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Thread: Automating billing for international usage

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Aug 2010
    Posts
    14

    Default Automating billing for international usage

    Is there now an automated solution for billing international usage? Or at least an API? If not, when can one be expected? Looking at each account one by one and manually adding up the usage and entering it into the billing software is just not practical if a reseller has more than a handful of accounts with international usage.

    As things stand now, can the call data be exported to a billing package that will parse it and charge each each account?
    Last edited by AnyWho; 12-13-2011 at 05:34 PM.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Jul 2010
    Posts
    369

    Default Re: Automating billing for international usage

    I'll try to answer this, though I do not represent VOIPo.

    Currently, there is no API that I now of, and no ETA for one. You can export call history as a .csv file. From there, it is up to you to develop a methodology for sorting and billing.

    One suggestion that might help. Rather than billing AFTER calls are made, you might consider going with a prepay system. This way you can set limits to protect yourself somewhat. You still have to bill customers to "refill" accounts, but their usage is covered up to a certain limit. International Call Fraud (actually, all phone fraud) is pretty common, and you could get burned if you bill after the fact.

    Something VOIPo could do to help make things easier for resellers, would be to show the same details for International Minutes as for Domestic Minutes. Namely: "previous month", "current usage", "remaining". But we would need to see the $ cost, rather than simply minutes used.

    Resellers would still have to do manual billing, but it would be much easier if that cost info was more readily available for any given account. Just get a dual monitor setup, and once a month, zip through only those accounts that have a prepaid INTL calling limit. (This is also why it is recommended to do your billing on the 1st of the month.)

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Aug 2010
    Posts
    14

    Default Re: Automating billing for international usage

    Tim,

    I would really like to hear from you regarding this matter.

    Like the user above noted, having our cost for each call would make our jobs a whole lot easier and we could spend more time selling. Please have your programmer add these three things: country code, cost per minute, and total for each call (all of which you already have in your database) which would show up in our control panels but not our customers'. At the very least, we would need the country code you used for billing and we could program the rest.

    Until you implement the API, you can just have the system email us new usage reports weekly. We could also retrieve the reports via ftp.

    On a different topic, at the bottom of http://www.voipo.com/reseller-voip.php, there is a header that says Coverage. Underneath that it says Preview our live number inventory below. No matter what city and state I choose, nothing happens. The code must be broken.

    Also, is there an alternative to voip welcome? Type that into a search engine and Voipo immediately comes up. Not the best solution for white label.

    AW

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Aug 2010
    Posts
    14

    Default Re: Automating billing for international usage

    Tim? .

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Irvine CA
    Posts
    1,542,128,044

    Default Re: Automating billing for international usage

    We will keep your feedback and ideas in mind for future development.

    Right now we have a backlog of development work going on (such as our new vPanel look) so we can't make changes on the fly, but in the future, it may be possible to incorporate some of these things.
    Timothy Dick
    Founder/CEO
    VOIPo.com

    Interact with VOIPo: Twitter, Facebook

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Irvine CA
    Posts
    1,542,128,044

    Default Re: Automating billing for international usage

    Unfortunately, we do not offer an automated billing solution at this time.

    We will keep your feedback and ideas in mind for future development. &nbsp;<br><br>Right now we have a backlog of development work going on (such as our new vPanel look) so we can't make changes on the fly, but in the future, it may be possible to incorporate some of these things.
    Timothy Dick
    Founder/CEO
    VOIPo.com

    Interact with VOIPo: Twitter, Facebook

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