Service Plans


Overview

Service Plan is a feature that allows you to periodically bill Accounts a fixed amount related to "Service Charges" for such things Voicemail, System Access Fee, etc. Equally as important, Service Plans relate to the "Minute Plans" (minutes and destinations) you provide as part of your basic service to Customers and Accounts.

A Service Plan consists of three major parts:

  • A Tariff, which sets prices for calls to destinations outside of the minute plan
  • A Service Charge, which sets fixed prices per billing period for additional services you provide
  • Minute plans, which define fixed "bundles" of call price and destination per billing period.


Each service plan also has several parameters that define the billing period (weekly, bi-weekly, monthly), billing type (Pre-Paid or Post-Paid) and the related Action that the system needs to take if the billing run for a particular Account has failed (for example due to insufficient balance).   Available Actions include: Block Account or Use Tariff.  The Action selected determines how the system manages calls made after Pre-Paid or Post-Paid characteristics are met.

The difference between Pre-paid and Post-paid plans is that as the name suggests, charges for the Pre-Paid plan are applied at the beginning of the billing period, while charges for the Post-Paid plan are charged at the end of the billing period. In practice, the difference means that for the Post-Paid billing plan it is possible for an Account's balance to go beyond the credit limit that is set either by virtue of the service plan or by the credit limit allotted.

Once a Service Plan has been assigned to any Account, the system will not permit changes to price and/or composition of the Service Charges or Minute Plans.  The only changes possible once a Service Plan is assigned are Service Plan name and Destination patterns.  If you want to update a Service Plan, you can create a new plan that reflects the changes you wish to make and migrate the Accounts and Customers to that new plan.  Once all Accounts and Customers have been migrated to the new plan, the system releases the old plan allowing you to modify or delete it if necessary.  


"On billing failure" option

On billing failure - allows you to predefine a behavior of accounts that don't have enough funds for a service plan fee. There are three possible behaviors:

  • Use tariff - once account is suspended on billing failure with this parameter, system will allow an account to make calls by tariff until the balance isn't reached zero;
  • Block all calls - once account is suspended on billing failure with this parameter, blocks all calls even if it is an onnet call between two internal accounts, call to the trunk or any call to the flat rate;
  • Block charged calls - once an account is suspended on billing failure with Block ALL calls option on the service plan, block only calls with non zero prices;


See Also

Syntax of the Destination Patterns in the Service Plans


Availability

Sippy Softswitch 1.8