For prepaid customers
If a prepaid customer doesn’t have sufficient funds to cover all their subscriptions charged in advance, their service can be automatically suspended (this option can be set on the customer class level or for an individual customer). As soon as funds become available, the service is resumed.
Say John, a prepaid customer, has an active $30 monthly subscription “Triple play bundle” charged in advance. On November 1st, PortaBilling calculates the in-advance subscription charges for November ($30) and compares it with the amount of available funds, e.g.,$20. Since the available funds are insufficient, the customer’s service is immediately suspended.
If John’s service provider configured the subscription not to charge the subscription fee for the days when the services are suspended, PortaBilling recalculates the customer’s subscription charges each day to cover the remaining billing period and compares that with the funds available ($20).
For every day that the customer is suspended, the sum of their subscription charges decreases by the daily fee ($1) because they are not charged for those days. On November 11th, the sum of subscription charges equals the customer’s available funds ($20). PortaBilling charges the customer and resumes their service.
On December 1st, PortaBilling attempts to deduct $30 for December from John's balance, but he has no available funds. PortaBilling suspends service for John.
On December 5th, John makes a $50 payment, so now he has $50 in available funds. Since the customer couldn’t use the service from December 1st to December 5th due to the suspension, the subscription charges are calculated for the period starting from December 5th to December 31st (the last day of the billing period): $30 monthly fee/31 day*27 days=$26.12. This amount is then deducted from the customer’s available funds. The customer’s service is resumed.
By default, PortaBilling doesn’t suspend the service if the customer’s available funds are not enough to cover the subscription charge. PortaBilling calculates charges and applies them, even if the charge amount is higher than the available funds (in this case, the balance becomes negative, indicating debt).
If you want PortaBilling to automatically suspend prepaid customers’ service when their funds are insufficient to cover pending subscription charges, you can configure this:
- On the customer class level.
Go to a Customer class > Finances > General info > Status change > Insufficient funds for subscriptions > turn on the Suspend customers toggle.
Then, assign this customer class to each customer.
- For an individual customer.
Go to Customer > Finances > General info > set the Suspend on insufficient funds for subscriptions option to Yes.
This configuration also works for postpaid customers – if subscription charges push the balance beyond their credit limit, their service will be suspended.
For debit accounts
To stop providing services to users who have insufficient funds on their debit accounts, configure PortaBilling to automatically block debit accounts when their available funds are insufficient to cover pending subscription charges.
As soon as an account has enough funds to pay for the subscription (either the user tops up the account or the admin applies a manual payment), the account is charged for the subscription and automatically unblocked. Thus, the service becomes available for the user again.
If you want PortaBilling to automatically block debit accounts when their funds are insufficient to cover pending subscription charges, you can configure this on the customer class level:
Go to Customer class > Finances > General info > Status Change > Insufficient funds for subscription > enable the Block debit accounts toggle. Then assign this customer class to your customers that have debit accounts.
By default, when the account is not charged for the days they do not use the service, PortaBilling will apply a full subscription charge and issue a credit for the period during which the account was blocked.
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