Detailed documentation for sections covered in this tutorial can be found at:

• Billing
• Account balances
• Customers
• Pricing
• Customisation

The Billing section is where you credit customers, turn usage and other charges into invoices, send those invoices, record payment, and issue statements.

Before you send invoices

Contact Support ([email protected]) to have billing enabled for your instance. Then complete Configuration > Company:

• Sales, support and invoice sender names, addresses and signatures
• Invoicing details — postal address, invoice-from email, bank / wire details, footer note, and the first invoice number (numeric, starting with 1, for example 10000). These invoicing fields are changed by Support.
• Email templates — including invoice payment reminders

On each customer, complete the Billing tab (account code, payment terms, invoice email and postal address) as described in the Customers tutorial.

Account balances

Customers need credit to submit messages. The balance is on the customer account and is shared by all of that customer's SMPP accounts.

Go to Billing > Account balances.

The Balances table shows name, currency, balance, last updated time, and Prepay or Postpay.

• Currency None — SMS credits (one credit per accepted submit)
• A real currency — monetary balance; the destination price is deducted on accept

Add or remove credit

1. In Pending Changes, click Add balance change.
2. Select the customer.
3. Enter a positive amount to credit, or a negative amount to debit.
4. Enter a description (payment reference, test credit, goodwill, and so on).
5. Click Save.

The change is applied within about one minute, then appears in Changes Audit Trail with the user who made it.

Use Change type to switch Prepay / Postpay and Change currency to change currency. Period audit trail lists every manual and message-driven change for a date range and customer.

Configure low-balance warning emails on the customer Balance tab.

Create invoices

Usage charges (MT SMS and similar) are collated into charge lines. You can also add manual charges. Invoices are created from those unassigned lines.

Add a manual charge

1. Go to Billing > Create invoices.
2. Click Create charge entry.
3. Select the customer.
4. Enter description, quantity, unit charge, currency, tax percentage, period and optional PO reference.
5. Click Save.

Charge lines that are not yet on an invoice appear in this table. You can edit or delete them here.

Generate invoices

1. Still in Billing > Create invoices, click Generate invoices.
2. Confirm. Charge lines are grouped by customer, currency and PO reference into invoice documents.
3. A dialog reports how many invoices were created (or that none were generated).

New invoices appear on the Pending tab in Billing > Invoices.

If no invoices are generated, typical causes are: there are no unassigned charge lines, or billing is not yet enabled for the instance.

Manage invoices

Go to Billing > Invoices. Tabs:

Due dates are invoice date plus the customer's Payment terms (days).

Send an invoice

1. Open Pending.
2. Click PDF to check the document.
3. Click Email to send the PDF to the customer's invoice addresses, or Sent if you issued it outside the portal.
4. The invoice moves to Unpaid.

Hold and correct

1. On Pending, click Hold.
2. On Held, click Edit to adjust details, Zero if the invoice should not be charged, or Unhold to return it to the workflow.

Record payment

On Unpaid, click Paid when the customer has paid. The paid date is stored and the invoice leaves the unpaid / overdue lists.

Overdue reminders

On Overdue, click Email reminder to send the reminder template. Write off removes the amount from collections (wo_ts).

Icons on unpaid and overdue rows show whether reminders are held for that customer or the account is on a hold-live status.

Statements

Go to Billing > Statements.

1. Select the customer.
2. The page shows Statement total, Account balance, and the list of balance transactions.
3. Click Email statement to customer or Email statement to self.

Recurring charges

Go to Billing > Recurring.

1. Click New recurring charge.
2. Select the customer.
3. Enter the description, quantity, charge definition, next run time and optional expiry.
4. Click Save.

When a recurring charge falls due, a charge line is created and can be picked up the next time you click Generate invoices. Recurring service definitions used across customers are configured under Configuration > Company > Billing.

Reporting

Billing > Reporting includes:

• Unbilled and billed volumes — unbilled, billed and zero-revenue quantities over a date range (optional customer filter)
• Invoiced revenue (monthly) and Invoiced revenue (annual)
• Accuracy — actual message volume versus billed volume for recent months, with the difference and percentage

Use these after each billing run to confirm volumes match Reports and that nothing remains unbilled unexpectedly.

Troubleshooting

If the issue remains, contact Support.