Many consumers believe that a communications service invoice should contain information about their current expenditure, the services they are now using, and the services they are paying for. It is crucial to comprehend how the Telecom Billing Management System function since, in actuality, telecom bills are only intended to explain how much you owe, not why.
A Brief Overview of Telecom Billing Management System
Even the term “telecom billing” has many distinct meanings to many individuals. It is difficult to define, and the more you go into the rabbit hole, the more difficult it becomes. Many of the choices made by the IT staff about the technology they support are influenced by telecom bills. Telecom billing is an overhead cost that needs to be carefully tracked in the eyes of the finance team (but many lack the visibility to do so). The executive views telecom bills as the price of maintaining the business’s connectivity. It represents how much money you owe the service provider.
Observe how each side offers a little different point of view. It makes more sense to start with what telecom billing isn’t rather than what it is. The telecom billing is not your bill. It’s nearly hard to translate an invoice into intelligible English if you’ve ever tried. They never explain the reason behind the charge, and no two ever appear the same.
A telecom billing system is what?
Simply put, telecom billing software comprises all the procedures, data, and regulations that a service provider uses to determine how much money you owe them.
Each supplier uses a unique formula to determine its rates, billing, labeling fees, and branding costs. Even if you can understand the billing system of one provider, this seldom results in understanding other providers.
However, all billing systems share the fact that they have a lot of moving pieces, like:
- Payment and evaluation: a procedure run by an online charging system (OCS), a billing engine, to figure out how much you owe by translating calls or using statistics into money.
- Tariffs and charges: Each time you use a provider’s service, you’ll be charged a set cost, taxes, and extra service charges.
- Adjustments and disagreements: Any compensation is credited or debited to your account when there are inconsistencies between what you paid and what you were supposed to have paid.
- Cutbacks and prorating: Did the sales staff assure you of a fantastic introductory rate? Perhaps you choose not to use a service you already paid for. Your account balance has been updated to reflect those changes.
- Service adjustments: The billing system accounts for changes made by the services’ beginning, ending, or switching.
- Payment processing: The mechanism a carrier or supplier employs to handle and monitor your payments.
Are you seeing why telecom OSS solutions require more than just a single number at the bottom of the page? Many elements go into that number, but telecom bills aren’t intended to explain or even include them.
Common Telecom Billing Cycles
Other additional billing cycle choices impact your invoice in addition to the few variables that determine the final figure that appears on it, such as:
- Payment billing: Prepaid billing often requires advance payment before using a service. Instead of receiving bills, your account is charged depending on consumption in real-time, and you continually receive a summary of charges.
- Postpaid billing is the term used to describe the standard telecom billing method. You utilize services, and a predetermined billing cycle determines how much you are paid. Your invoice is created and sent to you by the provider’s telecom billing system at the billing cycle’s conclusion. 30, 45, 60, or 90-day billing periods are the most typical.
- Convergent Billing: To provide businesses with a uniform view of billing throughout a certain cycle, convergent billing consolidates some or all service costs into a single invoice instead of dividing each invoice by service. The fact is that convergent billing can make an already perplexing invoice much more difficult to understand.
How Does Telecom Billing Software Work?
The Online Charging System (OCS), which charges each transaction instantly, is the charging platform that telecom billing software connects to. Every time a device on your network communicates with the OSS BSS telecom, the OCS keeps track of and records that communication as a Call Data Record based on use and communication type (for example, data usage, call minutes) (CDR).
The possibility of billing errors is decreased because data is captured in real-time. Still, those figures need to be compared with the other billing elements mentioned above to calculate how much you owe precisely.
When you use prepaid billing, the OCS charges your account instantly, and if you have a credit limit, you are immediately alerted when you have over it. After that, you can choose to change services or add credit to your account.
When you choose postpaid billing, the OCS keeps track of the amount on your account and creates an invoice over a billing cycle, subtracting or including applicable discounts, taxes, and fees. After the billing cycle, you receive that invoice, but simply by glancing at it, you might not know what you’re paying for or, more significantly, why.
