Billing for DID number usage

There are two sides to billing DID numbers:

• Your DID cost is what you pay a DID provider for numbers, and this is managed by indicating vendor prices while uploading DID numbers.
• Your DID revenue is what you charge your end customers, which is configured using pricing batches to apply a markup to your costs.

You can charge for DID numbers in one of two ways:

• Via pricing batches.
• Individually, per DID number.

DID providers traditionally offer DIDs on a “fixed monthly fee” basis, with no per-minute charges. They also include access for obtaining “buying” rate information for a specific number via API (e.g., phone number 12065551234 will cost $5/month). This is the rate the DID provider charges the service provider that allocates the number to its network.

When you, as the service provider, obtain DID numbers from a DID provider, you are typically charged monthly recurring fees and an optional activation fee for all the DID numbers. Therefore, when provisioning DID numbers to your customers, you apply an additional markup to earn some profit. The markup parameters are defined in pricing batches.

Monthly recurring costs are calculated according to the vendor’s billing period and applied for all obtained DID numbers regardless of whether or not they are assigned to customers or resellers. These costs increase the vendor’s balance.

When your DID provider changes their pricing and sends you an updated DID list, all you have to do is upload it to the DID inventory.

To update the vendor costs in the DID inventory, select the Update vendor costs for existing DIDs option during the DID upload. The new DID numbers from the .csv file, if any, will simply be uploaded to their respective vendor batches in the DID inventory.

Upon upload, the new vendor costs override previous costs for all DID numbers regardless of their status (Not in Use, In Use, etc.). You will receive a notification stating the number of new and updated DIDs that have been uploaded to the DID inventory.

Your DID revenue is what you charge customers and resellers for DID numbers, and it is managed using pricing batches where you can define the following pricing parameters:

• Additional activation fee is a configurable fixed amount charged when a new number is provisioned, in addition to the DID provider’s activation fee.
• Additional recurring fee is a configurable fixed amount charged when a new number is provisioned, in addition to the DID provider’s recurring fee.
• Recurring fee markup is a configurable percentage by which the DID provider's recurring fee is increased. For instance, when defining the ability to dynamically assign US numbers from DIDWW, you can specify a 10% markup on the DID provider rates. In this case, if a customer assigns a phone number 12065551234 (DIDWW rate $5/month), the end user will be charged $5.50/month.

As a result, the total charge for the DID would be:

• At activation – DID provider activation fee + Additional activation fee.
• Monthly – DID provider monthly fee + the markup, consisting of the Additional recurring fee and the Recurring fee markup. This calculation may result in some “inconvenient” numbers, such as 3.289, which are usually rounded up.

DID fees (calculated as the sum of vendor fees and DID markup) are also modified automatically. Thus, customers using DID numbers are charged updated recurring fees. Their activation fees will not be recalculated.

You can choose a rounding method to apply to the DID charges in the customer class.

You can select one of the following rounding methods:

• Away from zero – this rounding method is selected by default. It works similarly to rounding up but differs when rounding negative values. Positive and negative values round symmetrically. For example, if the rounding precision is set to two decimals, then:
  • 1.214, 1.215, and 1.216 all round up to 1.22.
  • - 1.214, - 1.215, and - 1.216 all round to - 1.22.
• Half away from zero – this rounding method works similarly to arithmetic rounding but differs when rounding negative values. Positive and negative values round symmetrically. For example, if the rounding precision is set to two decimals, then:
  • 1.214 rounds to 1.21, 1.215 and 1.216 rounds to 1.22.
  • - 1.214 rounds to - 1.21, - 1.215 and - 1.216 rounds to - 1.22.
• Special rounding (malaysian) – formerly known as custom rounding. This type of rounding depends on the last decimal at precision point. For example, if the rounding precision is set to two decimals, and:
  • If the last decimal at precision point is [0...2], it is set to zero. For example, 1.204, 1.215 and 1.226 all round to 1.20.
  • If the last decimal at precision point is [3...7], it is set to 5. For example, 1.234, 1.255 and 1.276 all round to 1.25.
  • If the last decimal at precision point is [8...9], it is set to 0 and the previous decimal increases by 1. For example, 1.284, 1.296 all round to 1.30.

Also, when creating a DID pricing batch, you can choose the number of decimals to round the DID charges in the Rounding precision option.

For instance, if the number 12065551277 (which has a $1.00 activation fee and a $3.00 monthly fee charged by the DID provider) is provisioned by an end user, the DID pricing setup would be as follows:

• $2.95 for additional activation fee,
• $1 for additional recurring fee,
• 10% for recurring fee markup,
• and 0.01 (2 decimals) pattern for rounding precision.

  

If a customer has a shorter billing period, e.g., weekly, a proportion of the DID provider’s monthly fees will be used to calculate the customer’s charge.

If you want to use phone numbers just for calls within your network (e.g., for SIP calls among accounts), you still want to see which of them are in use and which are available. The best way to do this is by using the DID inventory. However, since these DIDs are just for calls within the network, they are, as a rule, provisioned free of charge and do not incur any charge for the customers.

Therefore, to manage such DID numbers differently, a completely free of charge DID has been introduced. These are the DID numbers that have no costs or charges associated with them and are always free of charge for every entity they are provisioned to.

When an administrator assigns a completely free DID number to a pricing batch and then provisions the DID number to a customer, no charges apply.

Since there are no recurring costs associated with the DID number, no charges are recorded for the vendor. Thus, both customer and vendor balances remain unchanged since no xDRs are created in the database.

You can provision DID numbers to your customers and resellers either for a fee or free of charge.

When you create a pricing batch, you can select the type – "Free of charge" or "Fee-paying" (the type cannot be changed later). For example, if you are planning to assign this pricing batch to free virtual phone numbers for use within your network, select "Free of charge." To set the pricing parameters (such as activation fee, recurring fee, and recurring fee markup) for DID numbers, select "Fee-paying."

Prior to allocating DID numbers to a customer, you need to assign each number to an appropriate pricing batch.

When a DID number is assigned to a customer from a pricing batch with a DID markup, the marked up price is applied to the customer.

Pricing batches are created either by the administrator or the reseller. An administrator does not see pricing batches created by resellers because these contain resellers’ markups.

You can move DIDs from the pricing batches to which they are currently assigned to other pricing batches.

If a DID number is not in use, it can be reassigned to any pricing batch. However, if a DID number is allocated to a customer or a reseller, it can only be reassigned to the same type of pricing batch (i.e., to “Free of charge” or “Fee-paying” pricing batches).

Note that when a DID number is assigned to a “Free of charge” pricing batch, such a DID number becomes free of charge. This means that no charges apply to either the customer or the reseller when a DID number from a free pricing batch is assigned to them.

Your customers may ask for a personal price when purchasing a DID number. Instead of creating a special pricing batch with this new markup and moving the DID numbers to it, set individual fees for this DID. When you create an account, click the button, choose a particular DID number, and specify the individual pricing for it.

A DID number with modified fees is automatically marked as having Individual pricing.