Allowance

Business Object (WS)

Definition

An allowance is the right for a consumer to consume one or several services in limited quantity and within a limited period of time. It is included in the charging contracts (customer master data).

Technical Data

Software Product and Version	SAP Convergent Charging 5.0
Technical Details	Data Types
Version	1
Application Area	IS-CC

Business Context and Use

Related Operations

You can use the following operation to perform actions on allowances in a charging contract or a subscriber account.

• Find the allowances associated to a given charging contract
• Cancel the expired allowances of a charging contract

Related Process Components

• Customer Master Data (Allowances Management): Allowance Management

Features

Life Cycle

An allowance can be created and modified during the execution of the following processes:

• Refilling process
• Chargeable items charging process
• Activation process

Every created allowance has a validity period during which it can be used. When this validity period has been exceeded, the allowance can be removed from the system using:

• the allowance purge mechanism.
  You have to wait for the retention period to be passed before the purge can be done.
  See the system parameter ALLOWANCES_PURGE_RETENTION_PERIOD to check which retention period is used on your platform.
• the ChargingContractExpiredAllowanceCancel WS operation

Structure

An allowance contains the following information:

• An identifier which is unique in the SAP CC system
• The identifier of its reference allowance plan in the pricing catalog of the service provider
• A validity period, made up with a start date and an end date
• The list of its defined parameters (possibly empty)
• The list of its defined counters (possibly empty)
• The identifier of the charging contract which created the allowance
• The identifier and the external identifier (possibly empty) of the contract item which created the allowance
• A status (inactive/active/expired)
• The identifier of the assigned account, with its type (prepaid or postpaid); This account is in the subscriber account that relates to the charging contract including this allowance.
• A currency
• A share identifier (empty if the allowance is not shared)
• The last time the shared counters of the allowance have been refreshed (empty if the allowance is not shared)

Integration

There is no specific integration information.

Constraints and Integrity Conditions

There is no specific constraint.

Notes on SAP CC Implementation

You must have installed and configured the SAP CC Core Server system.

Configuration

Consult the SAP CC Configuration and Implementation Guide to know the necessary configuration or Customizing of the SAP CC system.

Before implementing SAP Convergent Charging in your SAP system landscape, you must configure the systems and the data (master data, business data).