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Important: These features are deprecated since version 1.0 and must be replaced by the session-based charging. They are available only if you use offers and subscriptions, but they are not available for charge plans and provider contracts. |
Basic rating simply consists of the rating of all events related to the consumption of a service. If your configuration of SAP Convergent Charging uses the prerating and postrating feature, you need to know how this rating mechanism differs from the basic rating.
Related topic: Session-based charging and reservation
It is an advanced feature that enables a service provider to prevent a customer's balance (*) from going below 0 when a service is consumed. This is done by using a reservation mechanism. When SAP Convergent Charging receives a ticket from the reservation mechanism, the prerating operation calculates an amount for that ticket request and transmits the result of the prerating operation to the system to request and reserve the consumption. The system verifies the amount against the customer’s balance. If the balance is sufficient, the consumption is allowed.
When the calculated amount is greater than the balance, the consumption is not allowed. If the system generates a new ticket request for a smaller consumption volume, the prerating function regenerates a total amount for the modified request. The system verifies if the customer balance is sufficient for the new requested consumption.
Example - Making a telephone call
For long duration/large volume use, the prerating request is repeated towards the end of each allowed communication period in order to reserve more minutes.
A customer has $5 remaining in a prepaid account and wants to make a telephone call. A ticket is delivered by the system, which is calculated as a chargeable item class according to the subscription and charge fees.
The prepaid function calculates the amount of money required for a defined volume of consumption. If the balance is sufficient, the call is made. During the call, the system makes successive prerating requests in order to verify if the caller can continue the call. When there are insufficient funds for the requested volume, subsequent requests are generated for progressively decreasing amounts. This continues until there are insufficient funds to consume any service. The call is then terminated.
Postrating is the confirmation or the cancellation of a prerated event. If an event is canceled or modified, SAP Convergent Charging takes into account the impact this will have on other rated or prerated events by resetting subscription elements such as counters. The balance is updated accordingly.
After having been prerated, an event is postrated depending on the service delivery result:
Failed delivery: The postrating cancels the prerated event. If necessary, SAP CC Core Server takes into account the impacts on results of other events already rated or prerated. In addition, the subscription context such as counter values are updated.
Successful delivery: The postrating confirms the prerated event. The price previously calculated is confirmed. The balance is updated accordingly.
Successful delivery but with modified conditions: The postrating confirms the prerated event with a new ticket. The balance is updated accordingly. If necessary, SAP CC Core Server takes into account the impacts on results of other events already rated or prerated.
A prerating event can be canceled if:
The service was not delivered to the customer's recipient.
In the case of session management, the system has prerated a 5 minutes session but the user ends the call after 3 minutes.
Example
A customer sends a multimedia file and the customer is charged for the file reception (prerating). After several days have elapsed, SAP Convergent Charging receives information that the multimedia file was not received by the customer's recipient. During the postrating process, SAP Convergent Charging recalculates the prerating result and provides enough information to the external billing system in order to update the balance accordingly.
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Caution: If you are modifying a subscription or an element of it such as an offer, a charge, a pricing macro, or a translation table, and then you save the subscription in the past (before the last prerating date), you may encounter rating problems if unresolved prerating events are associated with the subscription. You may also encounter rating problems if you structurally modify a subscription, resulting in a new rating result and if there are unresolved prerating events are associated with it. Rating problems are encountered in these cases because the postrating value for the consumption of a service is different from the prerating value. To solve this problem, SAP Convergent Charging warns you if you try to modify a subscription (or an element of it) and if there are one or more unresolved prerating events associated with it. You are free to continue with the modification if you think that the modification is safe to make. However, you are not warned if you modify parts of an offer. For this reason, warnings are added in the documentation for each procedure that may cause prerating and postrating discrepancies. |