Invoice Generation (FT-1015.003)

v1

CMP Release 3.0

Initial release 

Quarterly

Issue all costs just every quarter at January, April, July, and October Billing Cycles.

Half-Yearly

Issue all costs just every half year at January and July Billing Cycles.

Yearly

Issue all costs just once a year at the January Billing Cycle.

Wait for Late EDR

Billing Cycle does not start immediately after midnight, but waits for late EDRs (Usage Data Records) that still apply to the previous month (i.e., the event timestamp is from the previous month).

This is configurable. Typically, the Billing Cycle begins at about 4 a.m.

Load OUC-B Usage Report

Once the Billing Cycle has started, the first step is to load all Usage Reports from the OUC-B (Real-Time Rating Engine) and store (materialize) them in a relational database. 

The Usage Report contains aggregated Usage and Overage details per SIM (Individual Price Plan) and Pool (Pool Price Plan) - structured per Zone, APN, Rating Group, Time Slice, and Tier.

All overage costs have already been calculated and are ready to be used at this time.

Create Base

The second step includes MRC (Monthly Recurring Charge) and One-Time (Event) charges (like Activation Costs, Prepaid Period Fees, etc.).

Those are based on the Subscriptions in CMP and do not take any changes (such as Price Plan changes) into account at this time.

Create Historical

The next step includes the change history. This mainly applies to Pro-Rated Accounts, where CMP investigates all Subscription changes from the previous month, calculating different and adding additional charge items to reflect the full scope of Price Plan changes across the previous month.

Create Usage

The next step takes all items from the "Load OUC-B Usage Report" phase and aggregates them for total Usage Costs per Usage Type (Data, SMS MO, ...) and generates an accurate representation of the Usage per Zone, APN, Rating Group, Time Slice, and Tier into an Accounting Item (to be used for Invoice or Cost Info generation later on). This step also aggregates the total Usage and Overage per Zone and stores it in a statistical data structure, which can be used later on by the Billing Feed.

Create Pre-Bill Report

The Pre-Bill Report is generated once all Charge Items have been created. Basically, it simply aggregates all Accounting Items from previous steps and presents them in an Excel file format. The aim is to quickly identify gaps in total, Charge Type specific, or individual cost items.

Manual Charge Corrections can still be added to the Billing Cycle at this stage.

Create Invoice/Cost-Info

Once the Pre-Bill Report has been approved, the final Invoices or Cost-Info Sheets are created as a PDF file, and get stored within CMP.
While the Invoice is a legal document, the Cost-Info Sheet is just a simple summary all total costs and normally used in case CMP is not in charge of the legal invoice but generating a Billing Feed for external billing (like in a BSS).

Optionally, if configured and integrated, these documents can be submitted directly by CMP to the Account via email.

Note:

Before creating any documents, the system evaluates the total net summary. If a NetCost Threshold is configured for the related Account, the system compares the total net summary of the Account to this threshold.

• An Invoice must be created if the net cost summary is negative, regardless of the threshold.

• If the net cost summary is zero, no Invoice is created.

• An Invoice is only created if the net cost summary is positive and meets or exceeds the threshold.

Create Billing Feed

The Billing Feed is generated once the Billing Cycle has completed successfully.

This step is fully optional and is based on configuration and integration.

While CMP offers a "Standard Billing Feed" as an OOB feature (which contains all created Accounting Items along with dedicated Charge Codes), it usually gets customized as part of the integration, to fit all requirements of the external billing system (like file output format, charge line logic and delivery taxonomy).

Import Invoice Details

Following the successful completion of the Billing Cycle, the Invoice Details of the external billing system can be imported into CMP.

This step is fully optional and is based on configuration and integration.

While CMP offers an OOB "Standard Invoice Presentation" (based on charge items created by CMP during the Billing Cycle), it can also be customized to load external data.

In the latter scenario, an integration has to apply to define the expected import format, file logic and delivery taxonomy.