Why Billing schemas - [Why separate billing schemas and rate categories]

[Former Member]

Hi,

I see we are using billing schema to club together a few rates, and that during rate determination the required rates will be picked and executed.

Why are we creating a billing schema, with all the rates and then linking it to a rate category.

Why not, just club those rates into Rate category, and during rate determination, pick the required rates. [i know this is not possible in the system. I just wanted to know why did they separate Rate category & Billing schema.]

e.g, I have three rates, ZRATE1, ZRATE2, ZRATE3.

I put all these three in a billing schema ZSCHEMA1.

Then I link the schema to the rate category ZCATEGORY1.

Why did they decide there is not to club the three rates inside the ZCATEGORY1 ?. Instead it is required to club them in a billing schema, and then link it to the rate category.

This seemed to be valid question. I am not sure how to answer this.

Regards,

Joshua.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Schema is basically a placeholder for the rates in order to bill an installation. Now while you do the billing the billing engine starts from billing schema and determine which of the rates needs to be executed sequentially.

Rate Category contains the link where the billing engine can look for the placeholder and start execution. Remember one thing it may so happen that for an installation with the mentioned rate category may not use all the rates which are defined by the rate category and relevant rate types. In order to control the billing engine execution we need to have a single link and billing schema serve that purpose(it is very much like calling a package where the execution starts and then execute the subroutines).

Regards,

S

Edited by: born2bdahero on Aug 24, 2011 12:01 PM

Edited by: born2bdahero on Aug 24, 2011 12:53 PM

[Former Member]

Thanks S!