A BillMax Account represents the entity to which a bill is sent and from which payment is expected.

The Account record contains information used in invoicing: contact information, invoice methods, payment methods, and credit card information. Accounts may contain one or more users.

	Bill presentment limitations
	Bill presentment is to the Account. BillMax does not support bill presentment to subordinate entities payable by a master entity.

A mechanism for limiting update capability to a single Authorized BillMax User for the account table, user table and service table records associated with a specific Account.

The payment method of an Account.

The person is who is administratively responsible for the BillMax operations of a Virtual Company. The nightly reports and other information from BillMax are sent to the Administrative Contact Email.

	Tip
	Make the Admin Email an alias that expands to several people.

The process of creating an Allocation

See Also Allocation.

An Allocation is the associate of a debit with a credit within a Account's financial data. The following allocations are allowed:

When a Void occurs, a reversal of the original association(s) is created.

The response(s) generated by the Customer Interface Daemon upon the successful registration by a new customer. The response is a template file that is processed by the Customer Interface Daemon before passing it to the registration agent (browser, CD software, etc.)

See Allocation.

A mechanism for locking the payhist table for an Account while Allocations are being created.

A person who is allowed to access to the Staff Interface.

A record indicating the beginning balance for an Account. May represent money owed or credit, but not both.

The billing contact information of a Virtual Company will be used to stamp the return address of any email communication sent to accounts by BillMax. The nightly reports and other information from BillMax are copied to the Billing Contact Email.

An indication of the status of a BillMax entity. The actual value of the status is contextual. States exist for Accounts, Users, Services, Service Definitions and Calltracks.

A record of the interaction between a customer and a Customer Service Representative. Used when dealing with customer issues.

The process of changing the Service Definition of a Service.

Constraints are used to validate data on data input. BillMax processes constraints whose specifications are based on UNIX regular expressions. Multiple regular expressions can be ANDed together by separating them with &&. If defined in this way the data entered will have to match both regular expressions.

Documenting regular expression syntax is beyond the scope of this manual. The O'Reilly book entitled UNIX Regular Expressions. In addition there are many web sites that document how to create regular expressions.

	Warning
	Constraints are only effective when data is entered through BillMax processes. Constraints are not honored when entering data directly into the database.

System daemon to execute scheduled commands.

The customer web interface to BillMax. To be used by customers of the company operating BillMax.

Custom SQL is SQL that is written and executed by a Authorized BillMax User. The SQL may also be stored in the customsql table for future use.

A program that is, in general, always executing waiting for input or waiting to perform actions at scheduled times.

A record in datacall table storing information about a dialup session.

Data, usually provided by the customer, that may be used to determine which POP the customer will be using.

A predefined length of time for service delivery. Specified in durations list. May be either months or days.

Current date plus Virtual Company's Prebilldays.

Electronic Funds Processing is a general term that refers to collecting monies or refunding monies through BillMax processing. This may include but is not limited to:

Within this document, using the word "automated" with Electronic Payment Processing refers to processing that BillMax may do (usually nightly) to automatically collect funds using Electronic Payment Processing.

Every Account has six different financial totals associated with it. These financial totals are:

The following are the financial transactions supported in BillMax:

Configuration information stored in globalconf table that is applicable to the entire BillMax installation.

A future date through which Overdue Processing will not take place for a specific Account. After the date, the Account will be subject to Overdue Processing.

A BillMax BillMax Hook is one of several programs that is executed (if it exists and is executable) when a record in certain database tables change. The nomenclature of a BillMax Hook is styled tablename_hook. The current list of BillMax Hooks is

All BillMax Hooks are run out of /usr/local/billmax/local. All data passed to the BillMax Hooks are through environment variables. The environment variables available depend on the BillMax Hook being run. For a particular hook, the values in the database record before the database record is updated are in the environment with variable names of the style "OLD_fieldname". The values in the database record after the database record is updated are in the environment with variable names of the style "NEW_fieldname". Related records that are in "parent" tables are in the environment with variable names of the style "tablename_fieldname". As an example, the execution of the service_hook contain the following environment variable groups: OLD_*, NEW_*, SERVDEF_*, CONFIG_*, ACCOUNT_*, USER_*.

The next date that the amount will be billed for a Service.

If invday equals the day of month of the Effective Date, then an account is considered for statement processing.

In BillMax, this is defined as the amount of service to be delivered computed using the values of payhist.startdate and payhist.entdate of Sales.

A set of related items stored in the lists table.

The definition of a List. This include the name, Constraints on list values, access Permissions, etc.

A single entry of a List.

Used by the Customer Interface to format messages to the customer.

Billing that is based on RADIUS data entered into datacall table.

Sales that span more than one month are divided into monthly intervals call monthlysales.

Samples stored of the form name=value. A comma delimited list of samples may be stored.

The value for a sample may be a decimal representation.

The Navigation Bar, often referred to as "navbar".

Figure 1. BillMax Navigation Bar

A Note is text stored in the BillMax database that is associated with a table entry. Notes may be associated with any table in principle but are currently associated with only the Account table and the Calltrack table.

Notes on an Account briefly sum up events having to do with billing or change of account status. BillMax generates notes when certain events occur to an account (see BillMax-generated notes below). You can also manually enter a note. If you do not specify a priority, the note is priority 0. Notes appear grouped by priority. All priority 5 notes appear, sorted by date (newest at the top), then all priority 4, and so on.

BillMax-generated notes.  BillMax automatically creates an accounting notes whenever certain things happen to an account or one of its users or services.

An entry in the notice table that is generated by closeofday. These entries may included in the nightly log.

The following is a description of the billing steps that an Account goes through when an Account becomes overdue.

An entry in the payhist table representing financial activity by an Account.

Used when interpreting Sales and Store Credits. This is the ending date for which the Sale or Store Credit is effective.

Used when interpreting Sales and Store Credits. This is the starting date for which the Sale or Store Credit is effective.

The type of the financial transaction stored in the payhist table.

Permissions in BillMax are used to grant or deny access to data (viewing and/or modifying) and to processing (one time charge of a credit card, enter a payment, etc.)

Permissions for access through the staff interface are specified in the CGI action file. These include permissions to display a form and to press a button. Permissions for processing are embedded in the BillMax binaries.

	Note
	Permissions are NOT cumulative. If a BillMax staff userid has System Admin privileges, it does not mean the userid has Basic Read privileges. For the userid to have both, both permissions must be granted.

Data that is specific to a POP such as DNS server, mail server, etc.

A Point of Presence. When a Service is assigned a POP, it is expected that the Service will be accessing services delivered by the POP. A company may have many POPs. POPs are usually defined on a geographic basis, although this is not necessary.

An entry in the popregions list for a specific POP.

A renewable service will be pre-billed this many days before it expires. Statements will be sent to customers this many days before their Invday also.

A block of time specified for each Virtual Company that is used to bill a different rate for service usage during that time. This is not used by Usage Based Billing

The billing for a Service may include a prorated charge. This proration is computed from the date the Service starts to the next date that coincides with the Account's Invday. Proration is calculated based on the number of days in the month in which the Service starts.

To Provision is the process by which access to a Service is enabled or disabled.

A record in the payhist table where payhist.type is 0. This represents a purchase by a customer or a sale to a customer.

Recurring billing is charging a customer for a Service or product at set intervals.

The database that contains the tables of detail data from various reports.

The reporttables table that contains information about memorized reports.

A resource is a mechanism used to delineate different namespaces. Each Service has its own set of resources. If the resources of two Services share a common resource, then they belong to the same namespace. Resources are used for the following:

Resources may be used for the following:

How resources work.  Resources are bits stored in the database together as a single four byte integer, giving you 32 possible resources. These bits are attached to service definitions to describe which namespace are used by the service definitions. This is done on the Service Definition page with a multi-select box listing all defined resources. The resource scheme becomes important when adding a Service. Assume the following:

If these three conditions are true, then there is a namespace conflict. Depending on Service Definition settings, adding the new Service may be denied.

A geographical area which is identified by a tax id in which one sales tax rate is assessed.

A BillMax Account represents the entity to which a bill is sent and from which payment is expected.

The Account record contains information used in invoicing: contact information, invoice methods, payment methods, and credit card information. Accounts may contain one or more Users.

	Bill presentment limitations
	Bill presentment is to the Account. BillMax does not support bill presentment to different entities payable by a single entity.

Used by the Customer Interface. Used to specify to which Service Definitions a Service may be changed by a customer using the Customer Interface.

A BillMax Service represents the services that you provide for which customers are billed and pay at regular intervals.

Default data for a Service record comes from a Service Definition and certain values may be overridden by a CSR. The Service record also contains the information necessary to interact with the appropriate provisioning system.

The process of changing the association of a Service from one Service Definition to another Service Definition

The staff web interface to BillMax. To be used by personnel of the company operating BillMax.

A file that is may be emailed, faxed or printed to the customer that contains

Used in Usage Based Billing.

A record in the payhist table of which the value for payhist.type is 5. It is created automatically whenever closeofday determines that a Statement should

A Service is synchronized if, when upon creation, the day of the Invoice Date was forced to be the same as the Account Invday and a prorated amount was billed if necessary. Whether or not a Service is synchronized is determined the synchronized setting in the associated Service Definition

The tabledefaults table. Used by the Customer Interface to specify different registration parameters. See Chapter 5, Configuring the BillMax Customer Interface.

The methods by which a customer pays. Example are cash, check, credit card type, etc.

One billing cycle for a Service.

A piece of equipment that a customer access for service, usually a dialup service.

Used in Usage Based Billing. The pricing level for a Usage Based Computation Result.

When interpreting a Tierplan with Tiers, this is the total amount to be billed if the statistics equal exactly the "Up To" amount for the Tier. Represents the pricing based on marginal increases in pricing.

Used in Usage Based Billing. A tier plan specifies what measurements and what computations will be used to calculate a Usage Based Computation Result. Depending on the pricing scheme used, a tier plan may contain zero or more Tiers.

Timetrack may be used to track employee time in BillMax. This may be used to generate payroll data for the payroll system. It also may be used to track consulting time that you then charge an Account.

The single value result of the specified mathematical computations on the applicable statistics.

Billing that is based on statistics. How pricing is applied to the statistics is specified by a Tierplan.

A BillMax User is a mostly used as a data placeholder. A User may belong to only one Account and may utilize one or more Services.

The User record may contain security information used by the Customer Interface.

A collection of associated Accounts that are managed with similar business rules and have similar defaults for new Accounts.

A Sale or Store Credit that has been Voided before payhist.startdate.