How Rates Affect the Information on Bill Segments
After consumption has been compiled, the system applies the service agreement's rate to the consumption to determine how much to charge the customer. We refer to this process as the "rate application."
The rate application is a very sophisticated process and can affect every aspect of a bill segment. See Rate Schedule Execution for an overview of how the system processes a rate.
Rates not only control which charges appear on the bill, but also the verbiage. In addition, there are variables that can be used in the configuration to customize the message that the customer receives. See How to Use Description on Bill for more information
Not all service agreements use a rate! There are a small number of service agreements that don't use a rate to calculate the charges that appear on their bill segments. For example, a service agreement used to levy a customer's payment arrangement amount doesn't need a rate because the amount to charge is defined on the service agreement. Whether or not a service agreement needs a rate is defined by the service agreement's SA type. Whether or not the system calls the service agreement's rate to calculate charges is controlled by the bill calculation algorithm plugged-in on the bill segment type that's referenced on the service agreement's SA type. Refer to Designing and Defining Bill Segment Types for a description of the various bill segment creation algorithms that are supported in the system.
Proration. A rate contains a variety of effective-dated information (meaning that the prices are effective-dated, and the structure of the rate is effective-dated) If this effective-dated information changes during a bill period, the system may need to prorate the charges; for example, if the sales tax percentage changes mid-period, the system can prorate the tax change. Refer to segments. Refer to Effective Dates and Price Proration for more information.
There are many plug-in spots available on a calculation rule. These plug-ins can manipulate virtually every aspect of the bill segment. This means if you require functionality that isn't support by the base package calculation rule, you can build additional calculation rule plug-ins to do whatever you need. See Base Package Calculation Rule Descriptions for more information
Refer to Rates for more information about how rates are constructed.