Call Tarrifs

Call tarrifs are a standard term in the telephone industry describing the charges for a call to a specific destination. E.g. The charges for a call from the USA to Australia.

As simple as it sounds call tarrifs are the most complex task in any telecommunications billing platform due to the nature of telecommunications billing. You see billing a telephone call can consist of several types of charges, these are listed below:

The cost of the call per minute, second or "6th of a minute", etc.
The call may be Untimed such as 10 cents for unlimited time.
The call may be charged at 5 cents for the first minute and 3 cents for any additional minutes
The call my have a "Flag Fall" of 4 cents and then be charged at 1 cent a minute.
The call may have all of the above (except untimed) wrapped up into the charge.

The power of vspPanel is that it allows you to do any of the above and more. Therefore giving you the power of a full size telco on your VOIP platform.

Billing Packages, what are these?

Billing packages are what vspPanel uses to "Group" call tarrifs (or call costs) together. Billing packages are a group of call costs. E.g. You may have a group for customers who are on a certain package. Such as customers who pay $9.00 per month monthly fee may get rates to certain destinations cheaper then those customers who pay no monthly fee. We can define these users by setting up "Billing Packages". In the scenario above you would have a Billing Package which is called "My billing package for monthly charged user" and another for the users paying no monthly charge, such as "My billing package for no monthly charge users".

As complicated as it sounds, please think of "Billing Packages" as groups of "Call Costs".

Fig 1. How Call Tarrifs are Grouped.

The Call Tarrifs Initial Menu

Most Items in the inital call tarrifs menu are self explanatory, however for completeness we will list them below:

Add Billing Package: Adds a new billing package to the system
Remove Billing Package: Removes an existing billing package AND all call tarrifs inside it.
Edit Billing Package: Allows you to edit the name of a billing package. This will change instantly for all users of the package.
Show All Packages: Shows all of the packages in the system currently.
Change Package Call Rates: This is where you can change the call rates inside a billing package. (Where you edit the costs of calls for customers on a package).
Default Numbering: This is where you add your default numbering plans. (Explained more below)
Default Call Rates: This is where you add your default call rates (Explained more below)

The "Change Package Call Rates" Menu:

The change package call rates menu is where all of your call rates for your billing package are set. Call Rates are split into 2 groups, these are "Call Rates" and "Numbering". Both of which are explained below:

Call Rates:

The call rates section allows you to define a "Call Cost" for a certain type of call. E.g. You could define a call type called "Untimed Calls for US Cities" and make them all 10 cents untimed, or you could define a call cost which is timed at 2c per minute for "International Destinations".

In most cases you will create a call rate for a country and save it to the system such as "Australia" 1.8c per minute.

Important things to note when costing a call:

The name of a plan can be duplicated as long as they are in different packages.
Untimed calls are charged an untimed fee and ignore any further "Timed" settings.
Flag fall is always charged on timed calls if it is entered in as a once off cost.
All costs are in CENTS or the non-dollar denomination of your local currency (e.g. Pence for the UK)
All times are in SECONDS and may go further then single seconds. E.g. 0.12 seconds is fine.
Call Caps apply to Flag Falls + Timed Calls, if your flag fall hits the call cap or exceeds it no more charges will be added to the call.
The second charge can be left blank on timed calls if you are only charging in a flat timed manner. E.g. 5 cents per minute would simply mean entering the first charge as 5 and the first charge length as 60
The second charge / length can be used to make more complex charging plans. E.g. 5 cents per minute for the first 2 minutes and 3 cents per minute for every minute thereafter would mean entering the first charge as 5 the first charge length as 120 the second charge as 3 and the second charge length as 60.
For a FREE call simply enter 0 in the Untimed Amount field.

As you can see, just about any combination is possible.

Numbering:

Numbering defines an area which can be called from your system. E.g. "New York", for the New York area you would put in the country code, and number that customers would call to access New York. Then you would attach a "Call Rate" to the number to be dialled such as "Untimed Calls for US Cities" as described in Call Rates above.

The reason for seperating the two sections is to allow you to define a "basic" call rate for several destinations which you then simply add a number too.

(It makes sense as you begin to do many many routes / call rates, trust us...)

The Default Numbering and Call Rates in the billing menu.

You may have noticed that there are "Default" numbering and call rates in the system. These are designed as a "Catch All" system. Basically what this means is that if you create a billing package with "Sydney Australia" in it as the only charge in the entire billing package and the customer suddenly attempts to call "Brazil" the system will first check the billing package that you created (in the example above thats "Billing Package 1" ) It will then find that you have no rates / numbering for that area so it will then go and search the "Default" package for a number / charge for this call.

Why do this you ask?, Well this allows for really speedy creation of billing packages. If you create a DEFAULT billing plan with all of the countries around the world and set your charges for them once then for all of your other billing packages that you create all you will have to do is make a "Modified" charge for the charges that should be different then the default charge. E.g. I have a default package with the entire worlds dialling codes in it, these all have a set cost. Then I create a package called "Australia" and I want to make anyone on that package get Australian mobiles at a cheaper rate then the "Default" rate. To do this all I have to do is create 1 item in the entire package, the item would have Australian Mobiles set to a rate such as 14 cents per minute for all people on the package. The effect of this will be that when the people on that package call Australian Mobiles (Cell Phones) they will get 14c mobile calls, however if the same people call Brazil or the USA they will be charged the default rate.

As you can see above the default dialling packages should be used to field the majority of your call costs and your billing packages should simply be implemented to filter calls that need to be costed differently.

Once you have implemented your full default dialing plan, an average billing plan should take less then 5 minutes to setup.

Where the heck do I get the worlds dialling codes?

vspPanel automatically installs a basic 1,800 numbers for calling in the default plans. These plans when the system is installed currently have no rates, these will need to be set by you and you will probably need a good cup of coffee or even a jug as it's going to take some time. However this will only ever need to be done once. Additionally please look on the vspPanel website (here) for tools / pre-defined sets to do this for you in the near future.

Matching Numbers:

As you may have noticed when we added a number with a country code and area code to the system, the system attempts to match what the user dialled to the numbering you entered. In most cases this is a simple process as all numbers are different, however it is important to note that vspPanel will take the "Most Correct" match whenever it is finding a charge for a call.

E.g. You may have a charge in the system for "Australia" and simply have a country code with no area code. (The country code is 61). If you want to charge for Sydney Australia you can add another number in the system which is 6129 , although you already have 61 in the system, if the user dials 6129xxxxxx the call cost associate with the more specific number entered will be applied.

So, the rule of thumb for matching numbers is that vspPanel will use the most correct match available.

Example - From vspPanel Getting Started.

Lets setup our first billing package.

The first thing we need to do to setup our billing is to create a "Package" (or group) to put all of our call rates in. Here's how we do it:

1) Click on "Call Rates (Tarrifs)" on the menu, you should arrive at the screen below:

2) Click on "Add Billing Package". When asked for the name of the billing package enter in "Bill Package 1" and press "Add Package".

Congratulations you have just created your first Billing Package. This is where you will start adding your call costs too from now on.

Lets add some call costs to the billing package.

The next step in billing your customers is to add a call cost to the system. To do this you need to edit the call costs within the package you just created. To do this follow the steps below:

1) Click on "Change Package Call Rates" on the Call Tarrifs menu and choose "Bill Package 1" from the dropdown list. (Then click Modify)

Here are the two most important parts to billing a call. The first is numbering and the second is the call rate.

Lets create a call rate for dialling Sydney Australia:

First we need to setup a call rate. We're going to make it 5 cents per minute to call this destination.

1) First click on Call Rates in the menu.

2) You should see a menu like this appear:

3) Now we need to setup a rate. Enter the following in the fields:

Name Of Plan: Sydney Australia
First Charge Cost: 5
First Charge Length: 60

3) Click ok, then proceed back to the main menu.

4) Now we need to add a the actual numbering for this package because at the moment we simply have a price for the call but the system has no idea when to charge you. This is where numbering comes into it.

5) Click on "Numbering"

6) Click on "Add a Number" at the top of the menu.

7) You should be at a screen that looks like this:

8) Now we need to add "Sydney" to this, you should also notice that in "Billing Plan" the call cost you just created is showing up. ("Sydney Australia")

9) Fill in the values on the menu like so:

Country Code: 61
Area Code: 29
Country Name: Australia
Area Name: Sydney
Billing Plan: Sydney Australia

10) Click "Add Dialling Code"

11) Your Done. Because of what you have just entered, any customer on the "Bill Package 1" billing package who makes a call to "6129xxxxxxx" (any number of digits) will be charged 5 cents per 60 seconds.