Revision as of 14:09, 27 February 2014

Overview

• Fees are charges automatically added to a customer's invoice based on some set of conditions.
• Unlike Freeside's traditional "one-time charges", charging a fee doesn't create a persistent package definition or a package on the customer's account.
• A fee definition can be a flat amount (e.g. a postal invoice fee) or a percentage of an invoice amount (e.g. a finance charge).
  • The fee can also be defined based on usage (CDRs), as either a flat amount per call or a percentage of rated price. These can be set independently for each usage class (local, intrastate, etc.).
• The fee can be charged based on past invoices, or on the customer's upcoming invoice.

Configuration

First, create the fee definition itself.

• Under Configuration -> Users, add the "Edit fee definitions" access right to your user account.
• Open Configuration -> Packages -> Fees, and click "Add a new fee definition" at the top.
• Set the fee's properties:
  • Description on the invoice. If you have multiple customer languages available, you will need a description for each one.
  • Comment (optional, for internal use)
  • The agent who will use this fee definition
  • Package class, for reporting purposes
  • Whether to treat the fee as "setup" or "recurring", again, for reporting purposes
  • The flat amount to charge
  • The percentage of the invoice amount to charge, and whether that's the percentage of the gross amount of the invoice or the unpaid balance.
  • Minimum and maximum values of the fee (optional). Note that the maximum will be adjusted to allow for any taxes that apply.
  • Whether to limit the fee to the customer's credit balance. (This is not generally useful.)
  • Whether the fee is taxable, and what tax class or product category it falls into.
• Submit the form.

Then create an event that determines when the fee should be charged.

• Open Configuration -> Billing -> Billing events, and click "Add a new event".
• To charge a flat fee each time the customer is billed, or based on a percentage of the customer's current invoice amount:
  • Set Type = "Customer".
  • Set Action = "Charge a fee based on the customer's current invoice."
  • Set any conditions that limit which customers should be charged the fee, such as agent, customer class, or current balance.
• To charge a flat or percentage fee based on previous outstanding invoices:
  • Set Type = "Invoice".
  • Set Action = "Charge a fee based on this invoice."
  • Set any conditions that limit the invoices that should be charged for, such as invoice age and balance due.
• In the action parameters section, choose the fee definition you created.

Examples

(coming soon)