Understanding and Managing Billing for Balances
Before setting up Balances for your end-customer Accounts, we strongly recommend that you review this topic, which explains in details how charges are drawn-down against Balance amounts for billing purposes:
Secondly, if you intend to use both Prepayments and Balances on your end-customer Accounts, please review this section on how to control the draw-down order against them for billing:
Understanding Charges Draw-Down Against Balances for Billing
When you create Balances for an end customer Account, it's important to know how the Balance amounts are handled for billing purposes:
Draw-Down Charge Types
A Balance amount on an Account can be applied to Bills that contain any of the following charge types and made available for draw-down:
Usage
Standing Charge
Minimum Spend
Recurring Charges:
Counter running total charge
Counter adjustment debit
Notes:
Controlling the charge types for draw-down? When you create or edit a Balance, you can select the charge types you want to be able to draw-down against the Balance. If you select none, then all are able to draw-down against it.
Balance and Prepayments on an Account? If you have both Balances and Prepayments added to an end-customer Account, then you can specify the order in which charges are drawn-down against them. See the following section for details.
Balance Active Period
For billing purposes, usage, standing charges, minimum spend, or recurring charges on an Account with a Balance can only be drawn-down against the Balance amount for the period the Balance is active for the Account.
Importantly, note that if you create a Balance on an Account and the Balance is active for only part of the normal billing period set up for the Account, then only the charges for usage, standing charge, minimum spend or recurring charges that are due for the period the Balance is active will be drawn down against the Balance, not charges due for the entire normal billing period for the Account
You can also optionally define a rollover or grace period, with a restricted rollover amount specified, to allow any unused Balance amounts to continue to be drawn-down against for billing purposes beyond the defined active period for the Balance.
Balance Consumption
When applied to a Bill, the Balance amount will be drawn down until it is fully consumed. If the Balance amount is greater than the Bill amount and the Balance remains active for some or all of the next billing period, the remaining Balance amount will be applied to subsequent bills.
Balance Transactions Ledger
Each Transaction that makes up the Balance, for example, an addition of credit, consumption of credit against a Bill, or adjustment of credit, are all recorded against a ledger, so that a complete record of all Transaction movements is known.
The Balance transactions panel on a Balance details page acts as a ledger. For example, if a Bill draws-down against a Balance for charges due on the Account during the Balance active period, then this will automatically show as a Bill Transaction with a link out to view the Bill. See Working with the Balance Transactions Ledger for more details.
Multiple Balances on Account
You can set up multiple Balances for a single Account. If you do this, there are some key points to note:
Draw-down order. If you have created more than one Balance for an Account, the order in which Balances are drawn-down against is determined by Balance end date - the Balance with the earlier end date is draw-down against first.
If you have multiple Balances ending on the same date and want to enforce a particular draw-down order, please contact m3ter Support so we can guide you toward the best solution based on your current configuration.
Draw-down proportional to usage. If you have multiple and overlapping Balances, then at billing charges will be drawn-down against them proportionally according to usage over the billing period. If your pricing use case requires multiple overlapping Balances on Accounts, please contact m3ter Support so we can guide you toward the best solution to meet your requirements.
Overage surcharge percentage must be configured for last Balance drawn-down. As stated above, if you have multiple Balances on an end-customer Account, the draw-down order is determined by the end date on the different Balances - the Balance with earliest expiry date is drawn-down against first. However, if an overage surcharge is not configured for the last Balance that will be drawn-down against for overages, then no overage surcharge that might be configured on Balances drawn-down previously will be applied.
Period for Charges Draw-Down
The following diagrams illustrate how the effective period for charges draw-down against Balance amounts on an Account are determined for billing purposes:
Active Balance Period by Date. No rollover or grace periods for consuming the Balance amount defined:
Active Balance Period by Date with Grace Periods. Rollover periods defined for consuming the Balance amount:
Active Balance Period by Date/Time. No rollover or grace periods defined for consuming the Balance amount:
Note that the end date/time is exclusive to the second, meaning that in this example the Balance amount can be used for draw-down against charges due up to and including 11:59:59 on 30th June.
Balances Draw-Down Order Against Prepayments
If you have added Balances and Prepayments as credits on an Account, you can define the order in which these credit amounts are drawn-down for billing the Account. Four options are available for this credit application order for Balances against Prepayments:
Prepayment then balance. Draw-down against Prepayment credit before Balance credit. Default.
Balance then prepayment. Draw-down against Balance credit before Prepayment credit.
Prepayment only. Only draw-down against Prepayment credit.
Balance only. Only draw-down against Balance credit.
You can configure this in two places:
At Organization level as part of your Organization configuration. See Viewing and Editing Organization Configuration.
At individual Account level when creating or editing the Account to which the Prepayments and Balances have been added under Bill settings. See Creating an Account.
If you configure this at Account level, the Account level setting takes precedence over any setting at Organizational level.
Important! If the Account belongs to a Parent/Child Account hierarchy, then the Credit application order settings are not available, and the draw-down order defaults always to Prepayment then Balance order.
Additional Support
Login to the Support portal for additional help and to send questions to our Support team.