2010-2Q: BILLING: Invoice Data Usage and Allowance

Overview

SIMPLer has been updated to allow an operator to include a customer's data allowance and actual data usage on the monthly invoices. This is primariarly intended for operators who charge for overage, but may be used by any operator.

Two new invoice template variables are available to be used (see the end of this document for some sample template code using these variables):

BANDWIDTHALLOWANCE

The data allowance, in Gb, assigned to the customer. Note that this does not include any overage allowances assigned to the customer during the month, or unused overage allowances carried over from previous months. This template variable will either contain the allowance, formatted to 2 decimal places and including the Gb suffix, or will be blank if the customer is not assigned a data allowance.

BANDWIDTHUSAGE

The actual data usage, in Gb, for the one month period leading up to the invoice date - for example if the invoice date is 15/April, this variable will contain the data usage for the dates 15/March - 14/April inclusive. As with BANDWIDTHALLOWANCE this variable is formatted to 2 decimal places and includes the Gb suffix. If there was no data usage for the period covered, this variable will be blank.

Setup

As this feature requires additional processing during invoice generation, it should only be enabled if the operator requires it.

Enable the feature as follows:

• • Under the "SIMPLer Settings" section in the "users -> Modify WISP" page set the flag "Calculate data usage and allowance for invoice" to the required value:

Figure 1: Enable/disable feature

• • Update the invoice templates (invoices -> Manage Templates >>) to include the BANDWIDTHALLOWANCE and BANDWIDTHUSAGE

Sample Invoice

The figure below show how the data usage and allowance might appear on an invoice. The template code to generate this is included at the end of this page.

Figure 2: Sample Invoice showing usage and allowance data

Figure 3: Sample invoice template code

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