Define your product's pricing structure

Imagine that you are an energy provider that sells power subscriptions. You would charge your client activation fees when you start providing the service, a monthly subscription to cover the distribution network fees and a fee proportional to the monthly power consumption. Then let’s say, 3 months after the start of the delivery, your client faces a problem with his meter. The distribution network operator would send a technician to replace the meter and would charge you for that service and you will invoice the service to the end-user.

In Opencell, your activation fee would be a “One Shot charge” of “Subscription” type, the monthly subscription fee would be a “Recurring Charge”, the fee proportional to the monthly consumption would correspond to a “Usage Charge” that is related to the consumption data and the meter replacement service fee would correspond to a “One Shot Charge” of “Other” type.

In this unit, you will understand how to configure and use the different charge types in Opencell.

One Shot Charge

A one shot charge is a charge invoiced on a punctual one time basis.

It can also be of 3 different types:

• Subscription

• Other

• Termination

One Shot Charge types

One Shot Subscription Type

As a catalog administrator, you would use a one shot charge of “subscription” type mainly when you want to charge your client activation fees for example, that applies once for a given subscription.

One Shot Termination Type

As a catalog administrator, you would use a one shot charge of “termination” type whenever you want to include penalty fees when your client decides to terminate the subscription.

One Shot Other Type

As a catalog administrator, you would use a one shot charge of “Other” type whenever you want to charge for a limited time or one time delivery service. It can precede a subscription without being tied to its activation or occur during the subscription upon client request or due to a mandatory action that might be needed.

This type of one shot charges can be subject to Invoice Plans and Commercial Gestures.

Creating a One Shot Charge

As previously seen in Use Cases, the End Users Training Product is a mandatory service that is provided before the licence subscription is running, as a matter of activation, and it’s a one time charge.

1. From Catalog Manager’s Main Menu, select Products

2. Search for the Product Name: User Training 10

3. Click on it

4. Click on CHARGES tab

5. Click on CREATE

6. Enter Name: CH0010

7. Enter Label: Cost Per Training Day 10

8. Enter Charge type: One shot

9. Enter Tariff type one-shot: Subscription

10. Save

11. Go back

12. Save

The Post-delivery Support Product includes an Operation KPI Dashboard that is charged once, and is independent from the support recurring service.

1. From Catalog Manager’s Main Menu, select Products

2. Search for the Product Name: Post delivery support 50

3. Click on it

4. Click on CHARGES tab

5. Click on CREATE

6. Enter Name: CH0020

7. Enter Label: Operation KPI Dashboard 20

8. Enter Charge type: One shot

9. Enter Tariff type one-shot: Other

10. Save

11. Go back

12. Save

Recurring Charge

A recurring charge relates to charging fees for a product over a given period of time and according to a defined frequency.

Subscription Term

Subscription products or Products with a recurring Charge as modeled in Opencell, are special because they’re sold as a service that lasts for days, months, or years. Since time is involved, you must consider what unit of time you want to use when quoting subscription products. For example, do you typically quote in terms of months, like a video streaming service? Or do you sell in units of days, like you might when renting industrial equipment?

In Opencell, the subscription term unit is defined by the Repetition Calendar parameter. Before you start configuring subscription products, you should configure your Calendars in the Administration Console. You may define a monthly, bimonthly, weekly, every 20 days or any time interval calendar.

Once you selected your term unit, you can define the subscription term represented by the Number of Repetitions parameter.

For instance, if your subscription Product is charged monthly over a period of 1 year, your Reptition Calendar is a monthly calendar and the Number of Reptitions is set to 12.

When you define a Number of Repetitions, this parameter represents the default term of your subscription. However, in your Product configuration, you may create an attribute of a numeric type (integer, numeric value, list of numeric values) that would correspond to the term of your subscription. In this case, while configuring your recurring charge, you may select this attribute from the picklist of the field Attribute Number of Repetitions.

The picklist from which you can choose an Attribute Number of Repetitions contains all attribute related to the product with the following types: Integer, numeric value, list of numeric values.

Proration

This feature allows you to use proration principle for your billing. Which means, do you want to invoice a full period to your client, or would you rather invoice them for the remaining time left on the current period.

Periods are defined via the subscription term (e.g. monthly, quaterly, yearly…)

Let’s take the example of a subscription with a monthly period that starts on the first of each month and ends on the 30th or 31st of each month. In the case I activated proration on the subscription and my client takes the subscription on the 20th, then the client will be charged for the remaing of the period (10/30) for a month with 30 days. If the recurring price of my subscription is of 60,00€, the client will then be charged: (60/30)*10 = 20,00€.

Recurring charge invoicing mode

When you invoice a recurring charge, you either choose to invoice it in advance or in arrears according to the subscription term. By default, in Opencell, recurring Charges are invoiced in arrears. To select advance billing option, set the toggle Apply in Advance to TRUE position.

Creating a recurring charge

The Licence for SMB product has a monthly subscription fee charged at the beginning of each month for the running month.

1. From Catalog Manager’s Main Menu, select Products

2. Search for the Product Name: Licence for SMB 20

3. Click on it

4. Click on CHARGES tab

5. Click on CREATE

6. Enter Name: CH0030

7. Enter Label: Licence SMB Subscription 30

8. Enter Charge type: Recurring

9. Enter Number of repetition: 12

10. Select Repetition calendar: Monthly

11. Save

12. Go back

13. Save

The Post-Delivery Support product has also a monthly subscription fee charged at the beginning of each month for the running month.

1. From Catalog Manager’s Main Menu, select Products

2. Search for the Product Name: Post delivery support 50

3. Click on it

4. Click on CHARGES tab

5. Click on CREATE

6. Enter Name: CH0040

7. Enter Label: Support Subscription 40

8. Enter Charge type: Recurring

9. Enter Number of repetition: 12

10. Select Repetition calendar: Monthly

11. Save

12. Go back

13. Save

The Licence for Key Accounts product has also a monthly subscription fee charged at the beginning of each month for the running month.

1. From Catalog Manager’s Main Menu, select Products

2. Search for the Product Name: Licence for Key Accounts 30

3. Click on it

4. Click on CHARGES tab

5. Click on CREATE

6. Enter Name: CH0070

7. Enter Label: Licence Key Accounts 70

8. Enter Charge type: Recurring

9. Enter Number of repetition: 12

10. Select Repetition calendar: Monthly

11. Save

12. Go back

13. Save

The Consulting Services product has also a monthly subscription fee when the Priority Pass option is chosen which is charged at the beginning of each month for the running month.

1. From Catalog Manager’s Main Menu, select Products

2. Search for the Product Name: Consulting Services 40

3. Click on it

4. Click on CHARGES tab

5. Click on CREATE

6. Enter Name: CH0060

7. Enter Label: Priority Pass Subscription 60

8. Enter Charge type: Recurring

9. Enter Number of repetition: 12

10. Select Repetition calendar: Monthly

11. Save

12. Go back

13. Save

Usage charge

Creating a usage charge

The Consulting Services Product has a usage charged based on the consumed consulting hours each month.

1. From Catalog Manager’s Main Menu, select Products

2. Search for the Product Name: Consulting Services 40

3. Click on it

4. Click on CHARGES tab

5. Click on CREATE

6. Enter Name: CH0050

7. Enter Label: Cost Per Consulting Day 50

8. Enter Charge type: Usage

9. Save

10. Go back

11. Save

Attribute Quantity of Use is an advanced Catalog Manager feature that we won’t discuss in this manual. As for parameters, they are related to the Mediation process which is out of scope in this manual.

Linked Attributes

A Linked Attribute is an boolean type Attribute of the Product. When selected as a Linked Attribute to one of the Charges of the same Product, it means that if its value is set to TRUE, the charge applies, and if its value is set to FALSE, the charge doesn’t apply.

Since charging the Priority Pass Subscription 60 recurring Charge is related to whether the option of having a Priority Pass is selected or not, Include Priority Pass 20 is Linked Attribute to the charge Priority Pass Subscription 60.

1. From the Charge Priority Pass Subscription 60 window, go to the Linked Attribute field

2. Select the attribute Include Priority Pass 20 from the picker

3. Save

Overriding prices

You may allow your salesrep to override you catalog prices during the quoting process. To activate this option set the Overloadable toggle to the TRUE position.

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