The account balance management adds prepaid account and credit control features to SAP Convergent Charging and:
Holds subscriber accounts
Controls the addition or deduction of monetary or non-monetary amounts from accounts
Performs credit reservation on accounts
Manages counters applicable for accounts
The benefits of the account balance management are the following:
Offer a single platform to manage balances for all subscribers, independent of their payment method
Support subscriber groups with sets of interrelated prepaid/postpaid balances, for example, for families or corporate customers
Enable flexible configuration of spending caps, allowances, credit limits, and service-specific wallets
Manage dynamic charging where the balances to be charged are determined per transaction at runtime
Ensure real time, online operation with high performance and high availability
The subscriber account contains all the accounts which are debited or credited when a service is consumed. The accounts are the following:
The charging policy identifies the account(s) that will be debited or credited with the amount calculated with the price plan. The configuration is mainly based on information set in:
Master data related to the service provider: the charging plan, charge plans (see expected account assignments)
Master data related to the end customers: provider contracts (see account assignment)
A distinction is usually made between online and offline charging:
Online charging: An online charging layer applies realtime technology to manage the multiplicity of services. It enables an exchange of information between the charging layer and the network element or applications in real time; the information exchanged can affect the delivery of service for the end user. The interaction is to handle authorization, rating, credit control, and the balance management of subscriber accounts. In SAP Convergent Charging, the online charging function is used for prepaid services.
Offline charging: An offline charging function is necessary to handle postpaid services. The charging information does not affect the service rendered in real time, and the final result of this charging mechanism is the forwarding of rated call-detail record files to the billing domain. The offline charging function is applied to users who pay for their services periodically, for example, at the end of the month.
SAP CC processes any usage event (chargeable item) coming from an external mediation system in the following order: Identification, rating and account determination.
Identification: The properties (technical identifier for the end customer (see service user identifier), service identifier, usage date) contained in the chargeable item allow to identify a business agreement (provider contract) and its charges through an access.
Rating and dependent fees: For each charge, the price plan is carried out, and the related transactions are created with the calculated price amount. Dependant fees are computed. If some dependent charges exist, the steps "rating" and "account determination" are repeated for each dependent charge.
Account determination and customer data updates (balances, counters): The charging plan is carried out through charging references which are links to accounts from the subscriber account. During this process, persistent counters are updated, the prepaid account balances are debited or credited, and charged transactions are created to debit or credit the balances of external postpaid accounts. Account and balance notifications are managed and alerts are sent to external systems.
Result data: When all the charges are processed, all the charged transactions are sent to the external billing system or saved to files. Different formats are possible: transactions, charged items, billable items (SAP Convergent Invoicing).
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Notes: About alerts and the rejection of the charging process.
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The refilling policy identifies the prepaid account that will be credited with a refill (money, units, and so on). The refilling policy is mainly based on the refill plan and its refill logic.
Any refill event (refill item class) coming from an external mediation system is processed in the following order: Identification and refill.
Identification: The properties (for example, account identifier, MSISDN, URL, and SIP) contained in the refill item class allow to identify the prepaid account.
Refill: The refill plan and its refill logic is carried out by the SAP CC system to compute the credit to add to the prepaid account and updates the prepaid balance and the counters of the related services accordingly. Refill records (or resulting transactions) are generated and stored in files.