Billing Parameters
Contents
Overview
Customers can purchase digital services at any time during their billing cycle. As part of the configuration of the products associated to these services, attributes such as billing offset, and proration are often considered. These become especially relevant if pay on bill options are available for customers to choose at the time of purchase.
Supported Capabilities
The MarketONE Subscription Management (SLM) domain manages and maintains the billing parameters for the products. Attributes such as proration, billing cycle, and frequency can be configured within the SLM domain as part of the product configuration. The SLM domain supports complete refunds capability, including the proration of refunds on the basis of unused service, or the ability to attach termination fees if a service is canceled within a commitment period.
Recommended Experience
Most digital service providers only support the ability of charging the customer at the anniversary of their purchase. Functions such as offset billing and refunds are not common. It is recommended that those same principles be adopted for MarketONE. This implies that every subscription service be configured to bill in advance for the next month. So, on the day of purchase, the customer is effectively paying for the next 30 days of service.
During this period if the customer makes a complaint due to dissatisfaction, a refund can be applied to the customer’s account based on the number of unused days of service.
When it comes to billing offset, having the charge applied on the day of purchase implies that for customers who choose pay on bill, they might see an offset between their bill cycle and the subscription cycle. For example: if a customer has a bill cycle for the 1st of every month, but purchases Netflix on the 10th of the month, their monthly invoice on the 1st of February will show a charge for Netflix from the 10th of January to the 9th of February. To avoid confusion, it is recommended that the billing item detail the period of the charge on the invoice so that it restricts the calls into the contact center.
Revision History
| Version | Description |
|---|---|
| 2020.03 | Added this topic. |