of Infinys Rating and Billing. The customer reference of the hierarchy root for the billing of
the account (that is, the BILLED_ROOT_CUSTOMER_REF field in the
CANCELBILLINFO table) lets you know if the latest bill for an account was produced as
part of a hierarchy or not, and is refreshed each time a version of a particular bill is created
or superseded. If it is:
y Null – then only the latest bill for this account can be canceled.
y Not null – then all the bills produced as part of the account’s hierarchy can be
canceled.
Example
A hierarchy contains three accounts, A1, A2, and A3. Periodic bills are produced for all
three accounts. After this, a credit note is produced for account A1 only. In this case, the
customer reference of the hierarchy root, for the billing of the account (the
BILLED_ROOT_CUSTOMER_REF field in the CANCELBILLINFO table) is null for
account A1 and not null for accounts A2 and A3. Attempting to cancel the latest bill for
account A1 cancels the credit note only. Attempting to cancel the latest bill for account A2
(or A3) is only allowed as part of the cancellation of the whole hierarchy of bills and, in this
case, fails. This is because the latest data in the BILLED_ROOT_CUSTOMER_REF field
in the CANCELBILLINFO table for each of the three accounts is not the same.

If the credit note is produced at the same time as the periodic billing of the three accounts,
then the entire set of bills including the credit note can be canceled simultaneously. It is
possible to cancel on a per account basis, but you cannot cancel according to the bill type.
When canceling bills for a customer hierarchy, the Bill Canceller attempts to
cancel any summary statements that were generated for customers in that
hierarchy during the last Billing Engine run. Only summary statements with a
status of “created” are processed. By canceling a summary statement the related
formatting request is deleted. If a summary statement fails to cancel then the
whole hierarchy fails to cancel and no changes are made to the database, except
for writing “cancellation failed” to the status fields in the ACCOUNT and
BILLSUMMARY tables wherever possible.
Rebilling
The Bill Canceller lets you cancel the last bill for a particular account. Once an account
has had a bill canceled, you can nominate that account for rebilling by the Billing Engine.
The BGretainCancelBillDataBoo system parameter is used to specify whether the Billing

Engine stores information about bills that will allow those bills to be canceled.

y T (true) – the required information is stored, and the Bill Canceller can cancel bills.
y F (false) – the required information is not stored, and the Bill Canceller is not able to
cancel bills.
For rebilling the system parameter BGretainCancelBillDataBoo must be set to T (true) so

that the Billing Engine populates the relevant cancel bill data tables. If this information is
not present a bill cannot be canceled (and hence cannot be rebilled).
The Billing Engine only rebills accounts that have been marked for rebilling. Accounts are
marked for rebilling by the billing status Rebill Requested (use the Bills tab of the
Account Billing or Account Finance view of Customer Account Maintenance to mark an
account for rebilling).
If a canceled bill is reissued, any events that have occurred since the original bill can be
included on the reissued bill. This is only relevant for nominal billing, refer to "Bill Dates,"
page 51 for further details.
This function is controlled by the SYSincludeEventsOnRebill system parameter, which

specifies whether eligible (as yet unbilled) events should automatically be included on a
bill when the bill is regenerated.

y T (true) – events are automatically included on the bill.
y F (false) – events are not included on the bill.
For rebilling the SYSincludeEventsOnRebill system parameter must be set to T (true).

Billing Concepts
Accounts can only be rebilled if the last bill has a status of Canceled. If the bill cancellation
was for an entire hierarchy, the rebill also applies to the entire hierarchy.
If standard invoice numbering is used, rebilled invoices are given the same invoice
number as the original bill. However, if sequential invoice numbering is used, a rebilled
invoice is given a new invoice number based on the next value in the sequence, rather
than the original value. Rebilled invoices can be canceled as usual.
information on marking bills for rebilling and Infinys System Processes for Rating and
Billing for further information on the system processes used for rebilling.

13 Bill Formatting
The output of the Billing Engine and Dunning Letter Engine is structured ASCII text
containing the information content of the bill and is written to the following tables:
y Bill data is written initially to the BILLDATA table.
y Statement data is written initially to the STATEMENTDATA table.
y Dunning notice data is written initially to the DUNNINGDATA table.
These tables are then read by the Bill Data Writer, which then writes the ASCII data
contained within them (stored in the LONG field) to managed files.
The format of the data at this stage is the same, regardless of how the data is to be
processed.
This bill, statement, and dunning data can then be processed by one of a number of
formatting engines to produce output in the desired form, for example, paper or CD-ROM.
A bill formatter may be one of the following:

y The Bill Formatting Engine, also referred to as the internal bill formatter
y An external bill formatter
Bill formatting configuration is primarily performed using System Configuration. However,

not every table that you may need to configure is accessible from System Configuration, in
which case the table can be edited manually.
Refer to Infinys Configuration for Rating and Billing for more information on the tables that
you may need to edit manually.
Internal
The Bill Formatting Engine uses the following information:
y Output data files (bill, budget center report, statement, or dunning notice data,
produced by the Bill Data Writer).
y A table definition file. Refer to Infinys Rating and Billing Bill, Statement, and Dunning
Data Templates for more information on table definition files.
y A template, in a rich text format (RTF) file.
The Bill Formatting Engine produces the following:

y Formatted bills, as RTF files. Bills, budget center reports, statements, and dunning
notices appear in separate files.

Billing Concepts
y A control file for each batch of RTF files.
The Bill Formatting Engine is a UNIX system process designed to run under
System Monitor/Task Master control. During execution, the Bill Formatting
Engine can be stopped, paused, and resumed. Refer to Infinys System
Processes for Rating and Billing for more information.
Overview
To configure Infinys Rating and Billing to produce bills using the Bill Formatting
Engine, do the following:
1 Create a formatter entry which uses the Bill Formatting Engine.
2 Create a bill template.
3 Configure the appropriate bill styles to use the correct template and formatter.
4 Configure the Bill Data Writer to produce bill data for the correct formatter. The Bill
Data Writer writes out data to managed files from the following tables:
o BILLDATA – for bills
o BCRDATA – for budget center reports
o DUNNINGDATA – for dunning notices
o STATEMENTDATA – for statements
5 The Managed File Modifier may be used to process the managed files output by the
Bill Data Writer with a user-written customizer application. System parameters need to
be set to determine if the job created is processed by the Managed File Modifier and
then the Bill Formatting Engine, or is processed by the Bill Formatting Engine straight
away.
6 Configure the Bill Renderer to input and output files from the appropriate directories
then convert these RTF files as Microsoft Word files.
The following sections describe in more detail each of these steps.
Configuring Formatter Information

Formatter information provides the Bill Data Writer with information about the formatting
system that is used to produce bills.
To use the Bill Formatting Engine, a formatter entry must be created for the Bill Formatting
Engine. This is carried out via the Formatter tab of the Bill Formatting view of System
Configuration.

13 – Bill Formatting
To configure formatter information for the Bill Formatting Engine, use System
Configuration to do the following:
1 Add a new bill formatter to the Bill Formatting Engine. This is carried out via the Bill
Formatter dialog box.
The new bill formatter must have the following properties:
Table 12 Bill Formatter Properties
Field Setting Notes
Formatter Type Internal This setting specifies that the Bill Formatting Engine
should be used.
Include Bill Unchecked The Bill Formatting Engine does not support bill inserts.
Inserts
You also need to provide additional information, such as a name for the formatter and
the directories where the Bill Formatting Engine stores bill images.
2 Create file classifications for the new formatter. These file classifications specify the
file group, type, and subtype for the managed files produced by the Bill Data Writer for
the different types of formatted output. This is carried out via the File Classification for
Formatter dialog box.
For example, the following data might be used as the file classifications to use with the
Bill Formatting Engine:
Table 13 Example File Classifications for Bill Formatting Engine
Category File Group File Type File Sub Type
Bill internal_bill_data internal_prod_bill_file internal_prod_bill_subtype
Test internal_bill_data internal_test_bill_file internal_test_bill_subtype
Exceptional internal_bill_data internal_exceptional_bill_file internal_exceptional_bill_

subtype
Dunning internal_bill_data internal_dunning_file internal_dunning_subtype
The file groups, file types, and file subtypes specified here must already exist.
The Bill category also covers statements and budget center reports.
creating a formatter entry and configuring formatter information.

Billing Concepts
Creating a Template
Template files determine the format and layout of the documents (for example, bills and
dunning notices) produced by the Bill Formatting Engine.
This is carried out via the Template tab of the Bill Formatting view of System
Configuration.
To create a template for use by Infinys Rating and Billing, do the following:
1 Create the RTF template file.
2 Use System Configuration, Template tab to configure the template. The template
should use the formatter created in "Configuring Formatter Information," page 64.
When configuring the template, ensure that the Data order file name field is blank in
the Template dialog box. This ensures that the default Infinys Rating and Billing table
definition file is used.
creating a template and Infinys Rating and Billing Bill, Statement, and Dunning Data
Templates for more information on how to create template files.
Configuring Bill Styles

When formatting bills, Infinys Rating and Billing uses a set of configurable mappings to
determine which template (and therefore which formatter) to use for each bill style and
type.
This is carried out via the Bill Style Templates tab of the Bill Formatting view of System
Configuration.
To configure Infinys Rating and Billing to use the new template, do the following:
1 Use System Configuration, Bill Style Templates tab to create a mapping between bill
styles and the new template.
For example, if an Internet Service Provider wanted to use the template
“ISPbillTemplate” for all English language periodic and interim bills for residential
customers, the tab may contain, amongst other information, the following:
Table 14 Example Bill Template Structure
Bill Style Bill Type Language Bill Template
Residential Periodic English (US) ISPbillTemplate
Residential Interim English (US) ISPbillTemplate
configuring bill styles.

Configuring the Bill Data Writer

The Bill Data Writer must be configured to produce bill data for the correct formatter.
The Bill Data Writer is a UNIX system process designed to run under System
Monitor/Task Master control. During execution, the Bill Data Writer can be
stopped, paused, and resumed. Refer to Infinys System Processes for Rating
and Billing for more information.
To configure the Bill Data Writer, do the following:
1 Use the -formatterId parameter to specify the formatter for which the Bill Data
Writer produces bill data.
2 The -dunning, -bill, and -bcr parameters can optionally be used to process jobs
for only dunning notice data, bill data, and budget center report data respectively. If
none of these parameters are used then dunning notice data, bill data, and budget
center report data is processed. The -faultedOnly parameter forces the processing
of faulted formatting requests only.
For bills created with the internal formatter, the Bill Data Writer creates a job that results in
the data file being processed by either:
y The Bill Formatting Engine (if it is to be processed by the internal formatter with no
customization).
In this case, set the appropriate system parameter to T (true) indicating that the data is
ready to process with no customization:
o BGbillDataReadyBoo – for bill data and budget center report data
o DLGdunningDataReadyBoo – for dunning notice data
o BGstatementsDataReadyBoo – for statement data
The -formatterId is checked and if the information in the FORMATTER table
indicates that the template is internal then the job created is for the Bill Formatting
Engine.
y The Managed File Modifier (if the data does require customizing).
In this case, set the appropriate system parameter to F (false) indicating that the data
is not ready for processing:
Refer to Infinys System Processes for Rating and Billing for more information on the Bill
Data Writer.

Billing Concepts
Configuring the Bill Renderer

The Bill Renderer does not run under the Task Master and does not access the Infinys
Rating and Billing database; it is a standalone Microsoft Windows application for rendering
RTF documents into Microsoft Word documents.
To run the Bill Renderer:
1 Enter values into all the required fields.

By default, the fields contain the values used the last time the Bill Renderer was run.
2 Click Launch.
Renderer.
External
If an external formatter is being used, Infinys Rating and Billing allows you to:
y Extract the bill/dunning data from the database and write it to a file.
The Bill Data Writer uses the following information to produce output data files:
y Data from the Billing Engine or the Dunning Letter Engine. The BILLDATA, BCRDATA,
and STATEMENTDATA tables contain raw data that is produced by the Billing Engine.
The DUNNINGDATA table contains raw data that is produced by the Dunning Letter
Engine.
y A tag translation file, if tag translation is required.
The Bill Data Writer produces the following:

y Files containing output data ready to be processed by an external formatting system.
The following sections describe how to configure Infinys Rating and Billing to use an
external formatting system.
Overview
To configure Infinys Rating and Billing to produce bills using an external bill
formatter, do the following:
1 Create a formatter entry which uses the external bill formatter.
2 Create a bill template.
3 Configure bill styles to use the appropriate template and formatter.
4 Create tag translations.

5 Configure the Bill Data Writer to produce bill data for the correct formatter. The Bill
Data Writer writes out data to managed files from the following tables:
o BILLDATA – for bills
o BCRDATA – for budget center reports
o DUNNINGDATA – for dunning notices
o STATEMENTDATA – for statements
The Managed File Modifier may be used to process the managed files output
by the Bill Data Writer with a user-written customizer application. System
parameters need to be set to determine if the job created is processed by the
Managed File Modifier and then the Managed File Exporter, or is processed
by the Managed File Exporter straight away.
Exported bill data is processed by the external formatter.
6 Configure the Managed File Importer to import formatting confirmations from the
external formatter.
7 Configure the File-based Database Updater to update the FORMATTINGREQUEST

and CUSTOMERFORMATTINGREQUEST tables.
8 Configure bill inserts.
The following sections describe each of these steps in more detail.
Configuring Formatter Information

Formatter information provides the Bill Data Writer with information about the formatting
system that is used to produce bills. To use an external formatting system, create a
formatter entry in System Configuration for the external formatter. This is carried out via
the Bill Style tab of the Bill Formatting view of System Configuration.
To configure formatter information for the external formatting system, do the

following:
1 Add a new bill formatter, for the external formatting system. This is carried out via the
Bill Formatter dialog box on the Formatter tab of the Bill Formatting view of System
Configuration.
The new bill formatter may have the following properties:
Table 15 Formatting Details for External Formatting System
Field Setting Notes
Formatter Type External This setting specifies that an external formatting

system should be used.

Billing Concepts
Table 15 Formatting Details for External Formatting System (continued)
Field Setting Notes
Translate Data Yes Translation is required between the Infinys Rating and
Tags Billing tags and the external formatting system tags.
(This setting depends on the formatting system you
choose.)
Limit Export Files No There is no limit on the number of bills that may
appear in a single file.
(This setting depends on the formatting system you
choose.)
You also need to provide additional information, such as a name for the formatter, and
the directories where the Bill Formatting Engine stores bill images.
2 Create file classifications for the external formatter. These file classifications specify
the file group, type, and subtype for the managed files produced by the Bill Data Writer
for the different types of formatted output. This is carried out via the File Classification
for Formatter dialog box.
For example, the following data might be used as the file classifications for use with an
external bill formatter:
Table 16 File Classifications for External Formatting System
Category File Group File Type File Sub Type
Bill external_bill_data external_prod_bill_file external_prod_bill_subtype
Test external_bill_data external_test_bill_file external_test_bill_subtype
Exceptional external_bill_data external_exceptional_bill external_exceptional_bill_

_file subtype
Dunning external_bill_data external_dunning_file external_dunning_subtype
The file groups, file types, and file subtypes specified here must have already
been created. Refer to Infinys Configuration for Rating and Billing for information
about how to create these.
configuring formatter information.
Creating a Template
For billing to work correctly with an external formatter an entry must exist for the external
formatter in the TEMPLATE table. The external formatter uses its own template to create
the bills, nevertheless an entry must exist in the TEMPLATE table.

To create a template for use by Infinys Rating and Billing when using an external
formatter, do the following:
1 Create a dummy RTF template file.
2 Use System Configuration, Template tab to configure the template. The template
should use the formatter created in "Configuring Formatter Information," page 69.
When configuring the template, ensure that the Data Order File Name is blank in the
Template dialog box.This ensures that the default Infinys Rating and Billing table
definition file is used.
configuring the template.
Configuring Bill Styles

The configuring of bill styles is carried out via the Template tab of the Bill Formatting
To configure Infinys Rating and Billing to use the external formatter for your bill
styles, do the following:
1 Use System Configuration, Template tab to configure the default formatter for your bill
styles to be the external formatter.
configuring bill styles.
Creating Tag Translations

By using simple tag mappings the data can be transformed, if necessary, into a format
appropriate to the external formatting system.
Such a mapping is essential for processing with DOC1, as it requires fixed length
tags and the native Infinys Rating and Billing format has variable length tags.
Mappings between Infinys Rating and Billing bill data tags and the tags required by the
external formatting system are configured in the BILLDATATAGMAP table.
Tags as set up in the BILLDATATAGMAP Table
Field Example Notes
GENEVA_TAG_NAME ACCOUNTNO The tag as output by the Billing Engine/Dunning

Letter Engine.
FORMATTER_ID 2 The identifier of the formatter for which this

mapping will be used.

Billing Concepts
Tags as set up in the BILLDATATAGMAP Table (continued)
Field Example Notes
EXTERNAL_TAG_NAME ACC0010000 The corresponding tag used by the external

formatter.
Entries in this table specify, for a particular formatter, which output tag should be used for
each Infinys Rating and Billing tag.
It is possible to use user-written designed processes to integrate with the

external formatter and perform the tag translations without looking at the Infinys
Rating and Billing tables.
A script, LoadDoc1TagMap is provided to help load sample tag translations for the DOC1
formatting system into Infinys Rating and Billing. It requires the UNIX environment variable
$DATABASE to be set up with the appropriate Infinys Rating and Billing database. This
script is run as follows:
LoadDoc1TagMap <formatter_id> <datafile>
where:
y formatter_id is the identifier for the DOC1 formatting path configured in the Infinys
Rating and Billing database.
y datafile is a text file containing source and destination tag names.
Refer to Infinys Rating and Billing Bill and Statement Data Interactive for more information
about tag translations.
Example Mapping for DOC1
The tags for DOC1 must be a fixed length up to 10 ASCII characters long. The file
doc1_mapping.dat contains a sample set of mappings to show how mappings to DOC1
might be set up. This file should only be used as an example as the exact mapping is
dependent on the Infinys operator’s billing configuration.
The following is a typical structure (it is an example of how the mapping might be done
and is not intended for use):
Table 18 Example DOC1 Tag Structure for Mapping
Chars Description Example
1-3 Three letters denoting the area of data that this tag is describing. For ACC
example, INV for invoice and STA for statement.
4-6 Three digits, qualifying the tag uniquely within the data area defined by the 001
first three characters.

Table 18 Example DOC1 Tag Structure for Mapping (continued)
Chars Description Example
7-8 Two digits. These digits are used for tags that can be generated as a result 01
of data configured in the Infinys Rating and Billing database. For example,
itemization data tags can exist for each different event type; itemization
tags will be qualified by the EVENT_TYPE_ID placed in these positions.
For all tags that are not dependent on EVENT_TYPE_ID,
BONUS_SCHEME_ID or USAGE_TYPE_ID, these characters will be “00.”
9-10 Unused. These are always 00 in the mapping defined for the native Infinys 00
Rating and Billing tags. This allows for post processing of the tags or future
expansion of the mapping.
The following is a sample from the file provided:
ACCOUNTNO ACC0010000
ACCUMBONUSPOINTS_1 BON0050100
ADDRESS1 ACC0030000
ADDRESS2 ACC0040000
ADDRESS3 ACC0050000
ADDRESS4 ACC0060000
ADDRESS5 ACC0070000
ADDRESSNAME ACC0020000
BUSINESSNAME ACC0120000
TSTARTADJ ADJ0000000
TENDADJ ADJ9990000
ADJ ADJ0010000
BILLTYPE BIL0010000
BILLINSERT BIL0050000
BALFWD STA0030000
BALOUT STA0050000
BENDBONUSSCHEMEREVIEW_1 REV9990100
...

Billing Concepts
Example DOC1 Application
Developing a DOC1 application for formatting Infinys Rating and Billing bill, statement,
and dunning data requires expertise in the use of DOC1. It is beyond the scope of this
document to provide more than guidelines on how to do this. An example application
based on the mapping described in Table 18 has been provided as part of the Infinys
Rating and Billing system. The files are as follows:
fullExample.svd A specially developed file of bill/dunning data, as would be

produced after mapping using the example mapping described
above. This is not real bill/dunning data. Instead, the file contains
an example of every tag with suitable data, with all the tags in the
correct relative order. This ignores the fact that some
combinations of tags may be impossible in real data but is the
recommended way of describing bill/dunning data to DOC1.
geneva.ldf A DOC1 data description file based on fullExample.svd. If the

mapping file supplied is used then this data description file can
be used unchanged when developing DOC1 applications.
geneva.lfl A DOC1 data library file. This contains the textual elements used
in the sample application.
geneva.lar A DOC1 application. This illustrates a possible way of formatting

the various elements of Infinys Rating and Billing data.
geneva.ear Compiled (EMFE ready) version of the DOC1.
geneva.efl Sample application.
geneva.edf Sample application.
These files are provided to give guidelines on how to create a DOC1 application
and are not intended to be used as they stand. Please consult your DOC1
documentation for further information.
Test Bills
Test bills are not processed by the Bill Data Writer. Therefore, if they are to be formatted
externally, their tags need to be translated by a different method. One option is to use the
Managed File Modifier.
Tag translation files for use by the Managed File Modifier are provided in the sample/mfm
directory of the release. They are:
y translate_tags.pl
y ppUtil.pm
translate_tags.pl is a Perl script that translates the tags based on the values in the
BILLDATATAGMAP table. ppUtil.pm is a support module that is used by the Perl script.

Configuring the Bill Data Writer

The Bill Data Writer must be configured to produce bill data for the correct formatter.
To do this, do the following:
1 Use the -formatterId parameter to specify the formatter for which the Bill Data
Writer produces bill data.
2 The -dunning, -bill, and -bcr parameters can optionally be used to process jobs
for only dunning notice data, bill and statement data, and budget center report data
respectively. If none of these parameters are used then dunning notice data, bill data,
and budget center report data is processed. The -faultedOnly parameter forces the
processing of faulted formatting requests only.
For external bill formatters, the Bill Data Writer creates a job that results in the data file
being processed by either:
y The Managed File Exporter (if it is to be processed by an external formatter with no
customization).
In this case, set the appropriate system parameter to T (true) indicating that the data is
ready to process with no customization:
The -formatterId parameter is checked and if the information in the FORMATTER
table indicates that the template is external then the job created is for the Managed
File Exporter.
y The Managed File Modifier (if the data does require customizing).
In this case, set the appropriate system parameter to F (false) indicating that the data
is not ready for processing:
Data Writer, Managed File Exporter, and Managed File Modifier.
Configuring the Managed File Importer

The Managed File Importer must be configured to search the directory where the
formatting confirmations from the external formatter reside.
1 Use the -sourceDir parameter to specify the directory where the formatting
confirmations from the external formatter reside.

Billing Concepts
The files are copied to a managed file area and renamed with an Infinys Rating and Billing
specific file name. The old copy of the file is deleted and a reference in the
MANAGEDFILE table created.
Refer to Infinys System Processes for Rating and Billing for more information on the
Managed File Importer.
Configuring the File-based Database Updater

The File-based Database Updater must be configured to complete the formatting request
and update the FORMATTINGREQUEST and CUSTOMERFORMATTINGREQUEST
tables.
1 Run the File-based Database Updater in Confirm Formatting Request mode by using
the -confirmFormattingRequest parameter.
This changes the state of a formatting request stored in the REQUEST_STATUS columns
of the FORMATTINGREQUEST and CUSTOMERFORMATTINGREQUEST tables from
state 3 (exported for external processing) to state 4 (processed).
Refer to Infinys System Processes for Rating and Billing for more information on the
File-based Database Updater.
Bill Inserts
Bill inserts are separate sheets that are included with the bills for particular accounts.
Infinys operators can configure which bill inserts can be sent out with bills, and under
which circumstances.
Bill inserts can only be used with external formatting systems which support bill inserts.
The Bill Formatting Engine does not support bill inserts.
The adding of bill inserts is carried out via the Bill Insert tab of the Bill Formatting view of
System Configuration.
Use System Configuration, Bill Inserts tab to do the following:
1 Add a new bill insert, specifying the bill insert to be sent and the conditions under
which the bill insert is included with a bill.
For example, an Infinys operator wanting to send out a bill insert detailing a special
offer may use the following settings:
Table 19 Example Bill Insert Settings
Field Setting Notes
Name Special offer The name for the bill insert.

Table 19 Example Bill Insert Settings (continued)
Field Setting Notes
Bill must be of type Periodic The bill insert is only to be sent out with periodic bills.
Do not send before 11/01/2003 The first day on which the bill insert should be sent.
Do not send after 12/31/2003 The last day on which the bill insert should be sent.
Send at most 2 Each account is to receive the insert twice at most.
Further restrictions can specify when a particular insert should be included. You can
choose to restrict by any or all of the following:
y The type of bill.
y The date (before a particular date and/or after a particular date).
y The amount of the invoice (for invoices below a particular amount and/or for invoices
above a particular amount).
y The number of times it is to be sent in total.
y The currency of the invoice.
Bill inserts are also modified and deleted on the Bill Inserts tab in System Configuration.
If no accounts have been nominated to receive the bill insert, then the fields can
be altered in any way. Otherwise, certain restrictions exist:
y The start date can only be changed if it currently contains a date later than
today’s date.
y The end date can only be changed:
o From being unspecified to a date equal to or later than today’s date.
o From a date equal to or later than today’s date to being unspecified.
y The maximum number of times an account can receive a bill insert can only
be changed if it is currently unspecified.
A bill insert cannot be deleted if accounts have been nominated to receive it.
Refer to Infinys Rating and Billing System Configuration Help for more information on the
management of bill inserts.
Handling Codes
Handling codes are codes that are output as part of the bill data and indicate any special
instructions to be carried out by, for example, the print bureau when formatting and
printing the bill.

Billing Concepts
Handling codes are created, modified, and deleted on the Handling Code tab of the Bill
Formatting view of System Configuration.
Within the Bill Handling Code dialog box the Handling Code field cannot be
modified; only the Name and Description fields can be modified.
Handling codes cannot be deleted if they are in use by a currently active account.
After the handling codes have been created they are assigned to accounts on the Add
account tab (if you are adding an account) or on the Account details tab (if you are
modifying an account) in Customer Service Management.

should use Customer Account Maintenance to achieve this configuration.
Handling codes can be assigned to accounts via the Add Account Wizard. Refer
to Infinys Rating and Billing Customer Account Maintenance Help for more
information.
creation of handling codes and Infinys Customer Service Management Help for more
information on how to assign handling codes to accounts.
Styles and Templates

Each bill style specifies which formatter is to be used to format the bills of that style.
Therefore, you can use different formatters for producing the bills for different accounts, by
allocating them different bill styles.
The bill style to be used by an account is specified when adding or modifying an account.
In Customer Service Management the bill style can be selected on the Add account tab
(if you are adding an account) or on the Account details tab (if you are modifying an
account).

should use Customer Account Maintenance to achieve this configuration. The bill
style to be used by an account is specified via the Add Account Wizard. Refer to
information.
You can view, add, modify, and delete template associations.
Refer to Infinys Customer Service Management Help for more information on how to add
or modify an account.
Viewing Bill Templates

It is possible to view bill template associations with particular attributes. This is carried out
via the Bill Style Templates tab of the Bill Formatting view of System Configuration.

Example
To display bill templates in a particular language select the language (for example, English
[UK]) from the Language drop-down list, then click Apply. The list of bill template
associations is updated. To return to the default setting of <all> for all lists, click Reset.
to view bill templates.
Marketing Messages
Infinys Rating and Billing provides support for multiple (up to 99) marketing messages on
a single bill. These may be associated with the bill template (as detailed in the
BILLTEMPLATEHASMESSAGE table) or specific to the account. Each message is given
a position number which is used to determine where on the bill the message is displayed.
If an account-specific marketing message does not exist, then the bill template message
with the equivalent position number is used. Refer to Infinys Configuration for Rating and
Billing for more information on account-specific marketing messages.
Marketing messages are created via the Marketing Message tab of the Bill Formatting
Infinys Rating and Billing allows you view, add, modify, and delete associations between
bill templates and marketing messages. This is carried out via the Template tab of the Bill
Formatting view of System Configuration. Account-specific messages are entered
directly into the ACCHASMESSAGE table.
Marketing messages that are used by bill templates or account-specific

messages cannot be deleted.
to manage marketing messages.
Viewing Bill Images

Infinys Rating and Billing provides the facility to view bill images on screen, for example, to
help with customer queries.
In Customer Service Management, the bill image can be accessed via the Current bill or
Previous bills tabs. If you are on the Previous bills tab select the invoice number you
are interested in.

should use Customer Account Maintenance to view the bill image. The bill image
is accessed via the Bills tab of the Account Billing, Account Finance, or All
Account Views view. Refer to Infinys Rating and Billing Customer Account
Maintenance Help for more information.

Billing Concepts
You can also specify where the bill images created by each bill formatter are to be placed,
and the application that is to be used to view them. This is carried out via the Bills tab of
the Bill Formatting view of System Configuration.
Refer to Infinys Customer Service Management Help for more information on how to view
bill images and Infinys Rating and Billing System Configuration Help for more information
on the viewing application and location for the bill images.

14 Receivable Classes
An Infinys operator can allocate payment to a whole invoice, or alternatively, calculate

separate subtotals on a bill for different types of charge (depending on the service and
who has provided it), and allocate payments to these subtotals (bill receivables) instead.
A bill receivable is the smallest part of an invoice total that can have a payment
allocated to it and are generated during billing according to the receivable class
of individual charges.
To categorize a bill into bill receivables and to assign a payment priority to each bill
receivable, a receivable class is used.
Receivable classes can be assigned to charges at a similar level to revenue codes, with
the taxes and discounts on a bill apportioned to the receivable class of the charge to which
they apply to during billing.
If a receivable class has not been configured for an individual charge, or if receivable class
functionality is switched off in billing, an invoicing company default receivable class is
available for use.
The configuration of receivable class is not determined by the account being billed but by
the charge itself.
The levels at which a receivable class can be associated with a charge are:
y Revenue code. See "Revenue Code," page 82 for details.
y Invoicing company. See "Invoicing Company," page 82 for details.
A receivable class may or may not require settlement periods to be defined. If it does, the
receivable class needs to be associated with a settlement calendar.
Settlement periods are the period for which settlement amounts between the
Infinys operator and a merchant are reported on and settled for with regard to a
group of services or products.
Merchants can have more than one receivable class.
A merchant is a third party that offers services to customers of the Infinys

operator. A formal relationship typically exists between the Infinys operator and
the merchant, which defines agreements on issues such as commission rates,
settlement payment criteria, tax invoicing, and remittance schedules.

Billing Concepts
Revenue Code
Receivable classes can be assigned to different types of charge, as follows:
y Initiation charges, periodic charges, and final charges can each be given a different
receivable class through configuration at price plan level, along with an extra
receivable class for “non-use” charges such as suspension charges.
Only these four receivable classes are supported for each product price plan,
rather than the fuller range of configuration options for revenue codes.
y Events of different types (for example, local calls, long distance calls, or international
calls) can each be given a different receivable class if event receivable mappings
have been set up to distinguish between these types of call.
y Charges relating to third-party service providers can be assigned a separate
receivable class using event revenue mappings.
Invoicing Company
All charges relating to an invoicing company can be assigned to the default receivable
class, regardless of any other receivable class configuration at charge level. This is
carried out via the Always use default receivable class check box of the Receivable
Class tab in the Invoicing Company dialog box (that is, the value of the
SINGLE_RECEIVABLE_BOO field in the INVOICINGCOMPANY table).
The Always use default receivable class check box can be:
y Selected (that is, the value of the SINGLE_RECEIVABLE_BOO field is set to T [true])
– all revenue billed in this invoicing company will be under the invoicing company's
default receivable class.
y Not selected (that is, the value of the SINGLE_RECEIVABLE_BOO field is set to F
[false]) – all revenue billed in this invoicing company will not be under the invoicing
company's default receivable class.
As a result, a single BILLRECEIVABLE record is created for the invoice using the
information written to the BILLSUMMARY table.
You can change the default receivable class by selecting a new value from the
Default Receivable Class drop-down list in the Invoicing Company dialog box
(as shown in the RECEIVABLE_CLASS_ID field in the INVOICINGCOMPANY
table).
The setting of this check box can be changed, so even if the invoicing company currently
only produces bills with a single receivable class, previous bills could exist with different
receivable classes.

14 – Receivable Classes
If an invoicing company is allowing multiple receivables per bill, all charges on that bill
must be allocated to a receivable class. The Billing Engine then creates records in the
BILLRECEIVABLE table for each receivable class.
to assign charges relating to an invoicing company to a receivable class.

Billing Concepts

15 Introduction to Product Charging
A product charge is a charge of a particular charge type generated by a product. The

product charge may be split across any/all of the accounts held by a customer that are in
the same account currency. It can have a charging period distinct from the account’s
billing period, be charged in advance or in arrears, and may be prorated.
The amount of each individual product charge that appears on a bill is dependent on:
y The prices specified in the price plan assigned to the product, including the various
charge types.
y The properties of that price plan, for example:
o The charge period (see "Charge Types, Periods, and Synchronization," page 95).
o Whether it is in advance or in arrears (see "Price Changes," page 89).
o Proratability and refundability (see "Prorating, Refunding, and Charging in
Advance/Arrears," page 133).
y Any override prices defined for the product (see "Override Prices," page 107).
Override prices let you give specific customers products at a different price from the
standard product price.
y The nominal billing cycle of the account to which the charge is being assigned. This is
the date a bill is scheduled to be created via the Billing Engine. This may differ by
several days from the actual bill date.
y The proportion of the charge being received by different accounts within a customer
hierarchy, that is, split product charging (see Chapter 21, "Split Product Charging," for
details).
y Some of the properties of the account’s invoicing company (see "Invoicing
Companies," page 86).
y Values of certain system and invoicing company parameters.
Product charges can appear on certain bill types only, that is, initiation, periodic,
suspension, and final bills. They do not appear on credit notes, interim bills, or post-final
bills.
Every product charge has a price, defined by the billing catalog.
Additional factors that affect the price include:

y Packages (see "Packages," page 118).
y Subscriptions (see "Subscriptions," page 122).
y Parametric products (see "Parametric Products," page 109).
y Volume product discounts (indirectly) (see Chapter 20, "Volume Product Discounts,"
for details).
y Contracts (see "Contracts," page 105).

Billing Concepts
system and invoicing company parameters, and refer to Infinys Rating and Billing Product
and Catalog Concepts for more information on price plans and billing catalogs.
Invoicing Companies
Many Infinys operators support a broad range of customers on a single Infinys Rating and
Billing instance, potentially providing billing services for several companies/divisions or for
different types of customers. This can be done using invoicing companies, each of which
may have different processes and parameters as well as their own product and pricing
information in a distinct set of catalogs. An example of parameters that vary between
different invoicing companies is the setting of tidemarks for charges that appear on the
bills. See Chapter 6, "Service Provider Billing," for details.
The properties of an invoicing company that are relevant to product charging are:
y The billing window (see "The Billing Window," page 97).
y The products on offer (see Chapter 21, "Split Product Charging," for details).
y The synchronization day (see "Synchronization," page 98).
y The value of the BILL_PROD_FUTURE_CHANGES_BOO field in the
INVOICINGCOMPANY table (see "Price Changes," page 89).
Product Status
A product can exist in Infinys Rating and Billing in one of four statuses:
y Pending (PE) – products can be created in a pending state. A pending product is a
product that is not yet active. Infinys Rating and Billing is aware of the product, but no
product charges are levied during the pending period.
y Active (OK) – when the Active Rating Engine receives events for a pending product, it
can activate the product by creating a new record in the CUSTPRODUCTSTATUS
table with status Active. You can create the product in an active state.
The Active Rating Engine will only activate products in this way if the system
parameter RATEmakeProductActiveBoo is set to T (true).
o T (true) – the Active Rating Engine activates pending products when it receives
events for them.
o F (false) – no active record is created for the owning product that is in a pending
state and has no subsequent active period.
y Suspended (SU) – a product that has been temporarily put on hold, during which
reduced or zero product charges may be levied. Products that are suspended have
their service restricted.
y Terminated (TX) – a product that has been ended. A terminated product cannot be
reactivated.

15 – Introduction to Product Charging
When adding a product to a customer account you can select whether it has a status of
pending or active. In Customer Service Management, this is carried out on the Product
Configuration tab which is accessed via the Quotes summary tab. To change the status
you must select the start date for when you would like the product to begin.
If a product already exists on an account you can suspend or terminate it. In Customer
Service Management, this is carried out on the Provisioned product details tab which is
displayed when you select a product within the Customer hierarchy tab. To change the
status you must click on the appropriate link at the bottom of the Provisioned product
details tab, for example Suspend product.

should use Customer Account Maintenance to select the product status. This is
carried out via the Status tab of the Product view in the Product Details dialog
box of Customer Account Maintenance. Refer to Infinys Rating and Billing
You can also reactivate a product that has been suspended. Products can be suspended
(and reactivated) at account level or package level, as well as at product level. When a
product is changed to have a suspended status it is possible to apply suspension,
suspension periodic, and reactivation charges (in addition to the usual non-suspension
charge types, when applicable). Products that have a pending or terminated status do not
have charges applied to them.
change a product’s status.
The BILLDATA Table

The product status determines whether or not data is output to the BILLDATA table:
Table 20 Product Status Effect on BILLDATA Output
Product Status Code Output to BILLDATA?
Pending PE No
Active OK Yes
Suspended SU Yes
Terminated TX No

Billing Concepts
Product Status Transitions

Products can be changed from one status to another. However, not all possible transitions
are permitted. The possible product status transitions are shown in Figure 6:
PE OK SU
TX
Figure 6 Possible Product Status Transitions

16 Price Changes
A customer may decide to keep taking a product but change the price plan under which it
is taken, for example, a mobile telephone may have several price plan options that can be
taken/changed at the discretion of the customer and the network. Alternatively, an Infinys
operator may decide to alter the details of the product/price plan combination currently
being taken by the customer.
Price plan changes can be controlled by:

y The end user.
y The Infinys operator.
The effect on how a product is charged and the way an account is billed due to a price
plan change is determined by the following charging methods:
y In-arrears charging.
y In-advance charging.
In-Arrears Charging
In-arrears charging uses a price plan in which the product will be charged for a period up
until the day before the last nominal bill date.
If there is a change to a product price it is clearly known at the time of billing. The amount
charged for the product is segmented depending on when the price was changed.
Example
Consider a quarterly account, which is billed in arrears and the charging is prorated. One
of the bill periods runs from October 1 through December 31. The price is changed part
way through this bill period, that is, on November 16, from $10 to $15.
The following example shows a bill containing three instances of the charge:
y October 1 through October 31 = $10
y November 1 through November 15 = $5
y November 16 through November 30 = $7.50
y December 1 through December 31 = $15

Billing Concepts
Price change
Nov 16th
Oct 1st Nov 1st Dec 1st Jan 1st

time
Billing period
$10 $5 $7.50 $15

Product charge
Current
bill date
Figure 7 In-Arrears Prorated Charging
Example
Consider the previous example but with the charging not being prorated.
The following example shows a bill containing three instances of the charge:
y October 1 through October 31 = $10
y November 1 through November 30 = $10
y December 1 through December 31 = $15
Price change
Nov 16th
Oct 1st Nov 1st Dec 1st Jan 1st

time
Billing period
$10 $10 $15

Product charge
Current
bill date
Figure 8 In-Arrears Non-Prorated Charging

16 – Price Changes
In-Advance Charging
In-advance charging uses a price plan in which the product is charged for a bill period
ahead of the nominal bill date.
You can specify whether future product data changes scheduled to occur before the next
nominal bill date should be ignored or billed at the current nominal bill date (if the product
is being billed in advance).
This is set by the Bill Future Changes for Products check box in the Invoicing Company
dialog box (that is, the BILL_PROD_FUTURE_CHANGES_BOO field in the
INVOICINGCOMPANY table). The Invoicing Company dialog box is accessed via the
Invoicing Company tab of the Tax view of System Configuration.
The Bill Future Changes for Products check box can be:
y Selected (that is, BILL_PROD_FUTURE_CHANGES_BOO is set to T [true]) – the
period up to and including the day before the next nominal bill date is billed according
to the product data defined over this period (with the data that is present at the actual
bill date). If the customer stops taking the product during this period this is billed
accordingly.
y Not selected (that is, BILL_PROD_FUTURE_CHANGES_BOO is set to F [false]) –
the price charged is the price in force on the nominal bill date.
The setting of the Bill Future Changes for Products check box
(BILL_PROD_FUTURE_CHANGES_BOO) also determines whether or not a new product
with an in-advance price plan which starts between the nominal bill date and the day
before the next nominal bill date is included in the bill generated on the nominal bill date.
If the Bill Future Changes for Products check box is:

y Selected (that is, BILL_PROD_FUTURE_CHANGES_BOO is set to T [true]) – it
appears on the nominal bill date.
y Not selected (that is, BILL_PROD_FUTURE_CHANGES_BOO is set to F [false]) – it
appears on the next nominal bill date.
configuring in-advance charging.
Example
Consider a quarterly account with a monthly charge billed in advance, where charge
periods are synchronized with bill periods. One of the bill periods runs from January 1
through March 31. The price is changed part way through this bill period, that is, on
February 22, from $15 to $20.
If the Bill Future Changes for Products check box is not selected (that is,
BILL_PROD_FUTURE_CHANGES_BOO is set to F [false]) the bill contains three
instances of the charge, as shown in this example:
y January 1 through January 31 = $15
y February 1 through February 28 = $15

Billing Concepts
y March 1 through March 31 = $15
Price change
Feb 22nd
Jan 1st Feb 1st March 1st April 1st

time
Billing period
$15 $15 $15
Product charge
Current
bill date
Figure 9 In-Advance Charging

(BILL_PROD_FUTURE_CHANGES_BOO set to F [false])
Example
Each product charge is stored in the BILLPRODUCTCHARGE table so charges can be

refunded exactly. Thus, in the previous example, if the product that the charges relate to is
canceled on February 1, a refund of $30 is given.
Price change
Feb 21st

time
Billing period
$15 $15 $15

Product charge
Refund (appears $30

on next bill)
Bill
date Product canceled
Figure 10 In-Advance Charging (Product Canceled)
Old entries in the BILLPRODUCTCHARGE table are removed by the Bill Product Charge
Deleter once the value set by the system parameter BPCDdaysToDelete has been
passed. Typically this system parameter is set to reflect the longest charging period in use
in the system. The default is 90 days.

16 – Price Changes
Example
If the Bill Future Changes for Products check box is selected (that is,
BILL_PROD_FUTURE_CHANGES_BOO is T [true]) and the charging is prorated the bill
contains the following instances of the charge:
y February 1 through February 21 = $11.25 (75% of $15)
y February 22 through February 28 = $5 (25% of $20)
Price change
Feb 22nd

time
Billing period
$15 $11.25 $5 $20

Product charge
Current
bill date
Figure 11 In-Advance Prorated Charging

Example
When a product is non-prorated, the period for which the product is charged is the sum of
all the individual charge periods and the total period charged is always a whole number
multiple of the product charge period.
Therefore, if the Bill Future Changes for Products check box is selected (that is,
BILL_PROD_FUTURE_CHANGES_BOO is T [true]) and the charging is not prorated the
bill contains the following instance of charge:
y February 1 through February 28 = $15

Billing Concepts
Price change
Feb 21st

time
Billing period
$15 $15 $20

Product charge
Current
bill date
Figure 12 In-Advance Non-Prorated Charging


17 Charge Types, Periods, and
Synchronization
Charge Types
Charge types are the category assigned to a charge that appears on a bill. Product charge
types include initiation, periodic, and final charges.
Valid charge types/subtypes are:
Initiation: Initiation
Reactivation (from suspension)
Increment (parametrics only)
Periodic: Periodic
Suspended periodic
Final: Final
Suspension
Decrement (parametrics only)
Early termination surcharge (contracts only)
The charge/subtypes are set up in the Product Prices dialog box, which is accessed via
the Product Price Summary dialog box of the Price Plans tab of the Products & Pricing
view of Billing Catalog Maintenance.
Once created, a charge type is stored in the following:

y CHARGE_TYPE column of the BILLPRODUCTCHARGE table (see Chapter 23,
"Output," for details).
y CHARGE_TYPE column of the CUSTPRODUCTCHARGE table (see Chapter 21,
"Split Product Charging," for details).
Any charge subtypes are stored in the following:

y CHARGE_SUB_TYPE column of BILLPRODUCTCHARGE table.
Charges are defined separately for charge types in the billing catalog. See Chapter 21,
"Split Product Charging," for details of how charge types are allocated to accounts.

Billing Concepts
Refer to Infinys Rating and Billing Billing Catalog Maintenance Help for more information
on the setting up of charge types.
Charge Periods
A charge period is the length of time for which the periodic charge for products applies
(unless the charge is prorated – see "Prorating," page 133). The charge period does not
have to be the same as the bill period. For example, the charge period may be one month
while the bill period may be three months. This results in a quarterly bill containing three
monthly periodic charges, such as line rental. Non-periodic charges have a nominal length
of one day.
This charge period is set up in the Product Prices dialog box, which is accessed via the
Product Price Summary dialog box of the Price Plans tab of the Products & Pricing view
of Billing Catalog Maintenance (that is, the CHARGE_PERIOD_UNITS and
CHARGE_PERIOD fields in the TARIFFELEMENT table).
Charge periods can cover charges billed in advance or in arrears (see "Charging in
Advance/Arrears," page 140). This can be illustrated as follows (assuming the account
has already achieved steady state):
billed day before

to date next bill date
time
billing period billing period
charge period for

in-advance charges
charge period for
in-arrears charges
final charge day for final charge day for

in-arrears products in-advance products
Figure 13 Charge Periods for In-Advance and In-Arrears Charges
The billed to date is the date up to which the product has already been billed. It is stored in
the BILLED_TO_DAT field of the CUSTPRODUCTCHARGE table. If a product is new to
an account the billed to date should be taken to be the day before the product start date on
the account, which is stored in START_DAT field of the CUSTPRODUCTDETAILS table.
The final charge date is calculated as follows:

y If the product is charged in advance:
Final charge date = day before nominal bill date + billing period.
y If the product is charged in arrears:
Final charge date = day before nominal bill date.

17 – Charge Types, Periods, and Synchronization
If the billed to date is later than the final charge date then no charge for the product
appears on the bill.
on the setting up of charge periods.
The Billing Window

Infinys operators may want to generate bills for future charges that are more than one bill
period in advance in order to improve cash flow. For example, it might be desirable to
produce a bill on August 19 for a rental charge due from September 1 through
September 30. In order to generate product charges in advance of the next bill period, the
billing window needs to be set. This defines the length of time in days, weeks, or months
that a product can be billed in advance of the bill date.
Billed to Current nominal Next nominal Billing window

date bill date date (final charge day)
time
BILLING_WINDOW field in the

INVOICINGCOMPANY table
Charge for in advance product on Bill 1
Figure 14 Billing Window for Charging in Advance
Billing windows only apply to in-advance price plans. For in-arrears charging the point up
to which a periodic charge must be billed is always the same (that is, the day before the
current nominal bill date) rendering the concept of a billing window unnecessary.
The billing window is defined at invoicing company level and determines:

y How far in the future in-advance charges can be billed.
y The synchronization date for prorata products.
The billing window is set up in the Invoicing Company dialog box (that is, the
BILLING_WINDOW field in the INVOICINGCOMPANY table). This can be accessed via
the Invoicing Company tab of the Tax view of System Configuration.
setting up the billing window.
Example
A customer takes a product on the nominal bill date (March 1st). Charging is in advance
(prorated) with a charge period of 1 month. The customer is billed on day 1 of each month.

Billing Concepts
The invoicing company associated with the customer’s account has a billing window of
2 months. Assuming these details remain constant, the following figure illustrates this
scenario:
March 1 April 1 May 1 June 1 July 1

time
Billing window is 2 months
Charge 1 on Bill 1 Charge 2 on Bill 1 Charge on Bill 2 Charge on Bill 3
Figure 15 Effect of a Billing Window
If no billing window period is set, it automatically becomes the next nominal bill date.
Synchronization
Synchronization is an Infinys Rating and Billing concept that allows the charge period and
the bill period to be aligned via the synchronization date no matter what the product start
date may have been. This is achieved by creating a prorated charge such that the next full
charge starts on a specific date.
Whether or not synchronization is possible depends on:

y The price plan’s proratability.
y The price plan’s charge period.
y The account’s bill period.
Table 21 Example of when Synchronization is Possible
Charge
Proratable? Period Bill Period Synchronizable?
N 1 month 1 month N (due to the price plan being

non-proratable)
Y 1 month 1 month Y
Y 1 month 3 months Y
Y 5 weeks 1 month N (due to the charge period not being a

multiple of the bill period)
Y 1 month 6 weeks N (due to the bill period not being a

multiple of the charge period)

When charging on a proratable price plan with the charge period set to be a multiple of the
bill period or vice versa, charges for the product can be synchronized to the bill period.
This is achieved by creating a prorated charge such that the next full charge starts on a
specific date (referred to as the synchronization date) wherever there is a change of
details against the product.
The synchronization date is determined by the synchronization day, which is specified at

the invoicing company level (for example, the fifth of the month or three days before the
nominal billing date). This is set using the Synchronization day field in the Invoicing
Company dialog box (stored in the SYNCHRONIZE_DAY field in the
INVOICINGCOMPANY table). The Invoicing Company dialog box is accessed via the
Invoicing Company tab of the Tax view of System Configuration.
The system parameter BGsyncDatForProductChargesMode (see Table 22) is used in

conjunction with the synchronization date. (Configurable at both system and invoicing
company level.)
Table 22 BGsyncDatForProductChargesMode
In-Advance Charging In-Arrears Charging
IN_NEXT_BILL_PRD Synchronization day is within Synchronization date that

the next bill period. immediately follows the
current nominal bill date is
used.
IN_THIS_BILL_PRD Synchronization day is within Synchronization date that

this bill period. immediately follows the
current nominal bill date is
used.
IN_CALENDAR_MONTH Synchronization date is the Synchronization date is the

synchronization day in the synchronization day in the
calendar month of the calendar month of the
nominal bill date. nominal bill date.
Occasionally there may be incompatibility between the synchronization of a

product charge and the cut-off date of that charge, for example, synchronizing an
in-arrears charge may result in it charging too far in advance (beyond the next
nominal bill date). Under these circumstances the cut-off date requirement takes
priority; and as a result the Billing Engine does not synchronize at this time, but
synchronizes at the next bill.
The value of the system parameter BGsyncDatForProductChargesMode is

important if:
y Synchronization is possible.
y The charge period is greater than the bill period.
y The product starts prior to the nominal bill date of the first bill it is to appear
on.

Billing Concepts
If no synchronization day is specified or it is null, the synchronization date is either:

y The current nominal bill date for a product on an in-arrears price plan.
y The next nominal bill date for a product on an in-advance price plan.
Where a synchronization day is specified (which must be in the range 1 through 28), the
synchronization date is advanced to the next occurrence of the specified day.
It is strongly recommended that the synchronization day functionality should only

be used in conjunction with charge periods which are defined in months.
setting up the synchronization day.
Example
A customer takes a product before bill date one. The product charge is in advance and
proratable with a charge period of two months. The account is billed monthly on the first of
the month. The billing window is null (that is, defaults to the next nominal bill date) and the
synchronization day is 10 (that is, the product charge is synchronized to the 10th of the
month).
If the system parameter BGsyncDatForProductChargesMode is set to

IN_NEXT_BILL_PRD (see Table 22) then:
bill bill bill bill bill

date date date date date
1 2 3 4 5
10th 10th 10th 10th
time
product
start
date
Bill 1 prorated periodic charge
Bill 2 periodic charge
Bill 3 <no periodic charge>
Figure 16 Synchronized Product Charge with Start Date
For the first bill it is necessary to synchronize the product charge to the 10th of the month.
However, since the charge period is twice the bill period there is a choice in this case as to
which 10th of the month is used in the synchronization – it could be the one falling
immediately after bill date 1 or the one falling immediately after bill date 2. As the system
parameter BGsyncDatForProductChargesMode is set to IN_NEXT_BILL_PRD the second
occurrence of the 10th (that is, the one falling after bill date 2) is used. Therefore bill 1 has
a prorated periodic charge from the product start date to the 10th of the month which falls

after bill date 2. No further periodic charge is necessary, as the prorated charge has
already met the billing window requirement for bill date 1. For the second and subsequent
bills, it is only necessary to meet the billing window requirement in each case.

IN_THIS_BILL_PRD (see Table 22) this becomes:

1 2 3 4 5
10th 10th 10th 10th
time
product
start
date
Bill 1 prorated periodic charge
Figure 17 Synchronized Product Charge with Specified Date
For the first bill it is necessary to synchronize the product charge to the 10th of the month.
However, since the charge period is twice the bill period there is a choice in this case as to
which 10th of the month is used in the synchronization – it could be the one falling
immediately after bill date 1 or the one falling immediately after bill date 2. As the system
parameter BGsyncDatForProductChargesMode is set to IN_THIS_BILL_PRD the first
occurrence of the 10th (that is, the one falling after bill date 1) is used. Therefore bill 1 has
a prorated periodic charge from the product start date to the 10th of the month which falls
after bill date 1. A full periodic charge is also necessary to meet the billing window
requirement for bill date 1. For the second and subsequent bills, it is only necessary to
meet the billing window requirement in each case.
Synchronize Product Charges with Start of Current Month

Product charges can be synchronized with the synchronize day of the calendar month of
the nominal bill date regardless of whether the synchronize day is prior or subsequent to
the nominal bill date. This applies to both in-advance and in-arrears charging and gives
Infinys operators great flexibility when configuring the Billing Engine.
The date up to which charges are applied on an invoice can be determined entirely with
respect to the synchronize day rather than with respect to the nominal bill date.
The ability to specify a forward billing window for an invoicing company is not
compatible with the synchronization of product charges to the calendar month of
the nominal bill date. If the synchronization of product charges to the calendar
month of the nominal bill date is in use and a forward billing window has been
specified for the relevant invoicing company then the forward billing window
setting is ignored.

Billing Concepts
The inclusion of future product changes on bills is achieved by selecting the Bill Future
Changes for Products check box in the Invoicing Company dialog box (that is, setting the
BILL_PROD_FUTURE_CHANGES_BOO field to T (true) in the INVOICINGCOMPANY
table). The Invoicing Company dialog box is accessed via the Invoicing Company tab of
the Tax view of System Configuration. See "In-Advance Charging," page 91 for further
details on this functionality.
This can interact with the synchronization functionality if the synchronize day falls prior to
the first nominal bill date in the same calendar month, which in turn is before the product
start date. Under these circumstances a prorated charge is generated on the first nominal
bill date covering the period from the product start date to the next synchronize day. This
leaves an uncharged period between the end of the prorated charge and the second
nominal bill date. On the second nominal bill date a full charge is generated to cover the
period that starts from the end of the previous prorated charge.
The synchronization of product charges to the calendar month is always with respect to
the calendar month of the nominal bill date rather than to a specified calendar month.
inclusion of future product changes on bills.
Example
A customer takes a product before bill date one. The product charge is in advance and
proratable with a charge period of 1 month. The account is billed monthly on the 10th day
of the month.

IN_CALENDAR_MONTH (see Table 22) this becomes:
bill bill bill

date date date
1 2 3
20th 10th 10th 10th
time
product
start
date
Bill 1 PR In advance charge
Bill 2 In advance charge
Bill 3 In advance charge
Figure 18 Synchronized Product Charge with Start of Month

For the first bill it is necessary to synchronize the product charge to the 1st of the month
(for the nominal bill date). Therefore bill 1 has a prorated periodic charge from the product
start date (20th) to the 1st of the month. For the second and subsequent bills, the bill is
synchronized with the start of the month.

Billing Concepts

18 Contract and Override Prices
Contracts
Contracts let you give specific customers preferential rates for a fixed period of time (for
example, half price calls to Sweden for the next 12 months). However, if the contract is
broken (by terminating the product before the end of the contract), early termination
surcharges may be applied.
At the customer level, the Infinys operator can define any number of contracts.
In Customer Service Management, you can assign contract price plans to a product on the
Shop tab which is accessed via the Product Catalog tab.

should use Customer Account Maintenance to achieve this configuration.
Contracts are set up via the Contracts tab in the Customer dialog box. Refer to
information.
Refer to Infinys Customer Service Management Help for more information on assigning
contract price plans to a product.
Early Termination Surcharges

Early termination surcharges have two parts, a fixed charge and a multiple charge. Either
or both of these can be applied:
y Fixed charge – a flat amount charged for termination of a contract
y Multiple charge – a fixed charge multiplied by the number of periods remaining on the
contract at the termination point
When the termination of a contracted product is requested and early termination

surcharges are applicable, the Infinys operator will be warned that the early termination
will incur penalties and will be given the option to:
y Apply early termination surcharges and proceed with the termination.
y Reject early termination surcharges and proceed with the termination.
y Cancel the termination.

Billing Concepts
Early termination surcharges are set up via the Early Termination Charges tab in the
Product Prices dialog box.
The Early Termination Charges tab is only shown for contract price plans.
The Product Prices dialog box is accessed via the Product Price Summary dialog box,
which in turn is accessed via the Price Plans tab of the Products & Pricing view of Billing
Catalog Maintenance.
on how to set up early termination surcharges.
Example
A customer takes a product on January 1 under a one year contract. The terms of the
contract state that there is a $15 administration charge if the contract is terminated early
and a charge of $20 for every month remaining on the original contract. The customer
cancels the product on September 30. The early termination surcharges are:
y A single charge of $15 for breaking the contract.
y Three charges of $20 each for the remaining three months of the contract, that is,
October, November, and December.
The total early termination surcharge is therefore $75. This is billed as a whole on the next
bill regardless of the charge period.
Prorating
Infinys Rating and Billing makes it possible to (optionally) prorate the multiplied elements
of early termination surcharges.
To make any multiplied surcharges proratable you must select the Pro-rate field on the
Early Termination Charges tab in the Product Prices dialog box (that is, setting the
EARLY_TERM_PRO_RATE_BOO field in the TARIFFELEMENT table to T [true]).
The exact method of proration depends on the value of the system parameter
BGearlyTermProRateAlignment.
The system parameter can be set to one of the following:

y PRORATE_PRODUCT_END – the part period next to the product termination date is
prorated
y PRORATE_CONTRACT_END – the part period next to the contract end date is
prorated
Figure 19 shows the effect of using the BGearlyTermProRateAlignment system

parameter.

18 – Contract and Override Prices
charge period charge period charge period

time
product contract
end end
date date
PRORATE_PRODUCT_END prorated periodic charge periodic charge
PRORATE_CONTRACT_END periodic charge periodic charge prorated
Figure 19 Effect of BGearlyTermProRateAlignment
Refer to Infinys Rating and Billing Billing Catalog Maintenance Help and see Chapter 22,
"Prorating, Refunding, and Charging in Advance/Arrears," for more information on
prorating.
Fixed Versus Variable Contracts

Contracts can be either:
y Fixed – the price for products taken under the contract is fixed as of the start date of
the contract.
y Variable – the price for products taken under the contract varies as normal when the
price plan changes.
Refer to Infinys Rating and Billing Finance Concepts for more information on fixed and
variable contracts.
Override Prices
Override product pricing lets you give specific customers products at a different price from
the standard product price. These prices usually provide reductions for special customers.
Override prices are configured via the Override Prices dialog box. This can be accessed
via the Product Price Summary dialog box on the Price Plans tab of the Products &
Pricing view of Billing Catalog Maintenance. In addition, an Infinys operator can also
define limits outside of which customer service representatives cannot offer overrides to
customers.

Billing Concepts
The customer service representative can then assign override prices to individual
customer products. In Customer Service Management, this is carried out on the Shop tab
which is accessed via the Product catalog tab.

should use Customer Account Maintenance to achieve this configuration. The
assigning of override prices to individual customer products is set up via the
Products tab of the Account Billing view. Refer to Infinys Rating and Billing
The Billing Engine applies product price overrides only after all other discounts have been
applied. The Billing Engine ignores override product prices which start on or after the
nominal bill date. If necessary, refunds may be provided on the next bill.
on how to define override prices and Infinys Customer Service Management Help for more
information on assigning override prices to a product.

19 Parametric Products, Packages,
and Subscriptions
Parametric Products
A parametric product is a product that can have a quantity associated with it. This means
that, for example, a customer can take 14 miles of leased line or 200 Centrex lines and
have it appear on the bill as a single item.
The pricing of parametric products can be stepped and may be marginal or non-marginal.
A marginal price (also known as a tiered price) is only applied to the portion of a set of
products that have reached or exceeded a predefined threshold. A non-marginal price
(also known as a non-tiered price) is applied to the whole set of products once a
predefined threshold has been reached.
See "Parametric Products in Packages," page 119 for details of the inclusion of parametric
products in packages.
Example
A line rental parametric product has the following stepped pricing based on quantity, that
is, the price per line varies with the number of lines taken:
Table 23 Example Parametric Prices
Number of Lines Taken Periodic Price Per Line
1 through 10 $12
11 through 20 $11
21 through 50 $10
51 through 100 $9
100+ $8
A customer takes 23 lines:

y If the pricing is marginal this has a periodic charge of:
o Ten lines at $12 each = $120
o Ten lines at $11 each = $110
o Three lines at $10 each = $30

Billing Concepts
y If the pricing is non-marginal this has a periodic charge of:

o 23 lines at $10 each = $230
Therefore the marginal price for the 23 lines is $260 whereas the non-marginal price is
$230.
Like pricing, loyalty points and event discounts can also vary with quantity.
In addition to price stepping and tiering, the following should be considered when setting
up parametric products:
y If a parametric product is event generating, multiple event sources can be associated
with one product entry (as is the case for non-parametric products). For example, two
mobile handsets can be sold as a single product with combined talk time.
y It is possible to define prices for a zeroth instance of a product. This allows pricing of
the form $1000 + $50 per mile of leased line. The zeroth step of the pricing is
excluded from the marginal/non-marginal pricing structure.
y Prices inherit along the quantity axis first and then up the price plan tree.
For example, an Infinys operator specifies the price for 50+ units to be 10 percent
cheaper than for 20+ units, which is 10 percent cheaper than 10 to 19 units, which is
10 percent cheaper than 1 to 9 units. If the base price for a unit is $10, then for 50+
units the cost would be $7.29 per unit. (That is, 1 to 9 units at $10 per unit, 10 to 19
units at $9 per unit [10 percent less than $10], 20+ units at $8.10 per unit [10 percent
less than $9], and 50+ units at $7.29 per unit [10 percent less than $8.10].)
y It is possible to define whether an event discount accumulates usage at the product or
the event source level, that is, whether usage from all instances of the parametric
product contribute to the threshold or all event sources are treated separately.
y It is possible to specify a unit name for a parametric product (both singular and plural).
y A product label can be defined for any product, not just event generating ones. This
allows meaningful names to be displayed in Customer Account Maintenance, for
example, “Leased line – Site A to Site B” or “Leased line – Site A to Site C.”
y An event source label can be defined for each event source associated with an
account, for example, “Cambridge 123456” for 01223123456.
y The event source label and event source are output in the BILLDATA table for
itemization of events and summaries of events by event source.
y When the quantity of a product taken by a customer is changed, the periodic charges
are billed like a final charge and an initiation charge. This is consistent with all other
changes to products/price plans which are account initiated. If the charges are in
advance and prorated, this amounts to a prorated refund followed by a prorated

19 – Parametric Products, Packages, and Subscriptions
charge for the new quantity (which may be a different price as a result). If the prices
change for a product/price plan pair, no prorating is done as the price is a spot price at
the start of the period being charged for.
Where the product quantity is increased, additional initiation charges apply.

Where the quantity is decreased, final charges apply. Where the quantity
increases and decreases on separate occasions during the same billing period,
both initiation and final charges apply. Infinys operators may, if their internal
procedures allow, choose to apply an adjustment to neutralize these charges in
such a case.
y Initiation/final charges are billed for the change in quantity. For example, if the quantity
changes from 7 to 15, the initiation charges for units 8 through 15 should be charged
at the appropriate charges (charge is dependent on whether the product pricing is
marginal or non-marginal).
y All information necessary for the customer to reconcile the amount charged is
available for presentation on the bill.
y If a parametric product has a child product, it is not necessary that a customer has the
same number of each. For example, a customer may have 200 telephone line rental
products, with voice mail on 100 of them. It may in practice be simpler to allocate 100
line rentals with voice mail, and 100 without.
Price Plans
Price plans can be defined independently or based on other price plans that are already in
existence. In the latter case they are known as child price plans. Child price plans can be
related to their parent by either absolute amounts or percentages.
Price plans are defined via the Price Plans tab of the Products & Pricing view of Billing
Catalog Maintenance.
on how to define price plans.
Example
A company negotiates a special deal with an Infinys operator to discount all 3G handsets
rented to its subsidiary company. A non-marginal price plan is set up for their use only that
contains periodic charges relative to the Infinys operator’s standard charges, that is:
Table 24 Example Non-Marginal Parametric Price Plan
Number of Units 0 1 through 9 10 through 19 20+
Standard price plan prices $50 $30 $25 $20
Special price plan prices -10% -10% -$5 -25%

Billing Concepts
If ten 3G handsets are taken:

y For the main company:
o Standing charge = $50
o Ten 3G handsets at $25 = $250
y For the subsidiary company:
o Standing charge = $50 - 10% = $45
o Ten 3G handsets at ($25 - $5) = $200
Therefore the subsidiary company’s saving = $300 - $245 = $55.
If 25 3G handsets are taken:

o 25 3G handsets at $20 = $500
o 25 3G handsets at ($20 - 25%) = $375
Divergent Parent and Child Price Plans

The parent and child price plans do not have to contain the same quantity thresholds.
Example
The standard corporate price plan for 3G handset rental in the previous example is
modified to include steps at five and 15 units instead of ten. Event discounts are applied to
some quantity bands in the standard corporate and subsidiary company custom price
plans. All prices are non-marginal.
The periodic charges are now specified as follows:
Table 25 Example Child Non-Marginal Parametric Price Plan
Number of units 0 1+ 5+ 10+ 15+ 20+
Standard price plan prices $50 $30 $25 $22 $20
Special price plan prices -10% -10% -$5 -25%

Event discounts A, B, and C are also applied as follows:
Table 26 Example Child Non-Marginal Parametric Price Plan Discounts
Number of units 0 1+ 5+ 10+ 15+ 20+
Standard price plan prices A AB
Special price plan prices A BC
If three 3G handsets are taken:

o Three 3G handsets at $30 = $90
o No event discounts apply
o Three 3G handsets at ($30 - 10%) = $81
o No event discounts apply

o 13 3G handsets at $25 = $325.
o Event discount A applies
o Standing charge = $50 - 10% = $45.
o 13 3G handsets at ($25 - $5) = $260.

o 18 3G handsets at $22 = $396
o Event discounts A and B apply

Billing Concepts
o 18 3G handsets at ($22 - $5) = $306

Changes in Parametric Quantity

The quantity of a parametric product taken by a customer can be increased or decreased
at any time.
The following need to be taken into account when calculating periodic costs for changes in
parametric quantity:
y The Bill Future Changes for Products check box in the Invoicing Company dialog
box (that is, the value of the BILL_PROD_FUTURE_CHANGES_BOO field in the
INVOICINGCOMPANY table).
The Invoicing Company dialog box is accessed via the Invoicing Company tab of the
Tax view of System Configuration. See "In-Advance Charging," page 91 for further
details. Refer to Infinys Rating and Billing System Configuration Help for more
information.
y The Refundable check box in the Product Prices dialog box (that is, the value of the
REFUNDABLE_BOO field in the TARIFFELEMENT table).
The Product Prices dialog box is accessed via the Price Plans tab of the Products &
Pricing view of Billing Catalog Maintenance. Refer to Infinys Rating and Billing Billing
Catalog Maintenance Help for more information.
Decreasing the Parametric Quantity

If the quantity of a parametric product taken by a customer is decreased, final charges
may be applicable for the instances of the product that are no longer taken. The amount
and way in which the customer is billed for the periodic charges depends on whether the
charge is in advance or in arrears and whether or not it is proratable.
Example
A customer reduces the quantity of a parametric product taken in the middle of a bill
period. The bill period and the charge period are monthly and synchronized.
The following also apply:

y The Bill Future Changes for Products check box is not selected (that is, the value of
the BILL_PROD_FUTURE_CHANGES_BOO field in the INVOICINGCOMPANY table
is set to F [false])
y The Refundable check box is selected (that is, the value of the REFUNDABLE_BOO
field in the TARIFFELEMENT table is set to T [true])

quantity
time
period 1 period 2 period 3
a b
bill date 1 bill date 2 bill date 3 bill date 4
Figure 20 Decrease in Quantity of a Parametric Product
The possible billing scenarios are (periodic charges only):

y Charge is in advance and proratable:
o Bill date 1 – Full charge for period 1 at higher rate
If the Bill Future Changes for Products check box is selected (that is, the
value of the BILL_PROD_FUTURE_CHANGES_BOO field in the
INVOICINGCOMPANY table is set to T [true]) then the in-advance proratable
charges are exact for the quantity taken for period 2.
o Bill date 3 – Prorated refund given for the higher rate for period 2b, prorated
charge for period 2b for the lower rate to synchronize the bill and charge periods,
full charge for period 3 at lower rate
If the Bill Future Changes for Products check box is selected then no
refund is required.
Also, if the Refundable check box is not selected (that is, the value of the
REFUNDABLE_BOO field in the TARIFFELEMENT table is set to F [false])
then refunds are not given.
y Charge is in arrears and proratable:

o Bill date 3 – Charge is prorated to be exact for the quantity taken for period 2
o Bill date 4 – Full charge for period 3 at lower rate
y Charge is in advance and non-proratable:

Billing Concepts

y Charge is in arrears and non-proratable:
Increasing the Parametric Quantity

If the quantity of a parametric product taken by a customer is increased, initiation charges
may be applicable for the extra instances of the product that are now taken. The amount
and way in which the customer is billed for the periodic charges depends on whether the
charge is in advance or in arrears. Whether or not the account is proratable, although
having no effect on the amount billed (increases in parametric product quantities always
result in the charges being prorated) does affect the alignment of the charge period.
Example
A customer increases the quantity of a parametric product taken in the middle of a bill
period. The bill period and the charge period are monthly and synchronized.
The following also apply:

y The Bill Future Changes for Products check box is not selected (that is, the value of
the BILL_PROD_FUTURE_CHANGES_BOO field in the INVOICINGCOMPANY table
is set to F [false])
y The Refundable check box is selected (that is, the value of the REFUNDABLE_BOO
field in the TARIFFELEMENT table is set to T [true])
quantity
time
period 1 period 2 period 3
a b
bill date 1 bill date 2 bill date 3 bill date 4
Figure 21 Increase in Quantity of a Parametric Product

The possible billing scenarios are (periodic charges only):

y Charge is in advance and proratable:
If the Bill Future Changes for Products check box is selected (that is, the
value of the BILL_PROD_FUTURE_CHANGES_BOO field in the
INVOICINGCOMPANY table is set to T [true]) then the in-advance charges
are not overpaid at bill date 2 and in need of refund. Instead, bill 2 consists of
a prorated charge for the lower rate for period 2a and a full charge for period
2b at the higher rate (where charge period starts from date of product
quantity increase and is thus no longer synchronized with the bill period).
o Bill date 3 – Prorated refund given for the lower rate for period 2b, prorated charge
for the higher rate for period 2b to synchronize the bill and charge periods, full
charge for period 3 at higher rate
If the Bill Future Changes for Products check box is selected then no
refund is required.
Also, if the Refundable check box is not selected (that is, the value of the
REFUNDABLE_BOO field in the TARIFFELEMENT table is set to F [false])
then refunds are not given.
y Charge is in arrears and proratable.

o Bill date 3 – Charge is prorated to be exact for the quantity taken for period 2
y Charge is in advance and non-proratable.
o Bill date 3 – Prorated refund given for the lower rate for period 2b, full charge
period at higher rate (where charge period starts from date of product quantity
increase and is thus no longer synchronized with the bill period), full charge period
to extend beyond period 3
y Charge is in arrears and non-proratable.
o Bill date 3 – Prorated charge for the lower rate for period 2b, full charge period at
higher rate (where charge period starts from date of product quantity increase and
is thus no longer synchronized with the bill period)
o Bill date 4 – Full charge for remainder of period 3 at higher rate to extend beyond
period 3

Billing Concepts
Packages
A package is a defined group of products sold together as a unit. The advantages to
Infinys operators of setting up packages of products include:
y Increased customer revenue. Customers may want to take a package containing
products they would not otherwise have taken if the package costs only marginally
more than taking the individual products they want.
y Decreased rate of customer churn. Customers may consider changing to another
company to be too problematical and time-consuming due to the volume of products
they have and want to continue having.
y Decreased customer service representative time, Infinys operator time, and billing run
time. Calculating the associated product charges is easier, faster, and less prone to
errors for a single packaged product than for multiple individual products.
y New products can be introduced as part of a package of other products to generate
interest among customers who might not otherwise have heard of them and to
encourage customers to take them.
A package price plan is a product price plan given to a product when it is taken as part of a
package. It can be based on another price plan specified for the same, non-packaged,
product – a base price plan – so that a comparison can be made and associated savings
shown.
Package Savings
An Infinys operator can define packages so that taking products as part of a package
results in a saving for the customer.
This is carried out via the Packages tab of the Products & Pricing view of Billing Catalog
Maintenance.
on defining packages.
Example
A customer takes three products in a package. On their own the products have periodic
charges of $5, $12, and $7, which totals $24. The periodic charge for the package is $20,
so a saving of $4 is achieved by taking the three products in a package rather than
individually.
Donating Package Savings

Package savings can be retained by the account paying the product charges or donated to
another account.
Package savings can be allocated to another account via the Package discount account
field on the Billing tab in the Details for Account dialog box of Customer Account
Maintenance.

If the package savings are to be donated, then the account number of the account that is,
to gain the discount is stored in the PACKAGE_DISC_ACCOUNT_NUM field in the
ACCOUNTDETAILS table and the account that took the package is charged the individual
prices of the products instead of the lower package price.
information on allocating package savings.
Example
A business customer takes products with monthly periodic charges of $24 in a package
with a monthly periodic charge of $20, thus saving $4 every month. The business
customer’s head office has a policy that all discounts and savings are to be assigned to
them. The business customer therefore pays monthly periodic charges of $24 and the
head office has a monthly saving of $4 credited to their account.
Parametric Products in Packages

It is possible to include parametric products in packages of products so that Infinys
operators are not limited in their offerings to the market and customers can enjoy
extended savings associated with such packages.
Parametric products may become part of packages and hence:

y Have a price plan completely different from that of the same parametric product that is
not packaged.
y Contribute towards package level discounts.
It is not mandatory for a package price plan to be based on another price plan belonging to
the product (parametric or not). A package price plan may have no predecessor price
plan.
It is possible to take a parametric product from a package with zero quantity. This
is not the same as not taking the product at all, since in the former case any fixed
charges (quantity zero charges) are incurred.
When parametric products are included in packages:

y The parametric product quantity can change over time.
y It is possible for the packaged parametric product to have a packaged price plan
different from that of its base price plan.
y It is possible to see and define how the charges (base, initiation, periodic, final) and
loyalty points (initiation, periodic, etc.) vary between packaged and base price plans
as the parametric product quantity is increased.
y The package price plan (or its associated contract or override prices) is used when
billing.
y If a package or event discount is to be donated to another account, the Billing Engine
stores additional information, including the date of the donation and the quantity of the
product (for package discounts).

Billing Concepts
y If a bill is produced for an account which is to receive a package discount, the Billing
Engine utilizes the donation information stored in the DONATEDDISCOUNT table.
Example
A customer takes 25 units of a parametric product for which:

y There is no donation of the package discount or resulting saving.
y Both the base price plan and package price plan are defined as marginal.
y The base price plan and the package price plan have different product quantity
threshold bands and prices within the bands.
The parametric product’s base price plan is:
Table 27 Example Parametric Product Base Price Plan
Threshold Quantity Price
0 - $10
1+ 10 $8/unit
11+ 10 $6/unit
21+ 5 $5/unit
The parametric product’s package price plan is:
Table 28 Example Parametric Product Packaged Price Plan
Threshold Quantity Price
0 - $0
1+ 7 $10/unit
8+ 7 $5/unit
15+ 7 $4/unit
22+ 4 $3/unit

The resulting saving data for the package price plan over the base price plan are output to
the BILLDATA table and are similar to the following:
Table 29 Base Versus Package Price Plan Savings
Base Price Plan Package Price Plan
Package Qty Saving

Base Qty Saving
Package Price
Base Price
Threshold
Package
Saving
Qty
0 - Fixed $10 - Fixed $10 - $10
1+ 7 $8/unit $56 $0 $10/unit $70 $0 -$14
8+ 3 $8/unit $24 $0 $5/unit $15 $15 $9
11+ 4 $6/unit $24 $8 $5/unit $20 $20 $4
15+ 6 $6/unit $36 $12 $4/unit $24 $36 $12
21+ 1 $5/unit $5 $3 $4/unit $4 $6 $1
22+ 4 $5/unit $20 $12 $3/unit $12 $28 $8
25 Total $175 $35 Total $145 $105 $30
The quantity saving is defined for any product quantity threshold band n as the quantity
taken in band n at the band 1 (the first [non-zero] band) price per unit minus the quantity
taken in band n at the band n price per unit. For example, the base quantity saving of $12
(as highlighted in Table 29) is calculated by 6 (Qty) multiplied by (8 [that is, $8 per unit]
minus 6 [that is, $6 per unit]).
The package saving is defined for any product quantity threshold band n as the package
price for the quantity taken in band n minus the Base price for the quantity taken in band
n.
If either the base or package price plan is defined as being marginal then it is
necessary to report the data according to the combination of the product quantity
threshold bands (as in the example). This is simplified if the structure of the
product quantity threshold bands between the base and package price plans are
identical. However, if both price plans are non-marginal then it is only necessary
to report the quantity “1+” band, as all instances of the quantity of the parametric
product adopt the same price in the base price plan and the package price plan.
The quantity saving is zero for all threshold bands in this case.

Billing Concepts
Subscriptions
A subscription is a subaccount grouping that links a set of products and packages for the
purposes of billing, discounting, and reporting. It does not generate events (although the
products it contains can) and cannot be parametric or packaged.
Subscriptions Versus Packages

A package is an offer that is made by an Infinys operator to their customers; it has a
defined set of contents and a defined price. A subscription is a subaccount grouping that
links a set of products and packages together; the contents are not pre-defined.
The properties of subscriptions and packages can be compared as shown (accounts and
budget centers are also included for information):
Table 30 Subscriptions Versus Packages
Budget
Subscription Package Account Center
Group of linked products Y Y N Y
Predefined products/price plans N Y N N
Discount aggregation level Y Y Y N
Packages are usually allowed to span accounts so that the products in a

package can be owned by different accounts. However, a package under a
subscription cannot span accounts – products belonging to a package under a
subscription must all belong to the same account as the account owning the
subscription.
Subscription Information
Subscriptions have price plans associated with them. Price plans are configured and
associated with subscriptions in Billing Catalog Maintenance.
To set up a subscription:
1 Create the subscription type. This is carried out via the Subscription Type dialog box
of Product Configuration (select Edit > Add subscription type… from the toolbar).
Refer to Infinys Rating and Billing Product Configuration Help for more information.
2 Create the price plan. This is carried out via the Price Plans tab of the Products &
Pricing view of Billing Catalog Maintenance. Refer to Infinys Rating and Billing Billing

3 Associate a subscription type with the relevant invoicing company. This is carried out
via the Invoicing Company tab of the Tax view of System Configuration. Refer to
Infinys Rating and Billing System Configuration Help for more information.
Having a subscription can result in charges being applied to an account. This price plan is
only for the subscription as all products held within that subscription have their own price
plan. If no charge is to be applied for the subscription itself then the Infinys operator should
associate a zero charge price plan with the subscription.
Price plan information does not cascade down from the subscription.
Subscription Ownership
An account can have one or more subscriptions but a subscription cannot span more than
one account. However, split product charging and event redesignation (see Chapter 21,
"Split Product Charging,") allow Infinys operators to assign charges to different accounts.
Subscription Output
Each subscription can be output to the bill (invoice and statement) in a similar way to
standalone products. There are no subscription level totals or groupings; if these are
required they can be obtained via post-processing.

Billing Concepts

20 Volume Product Discounts
Volume product discounts let Infinys operators reward customer loyalty by providing
discounts based on the number of events or product charges a particular product
generates.
Four possible combinations of volume product discounts exist:

y Product charges qualify for a product charge discount. For example, a 10 percent
reduction in subscription charges when a customer takes five or more ADSL circuits.
y Product charges qualify for an event discount. For example, a 20 percent reduction in
the cost of national calls when a customer takes three telephone lines.
y Events qualify for a further event discount. For example, 20 MB of free downloads
when a customer downloads 100 MB of data.
y Events qualify for a product charge discount. For example, a free call waiting service
when a customer spends $50 on international calls.
Volume product discounts can also be based on product attributes, for example, make of
telephone handset or ZIP code. In addition, discounts can be created such that prices for
services reduce automatically over time, encouraging long-term customer relationships.
The Billing Engine creates pseudo-events that reflect the charges to be applied for the
product (including package discounts and override pricing). A pseudo-event is an event
that is generated by the Billing Engine and internal to Infinys Rating and Billing and
therefore does not appear in the database.
To distinguish pseudo-events from real events, pseudo-events have a negative

event type ID.
Once these pseudo-events have been created, they can be used for discounting in the
same way as other events.
Event and donated discounts are allocated to the receivable class of the charge
that is being discounted. In the event of a single discount amount applying to
more than one receivable, the discount is apportioned to the receivable classes
of the charges being discounted in the ratio of the undiscounted component
charges.
Payment method discounts, if present, are prorated back to each pre-discount

receivable class total for INVOICE_MNY, INVOICE_TAX_MNY and
ADJUSTMENTS_MNY (in the BILLRECEIVABLE table) that the discount applies
to.
Refer to Infinys Rating and Billing Billing Time Discount Concepts for more information
about all types of discounts.

Billing Concepts
Charge Periods Versus Discount Periods

For the first bill period after taking a product, charge periods and discount periods operate
in different ways (assuming both are proratable). The first charge period is a prorated
portion of a complete charge period, followed by entire charge periods. However, the
discount periods are initially complete, with a prorated portion at the end of the first billing
period.
This functionality is configured by the BGanchorPointForDiscountPeriodAlignment

system/invoicing company parameter:
y If set to START – the Billing Engine aligns the discount period to the start date of the
discount and any part periods are created at the end.
y If set to END – the discount periods will be aligned with the charge periods.
The BGattemptDiscountPeriodSyncBoo system parameter determines whether the Billing

Engine attempts to synchronize the discount periods for a billing time discount with the bill
period:
y If set to F (false), the Billing Engine does not attempt to synchronize the discount
periods for a billing time discount with the bill period.
y If set to T (true), the Billing Engine attempts to synchronize the discount periods for a
billing time discount with the bill period.
Synchronizing the discount periods will only succeed if two more conditions are in
place:
o The parameter SYSdiscountTidemark is set to 'NOMINAL'.
o The bill period is an integer multiple of the discount period or vice versa. For
example, if the bill period is 3 months and the discount period is 1 month then this
condition is met; if the bill period is 14 days and the discount period is 1 week (= 7
days) then this condition is also met; but if the bill period is 3 weeks and the
discount period is 2 weeks then this condition is not met.
The default is F (false).
This can be configured at either the system or invoicing company level.
Example
A customer takes a product with a monthly charge period. The account’s bill period is
three monthly and the discount period is monthly. The product start date is part way
through the month after bill date 1.

20 – Volume Product Discounts
bill bill
date date
1 1 month 2
time
product
start
date
Charge periods part whole whole

synchronized
Discount periods whole whole part
Figure 22 Charge Period Versus Discount Period
After the first bill period the charge periods and discount periods are synchronized and
remain so.
COSTEDEVENT Records
For each product charge, the Billing Engine synthesizes an event record in memory,
similar to those it has read into memory from the COSTEDEVENT table (that is, real
events). The synthesized events do not come from the COSTEDEVENT table, and the
Billing Engine does not write them back to the database. The requisite information is:
Table 31 COSTEDEVENT Records
COSTEDEVENT Column Name Source of Information
ACCOUNT_NUM Account number
EVENT_SEQ ACCOUNT.BILL_EVENT_SEQ
EVENT_SOURCE CUSTOMER_REF/PRODUCT_SEQ
CLUSTER_SUB_ID N/A
EVENT_TYPE_ID -Product ID
CREATED_DTM Actual bill date
EVENT_DTM Nominal bill date or price plan end date,

whichever is earlier
EVENT_COST_MNY BILLPRODUCTCHARGE.CHARGE_COST_MN
Y
MANAGED_FILE_ID N/A
ROW_NUMBER N/A
COST_CENTRE_ID Null

Billing Concepts
Table 31 COSTEDEVENT Records (continued)
TARIFF_ID N/A
EVENT_ATTR_1 Charge type (see "Charge Types," page 130)
EVENT_ATTR_2 CUSTPRODUCTTARIFFDETAILS.PRODUCT_
QUANTITY
EVENT_ATTR_3 BILLPRODUCTCHARGE.CHARGE_START_DA
T
EVENT_ATTR_4 BILLPRODUCTCHARGE.CHARGE_END_DAT
EVENT_ATTR_5 Product age in whole months (rounding down)
EVENT_ATTR_6 Charge flag (see "Charge Flag," page 130)
EVENT_ATTR_7 CUSTPRODUCTCHARGE.PERCENTAGE_PCT
EVENT_ATTR_8 BILLPRODUCTCHARGE.PACKAGE_BASIC_C
OST_MNY (the unpackaged price) if this is set,
else EVENT_COST_MNY
EVENT_ATTR_9 BILLPRODUCTCHARGE.PRE_OVERRIDE_CO
ST_MNY (the pre-override price) if this is set,
else EVENT_COST_MNY
EVENT_ATTR_10 The package saving if it is a packaged product,

else the amount of override if it is overridden, else
zero
EVENT_ATTR_11 Product package instance if it is a packaged

product, else zero
EVENT_ATTR_12 Package ID if it is a packaged product, else zero
EVENT_ATTR_13 Contract reference if present, else null
EVENT_ATTR_14 Contract term (zero if not under a contract)
EVENT_ATTR_15 Contract term units (null if not under a contract)
EVENT_ATTR_16 tariff_ID
EVENT_ATTR_17 CUSTHASPRODUCT.CUST_ORDER_NUM if
present, else null
EVENT_ATTR_18 Null
EVENT_ATTR_19 Product attribute 1

20 – Volume Product Discounts
LOYALTY_POINTS Null
COMPETITOR_COST_MNY Null
INTERNAL_COST_MNY Null
EXTERNAL_COST_MNY Null
FRAGMENT_NUMBER Zero
IMPORTED_COST_MNY Null
IMPORTED_CURRENCY_CODE Null
RATING_DISCOUNTED_USAGE_TOTAL Null
PRE_DISCOUNTED_COST_MNY Null
HIGHEST_PRIORITY_DISCOUNT_ID Null
TAX_OVERRIDE_ID Null
UST_CATEGORY_ID Null
UST_CODE_ID Null
ORIGINAL_ACCOUNT_NUM Null
RULE_NUMBER Null
EVENT_ATTR_25 Null
EVENT_ATTR_26 Null
EVENT_ATTR_27 Null
EVENT_ATTR_28 Null
EVENT_ATTR_29 Null
EVENT_ATTR_30 Null
EVENT_ATTR_31 Null
EVENT_ATTR_32 Null
EVENT_ATTR_33 Null
EVENT_ATTR_34 Null
EVENT_ATTR_35 Null

Billing Concepts
EVENT_ATTR_36 Null
Charge Types
The charge types available and their associated numerical representations are:
y Initiation = 1
y Termination = 3
y Partial period periodic = 5
y Full period periodic = 6
y Refunded periodic = 7
y Early termination = 8
y Refunded initiation = 9
y Refunded termination = 10
y Refunded early termination = 11
y Suspension = 12
y Refunded suspension = 13
y Partial suspended periodic = 14
y Full suspended periodic = 15
y Refunded suspended periodic = 16
y Reactivation = 17
y Refunded reactivation = 18
Charge Flag
The charge flag can take one of three values:
y First charge for this product on this bill = 1
y Second or subsequent charge for this product on this bill = 0
y If no charges are due for this product on this bill = -1

21 Split Product Charging
Infinys Rating and Billing supports split product charging. The charges incurred by a
product can be split across multiple accounts within a customer hierarchy, with each
account receiving a percentage of a particular type of charge for the product. The
exception to this is event (usage) charges, which must be completely allocated to the
owning account for the product.
A charge generated by a product can be split between any two accounts in a customer
hierarchy provided that:
y The accounts both have the same invoicing company.
y The accounts are both in the same currency.
y The accounts both have the same tax status.
When a product’s charge is split between accounts, the product is still owned by a single
account. The owning account does not have to incur any of the charges produced by the
product (other than usage charges) but it controls the price plans and rate plans for the
product and how product charges are distributed when the account is terminated.
Split Product Charging Rules
Event Charges
Event charges cannot be split but may be redesignated at rating time, that is, an account
other than the one that owns the product which generated the events can be billed for
100 percent of the event charges. Alternatively, the event charges can remain with the
product’s owning account but the initiation, periodic, etc. charges can be reguided at
billing time to a different account.
Initiation/Periodic/Final Charges
Initiation charges, periodic charges, and final charges for a product can be split between
any accounts or budget centers within a customer hierarchy. They can be apportioned into
percentages (which can be defined to two decimal places) via the Product Charges for
Customer dialog box.
The charges can be split into as many separate entities as is desired but the
percentages must total 100.

Billing Concepts
In Customer Service Management, you can split charges on the Negotiated quote item
billing assignment tab which is accessed via the Negotiated Quote tab.

should use Customer Account Maintenance to achieve this configuration. The
splitting of charges is carried out in the Product Charges for Customer dialog box
which is accessed via the Product Details dialog box on the Products tab of the
Account Setup or Account Billing view. Refer to Infinys Rating and Billing
Refer to Infinys Customer Service Management Help for more information on split product
charging.

22 Prorating, Refunding, and
Charging in Advance/Arrears
Prorating
A proratable price plan is one in which the charge for a product may be rated in proportion
to a part period at the start or end of supply.
The Prorate check box on the Details tab in the Product Prices dialog box of the
Products & Pricing view of Billing Catalog Maintenance (that is, the PRO_RATE_BOO
field in the TARIFFELEMENT table) indicates whether or not the periodic charge is
prorated.
If the Prorate check box is:

y Selected (that is, the PRO_RATE_BOO field is set to T [true]) – the charging period of
the periodic charge is aligned with that of the account by charging for a part period.
y Not selected (that is, the PRO_RATE_BOO field is set to F [false]) – the charge is only
billed in complete periods, regardless of the period of the account.
A facility is provided on the Packages tab within Billing Catalog Maintenance to

calculate and view prorated prices. However, the figures shown within Billing
Catalog Maintenance are a guide and cannot be guaranteed to be accurate
compared to the output from the Billing Engine.
Refer to Infinys Rating and Billing Billing Catalog Maintenance Help and see "Price
Changes," page 89 for more information on prorating.
Example
Consider a quarterly account with a monthly charge billed in advance, where charge
periods are synchronized with bill periods. One of the bill periods runs from January 1,
2002 through March 31, 2002. The price is changed part way through this bill period, that
is, on February 21, 2002, from $10 to $15.
If the product charge is not proratable the bill contains three instances of the charge as
shown in this example:
y January 1, 2002 through January 31, 2002 = $10
y February 1, 2002 through February 28, 2002 = $10
y March 1, 2002 through March 31, 2002 = $15

Billing Concepts
If the product charge is proratable the bill contains three instances of the charge as shown
in this example:
y January 1, 2002 through January 31, 2002 = $10
y February 1, 2002 through February 20, 2002 = $7.14
y February 21, 2002 through February 28, 2002 = $4.29
y March 1, 2002 through March 31, 2002 = $15
Proratable Charging
If a price plan is defined as proratable then the first and last periodic charges for a product
on its current set of product details may be prorated, that is:
y The first charge to synchronize with the account’s synchronize day (if possible where
the synchronize day may be specified at the invoicing company level as a number 1
through 28 or as the nominal bill date).
y The last charge to cover the period between the end of the last periodic charge and
the date of the product details change.
The term “product details” encompasses all the data stored for the product in the
following tables (and any implicit change to the price plan data):
y CUSTPRODUCTTARIFFDETAILS – holds the variable data required for
billing a customer-product, that is, the data which may be prorated across the
bill period
y CUSTPRODUCTCHARGE – holds a record of which accounts are
responsible for the various charges associated with each instance of a
product or subscription registered by a customer over time
y CUSTPRODUCTSTATUS – holds a history of customer-product status over
time and the data it contains is required for billing the customer-product
y CUSTOVERRIDEPRICE tables – contains the detail of the override prices for
customer products
A change in the product details can involve a change, for example, in the split
product charging regime, the status of the product, the assigned price plan, or the
prices specified in the assigned price plan.
If synchronization is possible then all interim charges between the first and the last charge
are charged in whole charge periods (there is no need for further proration).
If the charge cannot be synchronized (that is, the billing period is not a multiple of the
charge period or vice versa) then proration cannot occur. Similarly, if prorating is not
enabled, the product charging period may never synchronize with the customer’s billing
period. See "Synchronization," page 98 for further details.

22 – Prorating, Refunding, and Charging in Advance/Arrears
The following three system parameters affect prorating:
The BGproRateWithinProductDatesBoo system parameter is used for proratable charging

and specifies whether or not prorated pseudo-events generated by the Billing Engine are
forced to occur within the lifespan of the product that generated them:
y If set to T (true) – the Billing Engine ensures that all prorated product charges fall
within the lifetime (and therefore the last discount period) of the terminated product
that generated them. Any prorated charges that would normally be outside the
lifespan of the actual product, such as refunds due to termination in a period that have
already been charged, will have their date moved to the end date of the product. The
date of each pseudo-event is compared with the END_DTM of the
CUSTPRODUCTTARIFFDETAILS record associated with the charge, if not null. If the
pseudo-event falls outside this time span, the END_DTM of the pseudo-event is set to
be the same as the END_DTM of the CUSTPRODUCTTARIFFDETAILS record. This
is valid whether terminating a product or changing the price plan on which a product is
taken.
y If set to F (false) – the Billing Engine does not ensure that all prorated pseudo-events
occur within the lifespan of the product that generated them. In this case, the Billing
Engine does not modify the EVENT_DTM of any pseudo-events.
The BGproRateUnchargedFakeEventsBoo system parameter is used to specify whether

or not uncharged pseudo-events are prorated:
y If set to T (true) – uncharged pseudo-events will be prorated,
y If set to F (false) – uncharged pseudo-events will not be prorated.
BGproRateWithinProductDatesBoo and BGproRateUnchargedFakeEventsBoo

system parameters are ignored if BGproRateFakeEventsBoo is set to F (false).
Refer to Infinys Rating and Billing Billing Time Discount Concepts for more information on
when and how the system parameters should be used.
Example
A customer takes a product with an associated price plan. After two bills have been sent
the product details change due to a change in the price plan. Both the original and new
price plans are in advance and proratable and both price plan charge periods correspond
with the bill period.
The following assumptions are also made:

y The Bill Future Changes for Products check box is selected for the account’s
invoicing company (that is, the BILL_PROD_FUTURE_CHANGES_BOO field in the
INVOICINGCOMPANY table is set to T [true]). See "In-Advance Charging," page 91
for further details.
y Only the periodic charges are being shown.
y The billing window and synchronize day are null.

Billing Concepts
Therefore, this can be illustrated as follows:
bill bill bill bill

date date date date
1 2 3 4
time
product price
start plan
date change
prorated
Bill 1 periodic periodic charge
charge
prorated prorated
Bill 2 periodic periodic
charge charge
Figure 23 Proratable Charging with Changing Price Plan
The three bills shown in this example incur different charges. For bill 2, the billing window
requirement includes the date of the scheduled price plan change. Therefore:
y Bill 1 incurs:
o A prorated charge to synchronize charging with the nominal billing cycle.
o A full periodic charge to meet the first billing window requirement of the first next
bill date (that is, bill date 2).
y Bill 2 incurs:
o A prorated charge on the original price plan, extending from the end of the
previous periodic charge to the date of the price plan change.
o A prorated charge on the new price plan, extending from the end of the previous
product charge to synchronize with the nominal billing cycle.
the BILL_PROD_FUTURE_CHANGES_BOO field is set to F [false]) then the
scheduled price plan change is ignored on bill 2 (instead it is recognized on
bill 3) and bill 2 incurs a full periodic charge on the original price plan. See
"In-Advance Charging," page 91 for further details

y Bill 3 incurs:
o A full periodic charge to meet the billing window requirement of the third next bill
date (that is, bill date 4).
the BILL_PROD_FUTURE_CHANGES_BOO field is set to F [false]) then the
price plan change is recognized on bill 3. See "In-Advance Charging,"
page 91 for further details. Since the original price plan is proratable (and
assuming it is refundable) a refund appears on bill 3 for the part-period
incorrectly charged on the original price plan, and a recharge for the
part-period on the new price plan.
Non-Proratable Charging
If a price plan is defined as non-proratable then all periodic charges for a product on the
price plan are charged in full charge periods, that is, whole charge periods are added to
the billed to date until the final charge date is passed. The overall charge period is thus
always a whole number multiple of the product charge period. In addition, refunds can
usually be made in full charge periods.
A non-proratable charge is never synchronizable (unless synchronization to the nominal

billing cycle happens by chance). Exceptions to this rule are:
y Override prices – these are always proratable, regardless of the price plan definition.
y Parametric products – for increments the charges are always proratable, regardless of
the price plan definition.

Billing Concepts
Example
A customer takes a product with an associated in-arrears price plan. The charge period for
the product is one year and the bill period is three months; this can be illustrated as
follows:
bill bill bill bill

product date date date date
start
date
1 2 3 4
one year
time
<no periodic
Bill 1 charge>
in arrears in advance
Figure 24 Non-Proratable Charging
The price plan is in arrears so the first bill after the product start date incurs only the
initiation charge. Therefore:
y Bill 1:
Incurs an initiation charge only.
y Bills 2 and 3:
No further charge is required, as the in-arrears charge is not yet due.
y Bill 4:
The full in-arrears periodic charge is now due and the remainder of this charge period
is charged in advance (keeping the period charged in advance to a minimum).
Refunding
If a situation arises where a refund is necessary the Refundable check box on the Details
tab in the Product Prices dialog box of the Products & Pricing view of Billing Catalog
Maintenance indicates whether or not the periodic charge of the price plan is refundable (if
the situation where a refund is necessary arises). Refer to Infinys Rating and Billing Billing

If the check box is:

y Selected – the periodic charge of the price plan is refundable.
y Not selected – the periodic charge of the price plan is non-refundable.
In addition, the Billing Engine determines whether or not refunds are due if any change
occurs to a customer’s product charges. A proratable refund of periodic product charges
may be due if a product is cancelled before the date of the next due bill. If a product is
cancelled on a date after the billed to date, no refund is necessary.
Refunds of product charges should use the same receivable class as the original
charge. If there is no receivable class in this field, the refund is assigned a
receivable class for new charges of the product.
Example
A customer with a monthly billing cycle on the first of every month takes a product. The
product charging details are:
y In advance – monthly.
y Price plan – periodic charge of $30.
y Synchronized with billing cycle.
y Proratable.
y Refundable.
The last bill date is February 1.
On February 15 the customer cancels the product:

y This sets the EARLIEST_CHANGE_DAT field in the CUSTPRODUCTCHARGE table
for the product to February 15.
y This means that the customer is due a refund for the period February 16 through
February 28.
During the billing run on March 1 the following occurs:

y The Billing Engine detects that the value of the EARLIEST_CHANGE_DAT field in the
CUSTPRODUCTCHARGE table is not null.
y Credits a refund to the customer’s account for the period February 16 through
February 28.
y The Billing Engine resets the value of the EARLIEST_CHANGE_DAT field in the
CUSTPRODUCTCHARGE table to null.
Refunds are only possible if the Bill Product Charge Deleter has not deleted the relevant
entries in the BILLPRODUCTCHARGE table (refer to Infinys System Processes for Rating
and Billing for more information).

Billing Concepts
Charging in Advance/Arrears
At the most general level, a product is charged in advance if it is billed prior to each
charging period and in arrears if it is billed after each charging period.
See "Price Changes," page 89 for further details on in-advance and in-arrears charging.
In-Advance Charging
For in-advance charging the product charges are billed for a period up to at least the day
before the account’s billing window day. Typically, and by default, the billing window is null.
Therefore the product charges are billed for a period up to at least the day before the next
nominal bill date.
It is possible, when a product is first taken only, for an in-advance charge to be

billed in arrears. This happens if a customer orders a product after a bill has been
generated with a product start date that occurs before the next bill date.
Example
A customer takes a product on March 15. The product charge is $20 per month in
advance. The customer is billed monthly on the first day of the month. The customer stops
taking the product on April 30. If the product charge is prorated then the total cost to the
customer for taking the product is $30, that is:
March March April April May May

1st 15th 1st 15th 1st 15th
time
product next last day

start bill to charge
date date (April 30th)
$10.97 $20
Figure 25 Product Charge in Advance and Prorated

If the product charge is not prorated then the total cost to the customer for taking the
product is $40, that is:
March March April April May May

1st 15th 1st 15th 1st 15th
time
product next last day

start bill to charge
date date (April 30th)
$20 $20
Figure 26 Product Charge in Advance and Non-Prorated
Billing Window
If a billing window is set, the product charges can extend further into the future.
Example
A customer takes a product on the nominal bill date (therefore the value of
BGsyncProductChargeToThisBillDatBoo is irrelevant). Charging is in advance with a
charge period and a bill period of one month. The invoicing company associated with the
customer’s account has a billing window of two months. Assuming these details remain
constant, the following figure illustrates this scenario:

1 2 3 4 5
time
product
start
date
Bill 1 periodic charge periodic charge

Figure 27 Product Charge in Advance with a Billing Window
The bill period is one month and the billing window is two months, therefore the billing
window for the first nominal bill date is the day before the third nominal bill date, that is, the
periodic charges on the first bill for the product must start on the product start date and

Billing Concepts
extend at least until the day before bill date 3. As the charge period of the product’s price
plan is the same as the bill period of the account, two full periodic charges fulfill this
requirement.
The periodic charges on the second bill for the product must start the day after the end of
the last periodic charge previously billed and extend at least until the day before bill date
4. A single full periodic charge fulfills this requirement. The account is now in a steady
state so bill 3 is the same, etc.
In-Arrears Charging
For in-arrears charging the product charges are billed for a period up to at least the day
before the current nominal bill date (or bill request date for non-periodic bills).
Example
A customer takes a product on bill date 1. The product charge is in arrears with a monthly
charge period. The customer is billed monthly on the first day of the month. Therefore:

1 2 3 4 5
time
product
start
date
Figure 28 In-Arrears Product Charging
The product’s price plan is defined as in arrears so no periodic charge appears on the first
bill. The periodic charges on the second bill for the product must start on the product start
day and extend at least until the day before bill date 2. A single full periodic charge fulfills
this requirement. The account is now in a steady state so bills 3 and 4 are the same, etc.
It is possible in certain circumstances for an in-arrears periodic charge to actually become

in advance.

Example
A customer takes a product before bill date 1, in this case five days before. The product
charge is in arrears with a two monthly charge period and is not prorated. The customer is
billed monthly on the first day of the month. Therefore:

1 2 3 4 5
time
product
start
date


Figure 29 Product Charge In Arrears and not Prorated (Type 1)
day and extend at least until the day before bill date 2. However, the charge period is twice
the bill period so the charge actually extends up to six days before bill date 3, that is, it
becomes partly in advance. The third bill does not need to have any charges since the
requirement for the third bill date has already been met by the previous periodic charge on
bill 2. Bill 4 is the same as bill 2. The account is now in a steady state so bill 5 is the same
as bill 3, etc.

Billing Concepts
If the product start date is the same as bill date 1 this becomes:

1 2 3 4 5
time
product
start
date

in arrears

in arrears
Figure 30 Product Charge In Arrears and not Prorated (Type 2)
day and extend at least until the day before bill date 2. However, the charge period is twice
the bill period so the charge actually covers the period up to the day before bill date 3. This
is beyond bill 2’s remit so the charge is deferred until bill 3 and bill 2 is left without a
periodic charge. The fourth bill does not need to have any charges since the requirement
for the fourth bill date has already been met by the previous periodic charge on bill 3. The
account is now in a steady state so bill 5 is the same as bill 3, etc.
If the charge is prorated this becomes:

1 2 3 4 5
time
product
start
date
Bill 2 prorated charge

in arrears

in arrears
Figure 31 Product Charge In Arrears and Prorated

day and extend at least until the day before bill date 2. As the charge is prorated this is the
last day for which the customer is charged on bill 2. The periodic charges on the third bill
for the product must start on the previous final charge day and extend at least until the day
before bill date 3. However, the charge period is twice the bill period so the charge actually
extends up to the day before bill date 4. This is beyond bill 3’s remit so the charge is
deferred until bill 4 and bill 3 is left without a periodic charge. The account is now in a
steady state so bill 5 is the same as bill 3, etc.

Billing Concepts

23 Output
The Billing Engine populates the BILLDATA and BILLPRODUCTCHARGE tables. This
process is illustrated in Figure 32.
Billing BILLDATA Bill Data etc.

Engine table Writer
refunds
BILLPRODUCTCHARGE
table
Figure 32 Output of the Billing Engine
Event summaries and itemizations cannot be output in this way.
The tables are only populated during production (live) billing mode and not during
test (what if?) billing mode. See Chapter 7, "Billing Modes," for details.
BILLDATA Table
Whether or not data is output to the BILLDATA table is determined by the product status.
Information from the BILLDATA table is passed to the Bill Data Writer. The Bill Data Writer
writes the bill data to file, then the Infinys operator may run the Bill Formatter to generate
bills from these files, or alternatively use a third-party process to generate the bill.
Each row of the BILLDATA table contains bill data information pertaining to a specific bill
for a specific account. This data consists of a series of structured bill data tags that form
part of the bill using Infinys operator-constructed RTF templates. Bill data contains
descriptions of the following:
y Standalone (non-parametric) products
y Packaged (non-parametric and parametric) products
y Standalone parametric products
y Subscriptions
y Descriptions of events and discounts

Billing Concepts
Refer to Infinys Rating and Billing Bill and Statement Data Interactive for information about
Backus Naur Form descriptions and information tags.
BILLPRODUCTCHARGE Table
Information from the BILLPRODUCTCHARGE table is used in the refunding process, as
follows:
y Charge type is stored in BILLPRODUCTCHARGE.CHARGE_TYPE
y Charge subtype is stored in BILLPRODUCTCHARGE.CHARGE_SUB_TYPE
y Each product charge is stored in the BILLPRODUCTCHARGE table so charges can
be refunded exactly
y Old entries in the BILLPRODUCTCHARGE table are removed by the Bill Product
Charge Deleter
y Refunds are only possible if the Bill Product Charge Deleter has not deleted the
relevant entries in the BILLPRODUCTCHARGE table
Refer to Infinys System Processes for Rating and Billing for more information about the
Bill Product Charge Deleter.

Billing Concepts

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Rating and Billing

About This Document .............................................................................................................................. ix

2 Bill Types .............................................................................................................................................. 3

3 Copy Bills, Reissued Bills, and Summary Statements................................................................... 15

4 Budget Centers ..................................................................................................................................21

5 Billing Event Information...................................................................................................................25

Confidential and Proprietary i

6 Service Provider Billing.....................................................................................................................35

8 Adding Charges at Billing Time........................................................................................................43

10 Exceptional Bills ................................................................................................................................ 49

12 Canceling Bills ................................................................................................................................... 55

ii Confidential and Proprietary

Configuring Bill Styles.................................................................................................................... 71

15 Introduction to Product Charging .................................................................................................... 85

16 Price Changes ....................................................................................................................................89

17 Charge Types, Periods, and Synchronization................................................................................. 95

18 Contract and Override Prices .........................................................................................................105

19 Parametric Products, Packages, and Subscriptions .................................................................... 109

Confidential and Proprietary iii

Subscriptions Versus Packages ..................................................................................................122

20 Volume Product Discounts .............................................................................................................125

21 Split Product Charging ....................................................................................................................131

22 Prorating, Refunding, and Charging in Advance/Arrears ............................................................133

iv Confidential and Proprietary

Figure 1 Example Billing Processing Sequence (Using Bill Formatting Engine)..................................... 1

Confidential and Proprietary v

Figure 31 Product Charge In Arrears and Prorated .............................................................................. 144

vi Confidential and Proprietary

Table i Document Conventions............................................................................................................ ix

Confidential and Proprietary vii

Table 30 Subscriptions Versus Packages............................................................................................122

viii Confidential and Proprietary

Table i Document Conventions

Andale Mono Computer input and output text.

blue Linked cross-references to chapters, sections, and other reference points.

italics Word emphasis when defining a term and nonlinked cross-references to

“Quotation References to chapter titles and section titles.

Table ii Symbols and Graphics

> A menu path to a window.

Confidential and Proprietary ix

Table ii Symbols and Graphics (continued)

Characters Versus Bytes

Spelling and Terminology

x Confidential and Proprietary

Billing is the aggregation of all non-recurring, periodic, and chargeable events, on an

This guide covers the production of bills, including:

Figure 1 Example Billing Processing Sequence (Using Bill Formatting Engine)

Figure 2 Example Billing Processing Sequence (Using Third-Party Formatting Engine)

Confidential and Proprietary 1

Before You Begin

2 Confidential and Proprietary

Infinys Rating and Billing produces the following bill types:

Initiation bill Normally only requested as the first bill on an account.

Periodic bill Produced at regular intervals. Includes all periodic charges,

Post-final bill Sent when a terminated account has receivables

Confidential and Proprietary 3

A suspension bill can only be requested at the time an account is suspended.

When Bills Are Produced

The Billing Engine updates the BILL_REQUEST_STATUS field in the

Table 1 Bill Type Suppression

Bill Type Bill Types that Are Suppressed

Final bill Final bills suppress:

Periodic bill Periodic bills suppress:

Suspension bill Suspension bills suppress: