## Understanding the Parallels Business Automation - Standard Billing System

Parallels Business Automation - Standard billing system is supported by the Billing Director that provides financial management of the following client categories: Resellers and Customers. For settlement purposes, Accounts are created for each category. Parallels Business Automation - Standard billing provides a single-currency settlement and accounting system. A system-wide currency can be selected per Control Center (one currency for Provider and another currencies for Resellers, the exchange rate can be set per Reseller). In order to change the system-wide currency, select Configuration Director - Miscellaneous Settings - Regional Settings.

Hosting Plan is the basic account unit that used for calculation of money equivalent of services provided. A subscription period can be selected by customers from offered by Hosting Service Provider (one month, three months, six months, and year). Services provided in accordance with a Hosting Plan are paid in advance, in accordance with resource-specific quotes. Resources overusage is paid either in advance or at the end of subscription period.

Note: In Parallels Business Automation - Standard billing, the billing cycle equals to one month by default. This means that statements and resource overusage invoices are generated for each subscription each month. There are no mentions about billing cycles in Parallels Business Automation - Standard web-based interface.

Invoices are being generated in accordance with Subscription terms. Account balance is calculated on the basis of actual resource usage and payment(s) received. Account balance is calculated every hour (by default).

Current Account balance is regularly compared with customer credit limit. Depending on Billing Manager settings and Account balance, the following operations can be performed:

- Notification about negative Account balance can be generated and sent to a customer;
- Negative balance and credit limit control, generating reports on Accounts in debt;
- Suspending subscriptions associated with Accounts in debt in the case of credit limit overrun;
- For Virtuozzo Container subscriptions, changing a Container parameters (available resources limitation) in the case of resource overusage.

Basic Notions

Subscriptions

A Subscription holds terms of contract between Hosting Service Provider and a customer. Changes in Provider prices do not affect terms of Subscription. This means that prices for the Hosting Plan purchased remain changeless up to the end of subscription period.

However, if additional Applications or Containers were purchased, or a Subscription was upgraded to a higher version of the same hosting plan, then Subscription terms may change.

Documents

In respect to the Parallels Business Automation - Standard Billing Director, this notion means all financial documents that exist within the system. The documents may be created by a customer or may be generated automatically. The following documents' types exist:

- Orders - the documents that include information about Hosting Plans or additional services ordered by customers. Orders are generated automatically, after a subscriber orders one or another service;
- Payments - off-line and online payments for hosting services. An Order can be paid by several payments;
- Invoices - invoices are generated automatically after placing Orders or can be added manually. Invoices can be paid by parts;
- Credit Invoices - documents that add a certain amount to an account balance and include the itemization of services or other goods refunded or paid to an account owner.
- Adjustments - adjustments are used for Accounts' balance adjustment. For example, Credit Adjustment is applied if a customer was overcharged (to increase the Account balance), and Debit Adjustment is applied if a customer ordered additional services (increase the billed sum and decrease Account balance).
- Payment Requests - financial documents generated after a customer requests an arbitrary payment to increase his/her account balance.

Each financial document has its total sum and a balance, which allows both applying several payments to one Invoice, and applying single payment to several Invoices.

Balance

Your hosting company balance is the sum of all your customers and resellers account balances. A customer or a reseller account balance is calculated as a total sum of all payments and credit adjustments with a total amount of Invoices, Orders, and Debit Adjustments deducted.

Positive account balance means that an account owner has a certain overpayment, so Provider owes money to a customer. Negative account balance means that a customer or a reseller owes money to Provider. Zero account balance means that neither Provider, nor a customer do not owe money to each other.

Your hosting company balance does not reflect your earnings. It just shows whether your customers owe money to you or you owe money to your customers.

Reports

Billing Manager reports (Collected Cash, Revenue Report, Aged Account/Receivable, etc.).

Notifications

E-mail notifications generated automatically in connection with certain events within Parallels Business Automation - Standard system.

In This Section Calculations for the Services Provided

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