A customer is a company or a person that uses services and pays for them.
Each customer has one or more accounts. An account represents a device, an application, or a person – for example, an IP phone, a PBX extension, a SIP trunk, or an internet user. Each account has a unique ID that identifies the device or user consuming the service.
Each account is assigned a product. The product defines which services the account can access and how those services are charged. It includes one or more tariffs (a tariff per service), and can also include a subscription plan and/or a bundle.
Accounts have a role that defines the purpose of an account within a customer business model and controls which products can be assigned to it and which account ID formats are acceptable. For example, in a cloud PBX setup, an account with the Phone line role can only be assigned products configured for that role, and the account ID can only be a phone number.
The diagram below shows how these entities relate to each other.
PortaBilling has three categories of sales agents:
- Resellers purchase services from you and sell them to their customers (or subresellers) under their own brand. Customers of the reseller are called subcustomers on the Admin interface to distinguish them from your direct customers. See Resellers.
- Distributors sell your packages to your customers and typically represent distribution channels for prepaid services (e.g., SIM cards). Distributors earn a one-time commission on each sale. See Distributors.
- Representatives sign up new customers for you and earn recurring commissions based on those customers' charges or payments. See Representatives.
Resellers and distributors can also create their own subresellers and subdistributors.
