![]() Each customer account should include its payment method to be used after generating invoices and to ask customers for payments.īilling types indicate whether and how the users pay to get and use the services. ![]() Receipt view is shown in the next figure. The customers receive receipts of their payments. It is the process of collecting company money from the customers and adjusting their balances through adjusting the account debits and credits. The invoice contents are shown in the following figure: Invoices affect the account debits in the billing system. Each invoice includes the customer account, date of payment, line items of the invoice, and invoice sales taxes. It is the entity generated by the billing system to inform the customer that he must pay for his service usage or ordering. ![]() Normally the invoices are generated as a result of service hosting or using, and payments are the customer payments as a result of the invoicing operation. Invoices and paymentsĮach customer in the system has an account balance, which affects any invoices requested by the customer and any payments done by the customer. This process is essential in the billing process as it is the point of conversion of the service usage to revenue value to company, which is the target of telecommunication companies. Rating is the process of converting usage records from one form to another, like converting usage units to its cost. One of the big issues in any billing system is how, when, and where the companies should bill their customers. Customer account belongs to a specific account type, which is related to some price plans determined by discounts and promotions. Each customer account is linked in the system with specific services offered to this customer, and the customer will be billed depending on his usage of these services. The customer account includes customer contact profile information, account type, login information, and payment method. After service ordering by the customer, it takes a unique ID which is attached with the account of the customer, provided by the provisioning system to the customer at a certain date. All of these attributes are described later in this article. Each service is defined by an engineering employee as a service catalog which includes service type, name, billing policy, and its default rating profile. Service is the entity offered by the company and targeted to the customers. We can divide the system into seven parts as in the following figure: The billing system should provide service to the user, collect user usage records, and generate invoices of each credit expire, each billing cycle depends on the billing type, collect payments and adjust customers' balances as in the following figure: The service may be prepaid where he has to pay to have credits to use the service, or it may be postpaid, where he has to pay if the service has installation or setup fees, and later on he will pay for his usage of each billing cycle. Then the user asks to conduct an order with the selected service. If he has no account, he signs up for a new account, else he signs in. The system user navigates through the company site and views company services, and he decides to order one of the available services. To simplify the process I will introduce a simple system usage scenario as shown in the following figure. The billing process involves receiving billing records from various networks, determining the billing rates associated with the billing records, calculating the cost for each billing record, aggregating these records periodically to generate invoices, sending invoices to the customer, and collecting payments received from the customer.īilling system is very complex starting from network elements that generate usage to the billing system to usage collection, mediation, rating, and invoicing. ![]() ![]() Billing systems process the usage of network equipment that is used during the service usage into a single Call Detail Record (CDR). Telecommunication companies need an effective and accurate billing system to be able to assure their revenue. ![]()
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