- Key Terms
- Introduction
- Preparing to Design Services
- Configuring Categories and Service Items for Services
- Configuring Forms for a Service
- Configuring Services and Service Bundles
- Designing Plan for Delivering Services
- Configuring Rates and Accounts For Billing
- Additional Configurations For Designing Services
- Managing the Services and Attributes
- Designing Portlets and Portals Using Portal Designer
- Localizing Service Catalog
- Use Case of Designing a Service to Select Laptop
- Namespaces
- Form Rule and ISF JavaScripts UseCase Analysis
- Key Terms
- Index
Configuring Rates
and Accounts For Billing
This chapter contains the following topics:
Configuring Rates and Accounts For Billing
- Introduction
- Configuring a Billable Rates
- Configuring Accounts for Billing Transactions
- Configuring Billing Rates Based on Usage (Agreements)
- Pricing a Service
- Computing the Price for a Service
Introduction
You can design billing rates and also configure accounts and agreements to charge services based on usage. Using Demand Management module in Prime Service Catalog you can manage the consumption and billing/charge back of service items for your customers.
You must be granted the read permissions to Accounts, Agreements, and Billing Rates portlets in Portal Designer module to be able to access these portlets. You can also grant permissions in the Organization Designer module using the portlet, portal page, and portal page group. For more information see, Assigning Permissions, section in Cisco Prime Service Catalog Administration and Operations Guide
The key concepts involved in demand management are:
- Billing Rates - These are the rates or rate plans used for pricing service item consumption, characterized by the type of operation involved. Billing rates are equally applicable to the scenario of internal IT charge back. They are used synonymously as charge back rates in the context of demand management.
- Quotas - Quotas govern the maximum amount of service item resources allowed to be consumed by the customers. They are specified in the form of total item count, or the sum of the values for a specific service item attribute. Quotas are enforced by the corresponding policies defined in service items.
- Accounts - Each account represents a logical or physical customer whom the service provider transacts with. Each account may cover a business unit or multiple business units that are grouped together for the purpose of billing/charge back and quota management.
- Agreements - An agreement covers the types and quotas of service items an account may consume.
Configuring a Billable Rates
Billing data on service item consumption are recorded every time a billable event occurs. The rates for billing the service item consumption normally depend on the operation type and/or the quantity consumed.
Before You Begin:
During the billing rate design, the following factors need to be considered:
- What state changes or actions on a service item constitute a billing event?
- What operations need to be defined to model these billing events?
- How are the billing rates determined? Do they change based on the amount of service item resource consumed or are these flat rates? Are there different pricing scheme for different types of customers?
- How is consumption measured? Which attributes of the service item capture the amount consumed?
- What other information needs to be captured along with the billing events?
Step 1 | Create billable events as operations in the Define Service Item page in Service Item Manager. Only operations that have the “Billable” check box enabled are eligible for billing rate configuration. | ||
Step 2 | Define multiple billing rate groups to segregate the different pricing schemes for the same billable operation over different fiscal periods and/or different accounts. | ||
Step 3 | Create one or more billing rate tables for the billable operations once billing rate groups are in place. Create the corresponding rate tables using the Billing Rates portlet. | ||
Step 4 | On the Billing Rate Definition tab, specify the service item attributes to be used to look up the billing rates, as well as the ones to be captured along with the rates as memo information. | ||
Step 5 | On the Billing
Rate Table tab, enter the rates and/or rate codes that correspond to the unique
combinations of lookup attribute values.
| ||
Step 6 | When a billable operation of a service item is invoked, the billing rate for the service item is derived based on the values of the matching billing attributes as defined in the billing rate table. | ||
Step 7 | The billing information will be collated and recorded in a billing history table. The billing history can be accessed in the Billing History Portlet. It can also be retrieved through REST web services for passing to a third-party billing engine for further processing. |
Creating a Billing Group For Similar Rates
The operations performed for each service item may vary and therefore the rate at which each operation can be billed also varies. Create a billing rate group to associate a rate table logically and also group similar rate tables. You can create multiple rate groups.
Procedure
Configuring Rates for a Service Item
You can create a billing rate table to define billing attributes and attributes that could be used for reference. You can also use the billing rate table to configure rates for a service item.
![]() Note | Ensure that you have additional permissions to manage billing rates in the Organization Designer module. |
The content panel for billing rate table contains two tabs.
Billing Rate Definition- You can define the billing attributes and operations of a service item task that can be used for billing.
Billing Rate Table-You can configure the rates for the service item.
You can create multiple rate tables for a service item operation. When the service item operation is initiated, the system refers to the billing rate table and inserts an entry into the billing history table with the rate code, rate and the memo attributes.
To create a billing rate table:
Step 1 | Choose . |
Step 2 | Click the + Add in the list panel to the left and select Rate Table. |
Step 3 | Enter the
required information in the Add New Billing Rate Table window. Ensure that:
For example, if you are ordering a hard disk of unit rate 10 dollars and the quantity ordered is 2, the billable amount is 10*2 that is 20 dollars. The quantity entered in service form, ie 20 dollars is saved in the billing rate table and billing history. The per- unit rate billing does not support more complex billing rate calculations such as step rates and volume discounts. Therefore when you select Unit Rate ensure that: |
Step 4 | Click
Add. The
content panel for billing rates contains 2 tabs:
The information in the Billing Rate Attributes table is saved in the BiBillingHistory table. The BiBillingHistory table can be used by the billing engine to compute a rate for the service item task.
Billing Rate Definition tab displays the billable operations that you defined when you created a service item operation. See Configuring Service Item Operations, page 3-10.
For example, a service item like sandisk could be applicable for multiple companies such as IBM and Cisco. You can create rate code based on the company name that is using the sandisk. Rates could also vary depending on the unit of measure. You can define multiple rate codes depending on billing rates for the usage of sandisk. You could create a rate code for the usage like the number of months, days, or hours the sandisk is used. The attributes displayed in the Billing Rate Table is a one-one mapping of the billing attributes defined for the service item in the Billing Rate Definition tab |
Step 5 | Click Save. |
Configuring Accounts for Billing Transactions
An account covers one or more Organization Units (OU)s that can consume services and get billed for what is consumed. Therefore when you order a service, the application verifies if you belong to the OU that is mapped to the account. You can assign and track quotas using accounts.
There are two types of accounts:
- Tenant Account - A tenant account has a one-to-one relationship with the OU.
Create a tenant account when the resource consumption is tracked based on a person's Home OU membership. A tenant account may cover a single OU or a hierarchical organization, i.e., an OU with one or multiple levels of sub-units. A tenant account should be associated with the top OU in the hierarchy. When a member of the organization hierarchy orders a service that has billing or quota impact, the person's tenant account membership is determined in the system automatically by looking up the account associated with his/her Home OU. If there is no associated tenant account, the system repeats the search with the parent OU, and traverses up the organization hierarchy until one is identified.
- Project Account - This is a grouping of OUs. Project account can be associated with multiple OUs.
You create a project account when quota needs to be tracked collectively for a group of OUs that may or may not have a relationship with each other. When a member of the project account orders a service that has billing or quota impact to the account, the project account information should be included in the service item operation to override the tenant account lookup. For example, in a service item task, the associated service item-based dictionary should have the AccountID field included and set to the corresponding value for the project account that is being tracked for consumption.
In most cases, tenant accounts are used to model business units and project accounts are used to model groups established for projects.
Defining Attributes for an Account
The attributes are common to all accounts. If you are a service designer you can use attributes to define any additional attributes that should be captured for every account (e.g. Taxpayer ID). You can define custom attributes as this could vary based on the your domain. The attribute values can be referenced/exposed in policy email notifications. They can also be passed as parameters to policy triggered service requests.
To delete an attribute, choose Demand Management > Account > Define Account, select the attribute and click Remove Selected.
Creating an Account
Step 1 | Choose . | |||||||||||||||
Step 2 | In Manage Account tab, click Add | |||||||||||||||
Step 3 | Enter the following details: | |||||||||||||||
Step 4 | Click
Add.
The details you entered are displayed in the Account Information panel. | |||||||||||||||
Step 5 | In the Account
Information panel, do the following:
| |||||||||||||||
Step 6 | Click Save. |
An account may be deleted only if it has no agreement and service item subscription associated with it. To delete an account, choose Demand Management > Manage Account, select an account and click Delete.
Configuring Billing Rates Based on Usage (Agreements)
Using agreements accounts can be billed based on the services used. You can configure agreements to specify the maximum quota of service item. Therefore only attributes that are managed by quota can be used to create an agreement.
You can also create multiple agreements and sub-agreements and associate it with OUs or accounts. For example you can create a sub-agreement for an agreement such that a customer (OU or tenant account) can distribute his quota for a service item, to his sub OUs.
Agreements are created to enable tenant or project accounts to consume service items that are quota-managed. Service items that have any attributes marked as “Managed by Quota” are resources that need to be regulated for consumption to prevent them from over-subscription by individual accounts. As such, an agreement is a set of service item quotas defined for the associated account, specified in the form of “Count” (maximum number of service item instances) or “Sum” of certain attributes (aggregated total of the attribute values for all instances). The used amounts are also tracked in the agreement.
For example, if there is a need to restrict the maximum number of virtual machines provisioned for each account and the total vCPUs consumed, the service designer would first mark the vCPU attribute in the service item definition as managed by quota, and then create an agreement template which includes a count quota for the number of virtual machines, as well as the sum of vCPU allowed. When a new account is set up, the finance manager creates an agreement from the template to specify the quotas allowed for the account, and define a quota policy to enforce the quota check at the appropriate thresholds (e.g., notify the account manager at 80% consumption, and stop ordering at 100% consumption).
Once the account, agreement and quota policies are in place, when a service item operation is processed to create a new virtual machine for an account, the system performs the following steps:
Adding Agreement Templates
Agreement templates are created to enable you to create an agreement effectively. You can define service offering and attributes in the agreement template and then associate the template while you create an agreement. However you can also add additional attributes in the agreement which might not have been defined in the agreement template. The agreement will then be disassociated from the agreement template.
Step 1 | Choose . |
Step 2 | Click Add in the Agreement templates list panel. |
Step 3 | In the Add New
Agreement Template window, enter the
Name and
Description, and click
Add.
The details you entered are displayed in Agreement Template information panel. |
Step 4 | To define the attributes for the agreement template, click Add in the attributes table of the Agreement Template information panel. |
Step 5 | Enter the
following information in the
Add New Agreement Attribute window:
|
Step 6 | Click OK, and then click Save. |
![]() Note | Quota is the only attribute you can update once an agreement template is created. To change any other attribute you must select the row that contains the attribute that requires to be updated, click Remove Selected, save the agreement template, and add the attributes again with new values. |
Adding an Agreement
To add an agreement:
Step 1 | Choose . |
Step 2 | Click Add, in the Agreements list panel. |
Step 3 | Enter the
following information in the New Agreement window.
|
Step 4 | Click Add. |
Step 5 | The content
panel of the Agreements tab displays the following tabs:
For a master agreement (the top agreement for a tenant account), the tab shows the OU already associated with the tenant account. For sub-agreements (agreements that are created from a master agreement), the tab is editable and one or more OUs can be added here. The OUs are however restricted to only sub-OUs of the tenant account OU. Also each sub-OU can be associated with only one sub-agreement. |
Step 6 | Click Save. |
Creating Sub-Agreements
You can create sub-agreements of a parent agreement such that the quota limited for a master account can be shared appropriately with the sub accounts or fiscal periods. You can also ensure that you apply the sub-agreement to a particular OU of all the OUs that the account is associated with.
To create a sub-agreement:
Pricing a Service
Use the Pricing subtab to configure summary pricing and detailed cost information for the service. Service costs and prices can be used as the basis of chargebacks for delivering the service.
If you need to price service item based on consumption or by the type of operation involved, you can configure pricing in the Demand Management module. For more information, see Configuring a Billable Rates section.
To define the price for a service
Step 1 | Choose . |
Step 2 | Enter the Cost Details in the Cost Details table. See Cost Details Information. |
Step 3 | Enter the Pricing in the Pricing Summary table. See Pricing Summary Information. |
Step 4 | Click Save Pricing Summary. |
Pricing Options and Dynamic Pricing
The options specified on the Pricing Summary determine how price information is displayed in My Services > Service Overview. Only the “Pricing Required” option from Service Designer > Offer > Estimated/Fixed influences the workflow of the service by inserting a pricing moment after the request has been submitted. Because this behavior is inflexible, it may not be suitable for most scenarios where a price must be determined dynamically.
To provide more flexibility, service designers can write active form rules that dynamically set the price of the service. Like any active form rules, rules that set the price for a particular service request can be executed conditionally at any time during the authorization, review, and delivery cycle. The updated “transactional price” of the service request is shown in the Service Catalog > My Stuff > Open Orders or Completed Orders.
Dynamic pricing rules can be used in any services, not just those that are “Priced Dynamically”. The only benefit of using this option vs. “Fixed” is that it better sets the customer’s expectations.
For more information on using rules to dynamically price a service, please see Configuring Dynamic Form Behaviors Using Form Rules.
Field |
Definition |
---|---|
Accounting Code |
Category of expense, such as Capital expense or labor expense. Click Add to add a code. Click Update to update information. |
Description |
Description of the chosen code. |
Quantity |
Number of the chosen expense to be included. |
Rate |
The cost per service. The quantity and the rate are calculated and reflected in the total if you choose the Include option. You can also copy the total into the Pricing Summary if you choose Copy. |
Cost Driver |
Units appropriate for the chosen service such as BTUs or CPUs. The list of available Cost Drivers is configured in the Administration module in Lists. |
Time Period |
The time period in which the service expense is applied, such as Daily or Once. |
Subtotal |
Price based on the quantity and the rate for the given expense. |
Include |
Choose to include the expense in the pricing total. |
Copy (button) |
Click to include the Total from the Cost Details into the Pricing Summary information. |
Computing the Price for a Service
While designing services, you can enable the end user to calculate the price for a service before ordering. This will enable the end user to make conscious decisions while ordering a service.
An estimated price defines the billable amount for the dictionary. However, when you enable compute price, it calculates the sum of all the dictionaries for a service form and/ or calculates the price for each dictionary.
You must ensure that a rate table is associated with the billable attributes of a service.
Step 1 | Create a
Service Item, and do the following:
|
Step 2 | Create a
service item-based dictionary for the service item.
|
Step 3 | Create a form in the Active Form Components, and add the service item-based dictionary to the form. For more information, see Service Item-Based Dictionary. |
Step 4 | Create a
service (You can define the service as Order Server), and do the following:
|
Step 5 | Create a billing rate table that is applicable to the service item. For more information, see Configuring a Billable Rates. |
Step 6 | Create an
account and configure it such that it is mapped with the billing rate group
applicable to the service item. Also add the organizational unit. For more
information, see
Configuring Accounts for Billing Transactions.
Order the service from My Services. Click on Compute Price to evaluate the estimated price of the service that you ordered. |