Inbound Billing Workflow

Inbound billing generates billing records for the batches (ICLs) received. As the batches (ICLs) are processed by Gateway, the Business Rules workflow execute node assigns the inbound product code to the batch (ICL) and assigns a batch (ICL) billing code to each transaction in the batch (ICL). When the transmission is accepted by Gateway, the Transaction Server initiates an event that sends a message to Services Framework. This message tells Services Framework to run the inbound billing task for the processed batch (ICL).

Inbound billing determines if the batch (ICL) was already processed. If it was, it is not processed again. If the batch (ICL) has not been billed, inbound billing uses the inbound product associated with the batch (ICL) to determine if billing is active. If billing is active and the inbound product has billing codes defined, inbound billing generates the following:
  • transmission billing records
  • batch (ICL) billing records
  • transaction billing records for all of the transactions in the batch (ICL)
  • a summary transaction billing record for each transaction billing code in the batch (ICL). Multiple summary transaction billing records may be generated for a batch (ICL) since each transaction in the batch (ICL) is assigned a billing code
The services used by the inbound product can be billed by inbound billing. Similar to the inbound product, inbound billing may generate daily billing records, transmission billing records, and batch (ICL) billing records for the service. The billing performed for a transaction depends on the inbound service type as follows:
Repair
inbound billing bills for repaired transactions
Bill for addendum
inbound billing bills for all addendum records
All other inbound service types
inbound billing bills for all transactions in the batch (ICL)

When inbound billing completes its processing, it sets the state of the batch (ICL) to billed.

At the start of each new business day, inbound billing is called. At that time, inbound billing looks for all customers that are subscribed to an inbound product that has a daily billing code. It generates a billing record for each of the customers that are found. This process is repeated for all subscription services in the product.

Inbound billing can be run manually. When it runs manually, it looks for all inbound batches (ICLs) that are not yet processed and submits a request to Services Framework to process them. For more information about running the inbound billing task manually, see Run Task Operation page.