Configuring Pricing in Charge Offers

9 Configuring Pricing in Charge Offers

Learn how to configure pricing in Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management (BRM) charge offers.

Topics in this document:

Configuring Pricing in Charges

Each charge can contain one or more balance impacts. You configure balance impacts in the pricing table. Figure 9-1 shows an example of the pricing table. Each row in the table represents a balance impact.

Figure 9-1 Pricing Table for a Charge

Description of "Figure 9-1 Pricing Table for a Charge"

A balance impact is defined by how much to charge (the Amount column in the balance impact) for a given amount (the Per Unit column in the balance impact). When configuring pricing for a charge, you can also do the following:

Configure when to grant noncurrency balances. See "Configuring Validity Periods for Noncurrency Credit Balances".
Configure how to round balance impacts. See "Specifying Rounding in Balance Impacts".
Specify if a balance impact can be discounted. See "Specifying if a Balance Impact is Discountable".
Specify a minimum amount to charge. See "About Minimum Charges".
Disable proration for a charge if proration is enabled for a charge offer. See "About Prorating Charges".
Use a price selector to choose a pricing configuration based on the values of specified event, service, or account attributes. See "About Selectors".

Configuring Validity Periods for Noncurrency Credit Balances

When you create an offer that credits noncurrency balances, such as granting minutes, you can configure a validity period for the balance impact. This is useful if you want to limit how long a customer can keep minutes in their balance before they need to purchase more minutes. Figure 9-2 shows a balance impact that grants 100 minutes that are available for one billing cycle.

Figure 9-2 Balance Impact for Minutes

Description of "Figure 9-2 Balance Impact for Minutes"

You can specify the following fixed validity periods:

For the current accounting cycle
For the current billing cycle
For the current recurring cycle

You can also define validity period start and end times. You can start a validity period at these times:

When the event occurs.
At first usage of the service.

If a balance is shared among accounts in a sharing group, the balance validity period is set when any account in the group first impacts the balance. Because the same balance is shared with all accounts in the group, the validity period of that balance applies to all accounts.
From a specified date.
Relative to a specified date.

You can end a validity period based on:

A date relative to the start date (measure in minutes, hours, days, months, or in account, billing, or recurring cycles)
On a specified date.
No end date.

If a charge offer or discount offer is canceled after being used, the validity end time of any balance granted by the offer is set to the time of the cancellation.

Note:

A charge offer that is valid from first usage should not grant a credit balance, such as included minutes, that is also valid from first usage. If it does, the granted balance cannot be consumed by the first usage event. See "About Granting First-Usage Balance Impacts In First-Usage Charges" for more information.

Granting Noncurrency Balances in Increments

Note:

This functionality is supported only for recurring and one-time charges that have validity periods with a specified end date.

When you credit noncurrency balances, such as free minutes, in a one-time allotment or in a recurring cycle, you can choose to grant the noncurrency balance in smaller portions on an incremental basis, such as every 5 hours or every 2 days. For example, a one-time allotment of 50 Gigabytes that is valid for one month could be distributed to customers as one Gigabyte per day or 10 Gigabytes every seven days.

To configure PDC to grant a noncurrency balance in increments, you split the noncurrency balance into multiple validity periods and specify the following:

The total validity period for the credit of noncurrency resources.
The length of each incremental validity period, in terms of seconds, minutes, hours, days, or months.
When the incremental bucket of noncurrency resources expire: at the end of the incremental validity period or at the end of the total validity period.

PDC calculates the amount of noncurrency resources allocated to each incremental bucket (except the last bucket) as follows:

(incremental validity period/total validity period) * (grant amount)

The amount for the last incremental bucket is calculated as follows:

(grant amount) - (total amount granted in previous buckets)

For example, assume your customers are granted a one-time allotment of 400 free minutes with a one-month total validity period. The 400 free minutes are split into multiple 7-day validity periods, with each incremental bucket of free minutes expiring at the end of its 7-day incremental validity period. Table 9-1 shows how these 400 free minutes would be distributed to your customers in the month of June.

Table 9-1 Schedule for Distributing 400 Free Minutes in 7-Day Validity Periods

Bucket	Bucket Size Calculation	Bucket Size	Validity Start Date (starting at 12:00:00am)	Validity End Date (ending at 11:59:59pm)
1	(7/30) * 400	93 Free Minutes	June 1	June 7
2	(7/30) * 400	93 Free Minutes	June 8	June 14
3	(7/30) * 400	93 Free Minutes	June 15	June 21
4	(7/30) * 400	93 Free Minutes	June 22	June 28
5	400 - (93 * 4)	28 Free Minutes	June 29	June 30

You can configure multiple validity periods for noncurrency balances by using one of the following:

The PDC UI. To do so, when adding balance impacts, set the Distribute Credit, Frequency, and Unused Credit Valid Until fields. For more information, see "Adding Multiple Validity Periods to Noncurrency Balance Impacts" in PDC Online Help.

Description of the illustration periodic_validity.gif
A third-party application calling the PCM_OP_PRICE_SET_PRICE_LIST opcode and setting the opcode's PIN_FLD_SPLIT_DETAILS input flist parameter. See "Committing Price List Data to the BRM Database" in BRM Configuring Pipeline Rating and Discounting.

Specifying Rounding in Balance Impacts

In a balance impact, you can specify the number of units to which the charge applies. For example, for a mobile phone service, you might charge 0.40 US dollars for every minute of usage in 2-minute increments. In this case, if the unit is Minute, the Increment is 2.

If you specify an increment, you can select a rounding option. Rounding is based on the specified increment. For example, if a 3-minute-and-50-second call is rated in 2-minute increments, it is handled as follows:

No Rounding: Not applicable. (Applies only to an increment of 1.)
Round Down: Charge for 2 minutes ($0.80).
Round Up: Charge for 4 minutes ($1.60).

Specifying if a Balance Impact is Discountable

When creating a balance impact, you can specify if it is discountable in a bundle. By default, balance impacts are discountable.When a charge type is discounted in a bundle, the discount applies to all instances of the charge type that are discountable.For example, you might have a charge offer that charges for two cycle events. You charge a monthly fee for one event, and you grant included minutes for the other event. If you specify a percentage discount for cycle charges in the bundle, the discount applies to both cycle charges.To discount only the monthly fee, you must make the balance impact for the monthly fee discountable and the balance impact that grants included minutes nondiscountable.

About Minimum Charges

You can set a minimum charge for each balance element impacted by a pricing instance. Minimum charges are configured per price tier (see "About Defining Pricing Based on Multiple RUMs") and effective period.

If you define different minimum charges in different price tiers for the same balance element, the largest minimum charge is used during rating. For example, if one step defines a minimum charge of $2 and another a minimum charge of $1, $2 is used.

When multiple price tiers are applied to a charge, the minimum price is applied if the total of the charges does not meet the minimum charge. It is not applied for each of the price tiers if they each do not meet the minimum charge.

About Conditional Balance Impacts

A conditional balance impact is a balance impact that credits or debits a customer's balance only when the customer uses a charge offer for the first time within a specified period; for example, the first time in a day or the first time in two days. For example, you can use conditional balance impacts to grant daily included minutes to a customer, instead of using recurring events.

You can align the start time of the conditional balance impact period with the start time of the associated charge offer, the start of a calendar day, or the event occurrence. You can also specify whether the balance is available from the start time of the period or from the time the event occurs.

Conditional balance impacts can only be used with charge offers that are associated with a service, not with the charge offers associated with an account.

The following example shows how to configure conditional balance impacts for granting daily included minutes.

In this example:

The customer is granted 40 included minutes at $5 per day.
The included minutes are valid for a day.
The customer is not charged on the days that the offer is not used.

To configure conditional balance impacts for granting daily included minutes:

Create a RUM of type Conditional for the desired service and usage event. See the discussion about creating a new RUM configuration in the PDC Help.

Figure 9-3 shows a RUM of type Conditional.

Figure 9-3 New Rum Configuration

Description of "Figure 9-3 New Rum Configuration"
Create a charge offer. See the discussion about creating a charge offer in the PDC Help.
Add a new charge to the charge offer. When you add the charge, ensure that you select the following values:

Charge Category: Usage

Pricing Profile: Convergent Usage

Measured By: The RUM that you created in step 1. Optionally, you can select additional RUMs.

See the discussion about adding a new charge in the PDC Help.
Configure conditional balance impacts to grant 40 minutes at $5 per day on the days the charge offer is used.

Figure 9-4 shows the conditions configured for granting daily included minutes.

Figure 9-4 Conditions for Granting Daily Included Minutes

Description of "Figure 9-4 Conditions for Granting Daily Included Minutes"

Figure 9-5 shows the validity period for the conditional balance impact.

Figure 9-5 Validity Period for a Conditional Balance Impact

Description of "Figure 9-5 Validity Period for a Conditional Balance Impact"

Figure 9-6 shows the conditional balance impacts used in this example for granting daily included minutes.

Figure 9-6 Conditional Balance Impacts for Granting Daily Included Minutes

Description of "Figure 9-6 Conditional Balance Impacts for Granting Daily Included Minutes"

About Prorating Charges

You can specify to not prorate a recurring charge when proration is enabled in the charge offer itself. The proration settings are specified in the charge offer; this option only enables or disables proration for each recurring charge.

Configuring Dynamic Charging

You can configure PDC to apply dynamic charging for one-time, recurring, and usage events by using price tags. Dynamic charging lets you specify different prices at purchase time according to rules defined in setup components.

You add price tags to balance elements of charges. For usage charges using the Convergent Usage pricing profile, you can also add price tags to quantity ranges.

Note:

You cannot use price tags with chargeshare offers.

To configure dynamic charging:

Use the PDC UI or the ImportExportPricing utility to create price tag setup components. Specify the price tag name and permitted values, as well as balance elements, resource units, and services that the price tag can be associated with.
For example, you could create a price tag called FreeMinutesTag and specify a range of valid values from 10 to 50. You can determine that it will be associated with the Free Minutes balance element, the minute resource unit, and the TelcoGSM and Telephony services.

BRM stores the pricing tag configuration in the /config/price_tags object.

See "Configuring Price Tags" for more information about creating price tag setup components.
Use one of the following to add the price tag, such as FreeMinutesTag, to balance elements or quantity ranges:
- The PDC UI: Click the Price Tag icon in pricing table toolbar and then select a price tag from the Price Tag dialog box. For more information, see "Adding Pricing Tags for One-Time and Recurring Charges" or "Adding Price Tags for Usage Charges" in PDC Online Help.
- The ImportExportPricing utility: Use the <priceTag> element under the charge. See "Applying Price Tags to Charges."
When you add a price tag to a balance element, the rules configured in the setup component determine which price tags are available. For balance elements in charge offers, charge selectors, and price model selectors, price tags that match the balance element code, per unit value, and service associated with the charge are available.

When you add a price tag to a quantity range, the service names specified in the setup component determine which price tags are available. Other setup component fields aren't used to match price tags to usage events with quantity ranges.
At purchase time, enter the actual value to use in rating for the price tag. The rules configured in the setup component determine which values are valid. For example, if the setup component is configured with the LIST rule type, only the values configured in the list in the setup component are valid.
BRM stores the price tag values in /offering_override_values objects.

You can use BRM opcodes to get the list of valid price tags for a charge. See "Getting Information about Price Tags" in BRM Opcode Guide.

For information about enabling ECE to override the default value of the pricing attributes at run time, see "Pre-Rating Extension - Overriding Price in Product Offerings" in ECE Implementing Charging.