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 event that generates a fee can be an invoice event to charge the fee based on an existing invoice, or it can be a customer event to charge it on the customer's next 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.

(coming soon)