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Scheduling Billing

If you want Bills for your Accounts to be updated on a regular basis, you can:

• Define this as part of your Organization configuration in the Console.

• Use the Update OrganizationConfig API call.

Understanding the Scheduled Billing Process

If you implement scheduled billing for your Organization to have Bills for end customer Accounts updated at regular intervals, it's important to be clear about how the process will work:

• What is included at Bill update? The Bill for each Account is calculated at the time the scheduled update is due. Note that the calculation will only include for any charges due under active Account Plans on the Account at the scheduled time of update. This means that if an Account Plan ceases to be active for the Account before the scheduled time of update, then only the charges due under that Account Plan up to the date it ceases to be active will be included.

• What about late-arriving data? Yes, we allow for and accommodate any late-arriving data for up to 24 hours after the scheduled time of Bill update. By late-arriving data, we mean any usage data that should have been included in the Bill calculation at the scheduled time of update but which came into the m3ter service after the Bill was updated - that is to say, usage data whose timestamp is before the scheduled time of update. If any late-arriving usage data is recorded for the Account in this 24 hour period following scheduled Bill update, then the Bill is recalculated to include for the charges due on the Account for that usage.

  • Important qualification: The 24 hour inclusion period following scheduled Bill update for late-arriving data is not always timed from the scheduled Bill update time. For cases where an Account Plan used to charge an Account ends before the scheduled time of Bill update, the 24 hour inclusion period for late-arriving data is timed from the time the Account Plan ends. For example,

    • If, on a monthly billing frequency, an Account has a single Account Plan which is active for all of October, we'll continue to recalculate the Bill to catch any late-arriving data through to end of November 1st.

    • If, however, the single Account Plan ceases to be active for the Account at midnight on the 14th October, we'll continue to recalculate the Bill to catch any late-arriving data only up to midnight on the 15th October.

Scheduling Billing from Console

To schedule Billing in the Console:

1. Select Settings>Organization. The Organization page opens with the Overview tab selected.

2. On the Organization Configuration panel, select Edit Configuration. The Organization Configuration page opens.

3. In the Scheduled bill interval (hours) field, enter the required interval in minutes or hours - ten options: 15 mins, 30 mins, 1hr, 2hrs, 3hrs, 4hrs, 6hrs, 8hrs, 12hrs, or 24hrs:

• If you try to set an interval other than any of these options, you'll receive an error.

• The default is Disabled, which means no Billing is scheduled.

4. Select Update Organization Configuration. You are returned to the Overview tab where the Scheduled bill interval now shows on the Organization Configuration panel.

Scheduling Billing Using API Call

To schedule Billing using API call:

1. Review the API Documentation at https://m3ter.com/docs.

2. Open the OrganizationConfig section. You can use the Update OrganizationConfig API call to define a schedule interval for updating Bills:

PUT /organizations/{orgid}/organizationconfig

3. Enter the required parameters for this call and use the optional scheduleBillInterval request schema parameter to set the required interval:

• For portions of an hour (minutes). Two options: 0.25 (15 minutes) and 0.5 (30 minutes).

• For full hours. Enter 1 for every hour, 2 for every two hours, and so on. Eight options: 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, or 24:

• Default. The default is 0, which disables scheduling.

4. Submit the API call.

Next: Bill Line Item Types