Rates
When you set up a customer in the system, you create a service agreement for every service that the customer uses. The most important information specified on a service agreement is the rate. The rate controls:
- How the service's charges are calculated.
- How the charges are described on the customer's bills.
- How the general ledger is affected by the charges.
It's important to understand that while most service agreements are associated to a rate, you may have service agreements that don't use a rate to calculate their charges; for example, you may have billable charge service agreements to bill a customer for charges that have been calculated in an external system. Whether or not a service agreement uses a rate and the list of rates that can be specified on a service agreement are controlled by the service agreement's SA Type.
In addition to calculating charges for service, your implementation can also use rates to calculate adjustments.
Refer to How Rates Affect The Information On A Bill for how billing uses the information in a rate to calculate a bill segment. Refer to Calculated Adjustments for how to use a rate to calculate an adjustment.
Do not equate a rate in your legacy system with a rate in this system. You may find that the system's flexibility will result in fewer rates than you have today. For example, your current rate structure may have three rates for service because there are different prices based on the customer’s geographic area. In this system, however, you can set up a single rate and vary the price based on where the customer lives.
This chapter describes the structure and process to configure rates.
Rate schedules created using the new rate engine are referred to as Calculation Rule-Based Rates or, simply, Rates; and those created using the original rate engine are referred to as Component-Based Rates. This chapter focuses on Calculation Rule-Based Rates, unless stated otherwise.
Component-Based Rates, or classic rates, is not the recommended approach for new implementations. Component-Based Rates is intended for upgrading customers who currently use this rate structure and have not converted to Calculation Rule-Based Rates.