The Billing Solution Search

[uf_shane]

I know there are several discussion hear on billing, but I find this to be the most important part of reselling the system.

It can be the best service in the world, but if you cannot automate billing then it is useless...

You will spend more time and money trying to bill your customers than focusing on marketing and bringing in a good profit...




With that in mind, it's not a system that will work well for VOIPo because it's too specific to hosting and HostGator. We're going to initially launch VOIPo on a proven commerical billing software that we've used for HG until we outgrew it. This will be a solid solution for the time being.

Though I know this is an older thread Tim, I am curious to which billing system you are looking at.

I have seen mention of WHMCS which we use on our dedicated server (we are at the planet as well). It is very user and admin friendly in most cases.

Is there any chance that we can have a billing api to pull in usage?

[GreenLantern]

I cast my vote for a WHMCS module. :)

[VOIPoTim]

After we looked into it more, we don't see any real possibility of a WHMCS module since WHMCS does not handle usage/variable billing (needed for usage based and international). Any solution with real automation is going to have to be custom built so we do plan to launch a billing addon next year for resellers.

Our reseller program is the only one of its kind. It's a little different than hosting since there are thousands of hosting reseller programs out there. So there really aren't any entry level commercial billing solutions for VoIP providers out there since there really haven't been any entry-level reseller programs in existence until now. There just hasn't been a market for them since no one could be a reseller to begin with.


There is nothing preventing a reseller from using WHMCS manually though. You just have to do the math yourself vs it calculating things dynamically.

For the first year or 2 of VOIPo, we used a very simple approach with WHMCS with virtually no automation.


Here is an example of a very simple, easy way to use WHMCS manually and be fully up and running including an order form within 30 minutes.

It's really not much work to maintain at all.


Basic Setup:

1) Setup WHMCS Items for your base plans.

2) Add a field to the WHMCS Order Form asking where they'd like a phone number from (you could collect a city name, zip code, etc)

3) Use the WHMCS order form to take orders.

4) When an order comes in, setup the new account in vPanel using the area they put on the order form phone number selection. E-mail their account info.

For 99% of people, this will be it and there will be nothing else to do. Customers will be automatically billed each month by WHMCS.


International/Usage Billing:

If you choose to offer international or usage based plans, here is how to handle that.

1) Set aside the same day each month to run your usage/international billing. You could do this on the 1st to keep it simple since all vPanel limits reset on the 1st of each month. On that day, login to vPanel and pull the usage report for that month under the usage tab.

2) Create a "Usage Invoice" manually in WHMCS for each client with billable usage. WHMCS will not calculate things for you, so you do need to do the math yourself, but it should be pretty quick.

This is essentially the exact setup we used for VOIPo initially and we did our first million with it. It's not perfect, but it does show that simple methods can work very well.

[uf_shane]

Ive been doing a little research and there is a smörgåsbord of voip billing solutions out there, the only issue is the need for server access.

I did find one system that actually has a Reseller setup and gives each reseller a virtual billing server, but I assume you guys would have to completely reconfigure the system. So I can understand not wanting to go there.

I just request you guys research every system before spending the time and resources to build your own.

In this day and age, if you can think of it, someone is probably already selling it.

[VOIPoTim]

We're not aware of any that are designed to sell traditional VoIP services.

We spent over $1 million and several years developing vPanel and our internal billing. We spent a ton of time looking for commercial solutions before doing that and couldn't find any.

The only thing remotely close were Asterisk type solutions, but our system is not Asterisk-based since it does not scale at all.

If you know of any that we've missed, feel free to post them and I'll take a look. We'll love to find something pre-existing we could partner with.


Ive been doing a little research and there is a smörgåsbord of voip billing solutions out there, the only issue is the need for server access.

I did find one system that actually has a Reseller setup and gives each reseller a virtual billing server, but I assume you guys would have to completely reconfigure the system. So I can understand not wanting to go there.

I just request you guys research every system before spending the time and resources to build your own.

In this day and age, if you can think of it, someone is probably already selling it.

[uf_shane]

www.star2billing.com seems to be the most complete solution. This is the one that has the built in reselling system.

The biggest thing holding my research back is no knowing the platform you guys are using.

[VOIPoTim]

www.star2billing.com seems to be the most complete solution. This is the one that has the built in reselling system.

The biggest thing holding my research back is no knowing the platform you guys are using.

That looks like A2Billing which is Asterisk-based. Unfortunately, anything that would be usable needs to be kind of standlone and not integrated with Asterisk or an entire server. Our system is made up of dozens of servers and it'd have to be a situation where each reseller can install their own copy of it and have it all separated to only show their accounts. Since this is a server-level type service, that'd be really hard to do. The amount of work it would take to modify something like that to work with our system to keep it separated out by reseller would be much more than just doing a solution in-house.

As far as platform... Our system isn't a commercial platform...it's custom. vPanel and the account structure is entirely custom. The core system is custom as well built on heavily modified Kamailio.

Trust me, we'd love to have something we could just integrate with, but we've looked all over. The only real solution is to do it in-house.

[uf_shane]

No worries Tim I understand completely. Most of the billing systems I have found so far are built around Asterisk, and I was pretty sure that was not what you are using. Or you would have utilized one of these systems already.

I will keep searching around.

[VOIP9]

Tim,

Based on the API provided by WHMCS, there's nothing really stopping your firm from tying your systems via their API to fetch total minutes used to calculate billing, or developing your own WHMCS module. Other firms such as GlobalScape have developed a module for WHMCS that talks back to their internal API, and are even completing another module to integrate into cpanel to make orders/renewals for existing SSL customers even smoother.

It can be done, provided the "will' is there by VOIPO to do so.

[GreenLantern]

In the short term, until a full system or bridge is available, I propose the following:

Resellers need ready control over the account name (without having to create a support ticket). Or, we need a defineable "info" field that shows up with "mouse over" the account name on report pages.

Either of these simple features would allow resellers to see meaningful information about accounts, such as what "plan" the customer has, or how many minutes are pre-paid.

This setup would let resellers sell packages or plans, and visually scroll through reports once a month to identify any overages. Most accounts would likely require no additional billing. And the few that do, could be spotted quickly from the usage page... but ONLY if we have more meaningful account info showing on the report page.

As it is, we have to click into every single account to view the notes field. Or we must find some means of cross referencing accounts to determine the plan and if overages have occured. (Or we are forced to sell only 1 plan.)

Long term, I would favor WHMCS module. A decidated billing system would be fine, so long as there is a generic front end we can run in an iframe or something. I prefer WHMCS though, since it allows so much more customization and runs on our own domain.

[uf_shane]

Ok we opted for WHMCS and are willing to get the API done... when you are ready Tim, let me know and we can really discuss this...

I will ask if the members here are willing to pay for the module once complete?