Charging Customers for their International Calls

[pbxinabox]

We are still new with the Reseller program and would be interested if any else has the trouble on how to charge their customers for their International usage?

This seems to us that this is going to sink the RESELLER PROGRAM as right now it is an all or nothing deal when you click on allow International calls. What happens when just a few of your clients dial all day everyday International and the charges just ring up?

Once again, just curious if anybody else would be willing to share how they are tackling this major issue with selling plans?

For us, since we are still working on getting everything final, we are doing it manually.. :-( and I tell you you what it is a PAIN.

Finally, not only is International charges a pain, but also just charging for everything is really a nightmare with the RESELLER Product when you actually look at the vPanel, charges for things like 800 Numbers and the per minute rates, FAX, and on and on...

[VOIPoTim]

You can set an international minute limit for each account. This is separate from their normal monthly limit.

Here's what I recommend:

1) Set a limit for everyone (even on unlimited plans) to prevent fraud/abuse. If someone legitimately hits the limit, you can always up it when that happens.

If there is no limit and someone has a ton of usage that is not legitimate or turns out to be fraud, there's no way to go back.

Limits protect you.

2) Bill your clients for the base plan charge. Depending on how you structure your service, this is likely a monthly fee or maybe yearly depending on the plans you offer.

So as an example with a toll-free number, you might charge $5 per month for the number. I recommend setting this up as a recurring product if you use billing system so it's automatically charged.

3) Pick a day of the month and bill international on that day. Just generate the usage report and then invoice the customer in your billing system for the total due for that period.

Something like this: "March International Calls: $8.43". If you're not billing it based on the calendar month, then just put the date range on it.

Keep in mind that international and usage charges don't necessarily need to be based on the billing cycle. I recommend making it based on the calendar month (so you calculate everything based on 1st-31st of each month. That way it's consistent and you're not driving yourself crazy with customers on different billing cycles trying to match up their usage to their renewal dates.

I wouldn't worry about putting the details of the calls on there. One line item should be fine because they can always refer to their call logs for the actual calls during that period.


Yes, this means some customers get billed more than once a month. That's just the reality of VoIP though and almost all providers do that. Even with VoIPo, usage is billed at different cycles than the actual plans.

For example, we sell a toll-free number with 100 minutes included each month for $4.95. Say someone signs up on the 16th. There's a recurring item for $4.95 for them that bills them each month on their anniversary (16th). We calculate all usage though based on the calendar month (1-31) and invoice them separately for that. We also will bill customers for any unbilled usage charges anytime they exceed $10 even if that's 5 times per month so people do not build up large balances.

The key is to keep it simple and not overanalyze it. It takes a little work to manually do it, but as long as you keep it simple, it can be done.

[VOIPoTim]

As far as billing in general, there are no easy answers.

Before VOIPo, I spent years in the web hosting industry. I remember when cPanel/WHM came out and it was one of the first real solid control panel solutions. It just allowed you to setup and terminate accounts and provided a control panel for the customer to manage features. There were no billing solutions then either. Bandwidth, disk space, etc were all very expensive then and we faced the same issues with how to handle overage charges, how to bill clients for their plan in the first place, etc. There was absolutely no integration.

Over the years more and more solutions for the hosting business came out and it and today it's a very easy business to enter into and there are tons of automated solutions that fully integrate billing, control panels, websites, etc.


VoIP is still in infancy. We spent over $1 million just on vPanel alone. There weren't even any commercial control panels for VoIP at all when we began. There are no entry-level commercial billing systems for VoIP.

Over time, we see things evolving just as the hosting industry did and it'll become more turnkey and more people will participate.

Those that make it work and stick with it from the beginning have a huge advantage over those that wait until it's "easy". When something is easy it becomes more saturated and there's less money to be made.

Right now there is absolutely 100% no competition in the VoIP market. 99.999% of the potential market doesn't even know what VoIP is.

With VoIP, we are trying to do what some have considered impossible and bridge the gap so that everyone can be part of the industry.

Sure, we'd love things to be more turn key, but ultimately the fact that we're able to offer what we're offering (access to wholesale pricing in 90% of the country with a control panel) for under $25 per month when just last year you'd need to spend hundreds of thousands to get the same thing is a pretty big jump and a complete game changer for the industry.

So really our reseller solution is right where hosting was when I started in that industry.

Over time we expect to add more and more to it and make it easier for everyone.