Usage measurement and billing

You can bill for measured use of an asset or location each month by associating usage meters with the asset or location. You set prices for asset and location usage on automated billing schedules.

For example, for data backup and restore services, you can bill for the backup file size, the frequency of backups, and the number of generations of backups that are stored. For an aircraft, you can bill for flight hours of the aircraft components or subcomponents.

An administrator creates meters for an organization in the Usage Settings window of the Service Provider Options menu selection in the Organizations (SP) application. These usage meters might match meters that also are specified in the Meters application. If a meter name matches, then the service provider that is preparing the monthly usage bill can view all meter readings entries that were entered in Asset Meters tab since the last usage meter was billed. The service provider views these meter reading entries in the View Meter Readings window of the Actual Usage tab for the asset or location.

On the Actual Usage tab, the meter readings can be added to the Asset Usage or Location Usage table. Usage information from other sources, such as imported meter data, can also be added. The usage meters to be tracked can be specified in the Billing Meters table of that tab.

Prices for meter usage are specified in the billing schedule of a customer agreement. Different usage ranges for a meter can have different prices. For example, there might be a price for the first 100 hours of asset usage at a higher amount than the price for a range of 101 to 500 hours of asset usage.

At the scheduled billing intervals, each line of actual usage is copied to a sales order, and it is priced by the billing schedule for this customer and meter. Sales orders can be billed when they are complete.