Calendar Based Charging (Doc ID 2048592.1)

Last updated on MAY 31, 2023

Applies to:

Goal

This article explains the approach to realizing Calendar Based Charging in Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management(BRM) Applications.

When servicing corporate customers issuing invoices with cut-off date on the last day of the month is almost a universal request. A prevailing practice for corporations around the world is to settle accounts payable & receivables, run financial reporting and reconciliation at the end of the calendar month. Naturally issuing invoices that fall neatly within the reporting milestones simplifies matters for the customers. In BRM, the obvious way of invoicing on the 1st of the month is to set the BDOM of every bill unit to the first day of every month.

However such decision is not always feasible because of its downsides. Instead of clustering customers into several billing cycles and spreading them out evenly across the month, the operator is forced to perform all invoice processing activities on a single day. This issue afflicts call center. The volumes of billing inquires will spike around a single day of the month corresponding to date customers receives the invoice. The additional pressure to meet the SLAs, the increased cost of hardware necessary for processing entire customer base and the increased CSR head count required to cope with lopsided call traffic pattern prompts a search for alternate solutions.

Requirement:

From the above problem statement it is clear the solution must meet the following two criteria:

1. The invoice cut-off date should be the last day of the month.
2. The operator should be able to distribute the invoice processing jobs throughout the month.

The perspective solution would permit decoupling of the invoice processing schedule from the cut-off dates used in calculating the charges on the invoices. Thus an invoice run on the 15th of the month would still calculate charges as if the cut-off date is the last day of the month. A common term for such practice is Calendar Based Charging. 

Solution

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