1

Billing...

(12/07/2016 01:23:39 отредактировано hhamedk)

Тема: Billing...

Dear Gurtam development team

In our country, customers pay for Units per year and as we discussed with Gurtam support team there is no possibility to block Units in Wialon system. Gurtam support team offered us some tricks but none of those ways can exactly do what we need. Let me to explain our situation understanding the exact problem.

Consider a customer (mostly a dealer) ask you for an account of 30 Units for a year at the beginning of 2016 and you charge them. Then, after 6 month they ask you to increase their Units limits to 50. In CMS you have only 2 way to block a customer, block by days and by balance. If you want to use block by days for such a customer, so, when would be the expiration date? end of 2016? end of June 2017?  you see, it doesn't work. Another way (Gurtam support offered us) is to use block by days and block by balance together. The prospect is to consider a service charge for each Unit per day/month and set the system to withdraw this service charge from account balance. for example if you consider 10 unit of service charge monthly for each Unit then for first 30 Units you should add 30(Units)*12(month)*10=3600 and for next 20 units 20(Units)*12(month)*10=2400 and total balance for 50 units will be 3600+2400=6000. At the end of 2016 the balance will be 1200=6000-(30*12*10)-(20*6*10). As the customer should pay for next year (2017) so the block balance should be 1200+ 3600(for 30 units for 2017)=4800 and if you set this you can control the customer, if they pay you will add 3600 balance to their account and if they don't pay system will block them and you will decide to remove their Units or... based on your company policy.

This is our situation and the way explained is the way Gurtam support team offered us. But, there is some problems. When we are talking bout dealers we can't control when they add their Units. We offer an account to dealers and limit number of Units in their account. We can't control when they will add Units and the way Gurtam support team offered will work only if a dealer add all 30 Units on 1st January of 2016 and all another 20 Units on 1st July of 2016. Think about such a situation that they add 5, 2, 14, ... Units within 2-3 month! it's impossible to calculate when you should block the customer.

I'm thinking about a new function in CMS to block Accounts. It can be a new Block way in Restriction tab or a new item in Services tab of Account Properties. What we except of this new function is that to withdraw balance (the Balance Wialon has now or any other kind of balance that can be add as new feature) a specific amount each day. Let's call this specific amount of balance the System Service Charge. So, if you set this System Service Charge equal to customer's units then you will be able to control dealers. With such a function you can set  Wialon to withdraw i.e 50 (for 50 Units) units of balance each day. then if the customer (dealer) wants to increase units to 70 Units, the only thing you should do it is to set System Service Charge to 70. If i want to explain difference between what Gurtam support team offered us and what we need i should say that their suggestion works based on actual number of Units in Accounts but we need it to work based on maximum number of Units in Accounts.

I'm sure it will be very helpful to control dealers or customers who want to add their devices himself (big companies with IT department who is responsible about such cases) even they pay monthly not yearly.

Please inform me about possibility of adding this function to Wialon or any trick/way can help us.

2

Billing...

Re: Billing...

Hi !

Doesn't any partner/developer have any idea regarding this case?

3

Billing...

Re: Billing...

hhamedk, the point is: Wialon billing simply doesn't work this way. It can withdraw money for activating something of for number of created something once in a while. It can also block the whole account when the balance is below zero or when expired by days. If you need other scenarios, you may use our SDK tools to make customization which will work for you, because there are no plans to rewrite billing system in nearest future.

Katerina Alexandrova
Product Manager (Mobile)
Gurtam
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Billing...

(05/03/2017 16:42:28 отредактировано hhamedk)

Re: Billing...

alek, may you think about this case again? it doesn't seem hard work to add a criteria in billing plan to withdraw a specific amount of balance each day.

5

Billing...

Re: Billing...

Maybe, it doesn't look sophisticated but actually it is. So, certainly not in nearest future...

Katerina Alexandrova
Product Manager (Mobile)
Gurtam
6

Billing...

Re: Billing...

Hi There

We finally found a way (better to say trick) for this problem. Consider that a dealer reached to 500 units in a 6 month period. We added proper related amount of balance for each unit for one year previously when we increased limit of units on account. So, now our only concern is to withdraw a specific amount of balance each day. If we write a cost line like 500:1;-1 (daily) for units service it doesn't work as dealer may remove some units or doesn't add all units when he asked for new units and add them in a period of time. Now let's check our way to solve this problem:
Each account has at least one resource. So we can set a cost line like 1:500;-1 (daily) or 1:500;2:0 (daily) for resources service we can withdraw 500 units of balance each day based on this criteria that dealer has a 500 units contract with us and system withdraw this amount without consideration of number of units.
I think it will work, we checked but it need more tests.
Please think and share your ideas if you see any conflicts here logically.

7

Billing...

Re: Billing...

is there anyone for outsouce who can do program to integrate with this kind of feature in wialon?

hhamedk пишет:

Dear Gurtam development team

In our country, customers pay for Units per year and as we discussed with Gurtam support team there is no possibility to block Units in Wialon system. Gurtam support team offered us some tricks but none of those ways can exactly do what we need. Let me to explain our situation understanding the exact problem.

Consider a customer (mostly a dealer) ask you for an account of 30 Units for a year at the beginning of 2016 and you charge them. Then, after 6 month they ask you to increase their Units limits to 50. In CMS you have only 2 way to block a customer, block by days and by balance. If you want to use block by days for such a customer, so, when would be the expiration date? end of 2016? end of June 2017?  you see, it doesn't work. Another way (Gurtam support offered us) is to use block by days and block by balance together. The prospect is to consider a service charge for each Unit per day/month and set the system to withdraw this service charge from account balance. for example if you consider 10 unit of service charge monthly for each Unit then for first 30 Units you should add 30(Units)*12(month)*10=3600 and for next 20 units 20(Units)*12(month)*10=2400 and total balance for 50 units will be 3600+2400=6000. At the end of 2016 the balance will be 1200=6000-(30*12*10)-(20*6*10). As the customer should pay for next year (2017) so the block balance should be 1200+ 3600(for 30 units for 2017)=4800 and if you set this you can control the customer, if they pay you will add 3600 balance to their account and if they don't pay system will block them and you will decide to remove their Units or... based on your company policy.

This is our situation and the way explained is the way Gurtam support team offered us. But, there is some problems. When we are talking bout dealers we can't control when they add their Units. We offer an account to dealers and limit number of Units in their account. We can't control when they will add Units and the way Gurtam support team offered will work only if a dealer add all 30 Units on 1st January of 2016 and all another 20 Units on 1st July of 2016. Think about such a situation that they add 5, 2, 14, ... Units within 2-3 month! it's impossible to calculate when you should block the customer.

I'm thinking about a new function in CMS to block Accounts. It can be a new Block way in Restriction tab or a new item in Services tab of Account Properties. What we except of this new function is that to withdraw balance (the Balance Wialon has now or any other kind of balance that can be add as new feature) a specific amount each day. Let's call this specific amount of balance the System Service Charge. So, if you set this System Service Charge equal to customer's units then you will be able to control dealers. With such a function you can set  Wialon to withdraw i.e 50 (for 50 Units) units of balance each day. then if the customer (dealer) wants to increase units to 70 Units, the only thing you should do it is to set System Service Charge to 70. If i want to explain difference between what Gurtam support team offered us and what we need i should say that their suggestion works based on actual number of Units in Accounts but we need it to work based on maximum number of Units in Accounts.

I'm sure it will be very helpful to control dealers or customers who want to add their devices himself (big companies with IT department who is responsible about such cases) even they pay monthly not yearly.

Please inform me about possibility of adding this function to Wialon or any trick/way can help us.

8

Billing...

Re: Billing...

alek, regarding billing module of Wialon we discussed enough in different topics and we are really waiting for a revolution on this module. But, for now and in nearest update, do you think this is possible to add a feature to it to withdraw a specific user defined amount of balance per reset period? In example user can enter 500 with reset period of daily and system should withdraw 500 units of balance each day.
What you think?

9

Billing...

Re: Billing...

hhamedk, you can do this already! Choose any billing service and adjust "Limit and cost" - 500, and "Reset" - daily.

Katerina Alexandrova
Product Manager (Mobile)
Gurtam
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Billing...

(18/09/2017 15:06:37 отредактировано hhamedk)

Re: Billing...

alek wrote:

hhamedk, you can do this already! Choose any billing service and adjust "Limit and cost" - 500, and "Reset" - daily

Are you sure? I assume that if we set 500 for i.e geofences then they can create 500 geofences every day. Please double check.

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Billing...

Re: Billing...

hhamedk, you are right. It won't work with geofences. But with services like ActiveX for instance, it will. Please, contact our technical support — they will guide you in this issue and provide the most appropriate solution for you.
support@gurtam.com

Katerina Alexandrova
Product Manager (Mobile)
Gurtam
12

Billing...

Re: Billing...

alek, I sent some mails to support (and I have sent last year). There is no way for solving this problem and it need i little change in billing module.
The best approach in this case in my eyes is what I wrote:

alek, regarding billing module of Wialon we discussed enough in different topics and we are really waiting for a revolution on this module. But, for now and in nearest update, do you think this is possible to add a feature to it to withdraw a specific user defined amount of balance per reset period? In example user can enter 500 with reset period of daily and system should withdraw 500 units of balance each day.

13

Billing...

Re: Billing...

Thank you, hhamedk!
We'll take your request into account next time when we reconsider our billing module and its functionality.

Katerina Alexandrova
Product Manager (Mobile)
Gurtam
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Billing...

Re: Billing...

I'm suffering from the same problem, most of our installations take place in different dates (i'm talking about months) so it would be nice if Gurtam adds a blocking box for each unit and not only for account

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Billing...

Re: Billing...

Dear partners, as theme of billing and blocking by single units, not accounts, are closely connected, so I offer to discuss both them in the theme  Blocking Units by Days/Balance

Tatsiana Shmihelskaya
Business Analyst, Gurtam