First and Last Bill Segment Considerations
Billing provides the consumption period used for defining the start and ending intervals by the interval pricing and TOU pricing algorithms.
However, for the very first bill segment for the customer, perhaps your business practice dictates that the first interval is at some time other than the cutoff time. For example, rather than billing from 2 a.m. on the first day, perhaps the meter is only installed at 3 p.m. and that is when billing should begin. Similarly, for the final interval on the last bill segment for your service agreement, you may require billing to end when the meter is removed at 4 p.m., rather than through 2 a.m. on the day after the end date.
To accomplish this functionality, follow these guidelines:
- When starting or stopping a service agreement, navigate to the service agreement interval info tab to define the appropriate starting or ending interval for each interval profile or classic TOU map linked to the service agreement using the start and end date/times in the profile or map collection.
If the start/end intervals are defined based on the date/time a meter was installed or removed, the recommendation is to design a mechanism for updating the SA/profile and SA/TOU map date/times via an interface. For example, perhaps a field activity completion algorithm could update the profile and/or map date/times according to when the meter was installed. Or perhaps a notification & workflow process is designed to update this information.
- Design your interval pricing and/or TOU pricing algorithms to override the consumption period information passed in for the first interval of the first bill segment or for the last interval for the final bill segment. These algorithms receive the service agreement effective dates so that your algorithms can easily detect whether it is the first or last bill segment for your SA. If the algorithm detects that this is the first or last bill segment for the service agreement, it can use the profile and/or TOU map start and end date/times on the service agreement rather than the calculated consumption period passed in.
The interval pricing and TOU pricing algorithms provided with the product use the consumption period calculated and passed in from billing for the first and last bill segment.