CDNWiki - View Source: Billing

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Prototype

!! Buckets
Consume:
 Sink for consumed service; source for refunds
Service:
 Current allocation for service (can go negative if customer desires, or act as access cutoff)
Balance:
 Current customer balance not allocated for service (can go negative as consumed, or positive if prepaid)
Invoice:
 Amount owed on current invoice

!! Ticks

! Automatic Ticks

* Service tick
** Service -> Consume
*** Consumes a bit of service
**** once a day for daily consumption (disk, etc)
**** once a month for granular service (hosting)
**** once a year for registration (domain)

* Refund tick
** Service -> Balance
*** Refund for unused service, in case of overprovisioning or unconfigured service

* Billing tick
** Balance -> Service
*** Replenishes Service with enough to cover the next billing period

* Invoice tick
** Invoice -> Balance
*** Bring Balance from negative to zero to account for currently owed outstanding
*** Bring Invoice from positive to zero to account for overpayment

* Payment tick
** Outside -> Invoice
*** Incoming payments are placed here until they're accounted for by an invoice run

! Manual Ticks

* Prepay tick
** Invoice -> Balance
*** Preemptively move money to indicate a customer's desire to prepay by owing more on next invoice than is actually outstanding

* Service Refund tick
** Consume -> Service
*** Refund for consumed but unprovided service (outage, etc)

!! Invoice Generation
# Generate Refund tick to refund unused service
# Generate Billing tick to fund next billing period
# Generate Invoice tick to account for payments and refunds
# Compute invoice values and lines from all ticks between current and previous Invoice tick

!! Example flows
* January period starts December 20th
* New customer has empty buckets, provisioned for $10.00 VHOST MED service
* Bucket balances: C:0 S:0 B:0 I:0
* Service tick: $10.00 VHOST MED - C:10 S:-10 B:0 I:0
* February period starts January 20th
* Refund tick (none necessary, since service was consumed)
* Billing tick - C:10 S:10 B:-20 I:0
* Invoice tick - C:10 S:0 B:0 I:-20
Sample invoice:
<pre>
 $10.00   - VHOST MED: example.com 2011-Jan
 $10.00   - VHOST MED: example.com 2011-Feb
----
 $10.00   - Amount due
</pre>

* February 1st
* Service tick: $10.00 VHOST MED - C:20 S:-10 B:0 I:10
* Customer pays $10.00
* Payment tick - C:10 S:0 B:0 I:10
* Refund tick (none necessary)
* Billing tick - C:20 S:0 B:-10 I:10