Configuring Billing

Specifying the Minimum Payment to Collect

You can specify the minimum payment for billing. The pin_collect billing utility retrieves only those account bill units with an amount due greater than the minimum you specify. Charges accrue in the account balances associated with the bill unit until they reach the minimum amount, and then the amount due is collected.

The minimum value is expressed in terms of the account currency.

By default, the minimum amount is 2.

Open the billing utility configuration file (BRM_home/apps/pin_billd/pin.conf) in a text editor.
Change the value of the minimum entry.
Save the file.

Setting the Minimum Amount to Charge

To set the default minimum amount to charge to a credit-card:

Customize the PCM_OP_PYMT_POL_PRE_COLLECT policy opcode. See "Customizing the Minimum Amount to Charge" in BRM Opcode Guide.
Specify the amount in the CM pin.conf file minimum_payment entry.

There is no BRM configuration entry to set the minimum charge for accounts that pay their bills by using the invoice payment method.

Note:

Ensure that the minimum credit card charge does not conflict with the minimum amount to collect.

Customizing the Format of Bill and Invoice Numbers

Bill numbering for regular bills is B1-1, B1-2, B1-3, and so on. For corrective bills, the default numbering is CB1-1, CB1-2, CB1-3, and so on. The default numbering takes the format:

PrefixDB_num-Seq_Number

where:

Prefix represents the prefix to be used for the bill. B is used for regular bills, and C is used for corrective bills.
DB_num indicates the number of the database in which the original bill is stored. For example, when DB_num is 1, 3, or 7, the prefixes for regular bills are B1, B3, or B7.
Seq_Number is the sequence number.

To customize how BRM formats bill numbers and invoice numbers, create a custom application that calls the PCM_OP_BILL_POL_SPEC_BILLNO opcode. See "Customizing the Format of Bill and Invoice Numbers" in BRM Opcode Guide.

Specifying When to Apply Custom Bill Numbers

For corrective bills, BRM assigns a new bill number when it generates the corrective bill only. It does not support applying bill numbers at any other time in the corrective billing process.

For regular bills, you can control when custom bill numbers must be assigned to account bill units, which can be useful for revenue and expense accounting purposes. Custom bill numbers can be applied at the beginning of the first accounting cycle or at the end of the previous accounting cycle for multimonth billing cycles.

To specify when BRM assigns custom bill numbers:

Open the CM configuration file (BRM_home/sys/cm/pin.conf) in a text editor.
Change the value of the custom_bill_no entry.
- 0 assigns custom bill numbers at the end of the previous accounting cycle. This is the default.
- 1 assigns custom bill numbers at the beginning of the first accounting cycle.
Stop and restart the CM.

Configuring Auto-Triggered Billing

If you perform no offline usage charging, you might not need auto-triggered billing. You can enable or disable auto-triggered billing by setting the following business parameters:

ConfigBillingDelay. By default, the ConfigBillingDelay parameter is set to 0. If you are using delayed billing, you must set it to a value greater than 0.

When billing delay is specified, the system maintains an internal list of bill items for both the previous billing cycle and the current billing cycle so that new events impact bill items of the current billing cycle and old events impact bill items of the previous billing cycle.
AutoTriggeringLimit. By default, AutoTriggeringLimit is set to 2. For example, if billing for the previous cycle has not occurred and the billing for the current cycle is due in the next two days, then billing for the previous cycle is auto-triggered within these two days.

You set these parameters by running the pin_bus_params utility. For information on this utility, see "pin_bus_params" in BRM Developer's Guide.

To set the ConfigBillingDelay parameter, see "Configuring Delayed Billing".

Note:

If you do not use delayed billing but want to disable auto-triggered billing, set ConfigBillingDelay to 0.

To set the AutoTriggeringLimit parameter:

Go to BRM_home/sys/data/config.

Create an XML file from the /config/business_params object:

pin_bus_params -r BusParamsBilling bus_params_billing.xml

In the XML file, enter a value greater than 0.

For example, if you change the value to 5, auto-triggered billing is enabled only for the last 5 days of each billing cycle.
```
<AutoTriggeringLimit>5</AutoTriggeringLimit>
```
Load the XML file into the BRM database:
```
pin_bus_params bus_params_billing.xml
```
Stop and restart the CM.
(Multischema systems only) Run the pin_multidb script with the -R CONFIG parameter. For more information, see "pin_multidb" in BRM System Administrator's Guide.

Setting the Bill Unit Status When Billing Errors Occur

When the billing utility (pin_bill_accts) encounters an error while generating a bill for a bill unit, the utility sets the billing status of the bill unit to PIN_BILL_ERROR. Bill units with an error status are not selected when billing is run.

Note:

When billing fails for a nonpaying child bill unit, the status of the nonpaying bill unit and of the paying parent bill unit are both set to PIN_BILL_ERROR. This ensures that when billing fails for a nonpaying bill unit, the paying bill unit is also not billed. Otherwise, the parent bill might not include charges from the nonpaying bill unit, resulting in incorrect billing.

After you have resolved the billing errors, you can rerun billing for the failed bill units by running the billing utility with the -retry option. See "pin_bill_accts".

To set the bill unit status when billing errors occur:

Open the billing utility configuration file (BRM_home/apps/pin_billd/pin.conf) in a text editor.
Add the following line and enter the appropriate value.
- 0 sets the billing status in the /billinfo object. This is the default.
- 1 does not set the billing status in the /billinfo object.
```
- pin_bill_accts unset_error_status 1
```
Save the file.
Run the billing utility.