Resellers can easily view and manage their customers' charges based on their pricing rules from within their Standard Edition Storefront. The module called Customer Charges provides the resellers of the Standard Edition with access to each and every invoice from the root organization(distributor), view specific information per invoice, sort, filter, and manage the columns, as well as calculate the unit sell prices, total cost, and sell prices accurately. As a result, Standart Edition resellers can know exactly what their distributor charges them and accordingly create their invoices to charge their end customers.
Viewing & Filtering the Customer Charges
The Customer Charges module in Storefront is located inside the main tabs section on the left-hand side and is visible to all roles.
By selecting it, the reseller gets redirected to the Customer Charges page, where all the available invoices are presented in a tabular format with sortable columns that are categorized by each individual invoice per end customer and are sorted, by default, based on the invoice number in descending order.
Specifically, each column header is clickable and toggles between ascending and descending sorting. Also, filter options are provided above each column to allow resellers to filter results based on specific criteria and even search terms or select values from the Advanced Filter drop-down menu to apply those filters.
Let’s further analyze each column along with its options:
Invoice: Is the invoice number issued by the distributor to the Standard Reseller. Since it is a link, it redirects to the invoice page in the distributor's storefront. Sorting and filtering are available.
Invoice date: The invoice issuance date, which is provided by the distributor issuing the invoice (according to the STR reseller’s billing options). Sorting and filtering are available.
Type: Is the type of Invoice, either Debit or Credit. Filtering is available.
Customer: Is the name of the end customer to whom the invoice belongs. Sorting and filtering are available.
Description: Is the name of the product, which is also the invoice item. When a subscription is purchased in installments, the invoice item name includes the name of the product followed by the installment number. Sorting and filtering are available.
Start date: Is the start date of the billing cycle for the invoice item, which is provided by the distributor issuing the invoice. Sorting and filtering are available.
End date: Is the end date of the billing cycle for the invoice item, which is provided by the distributor issuing the invoice. Sorting and filtering are available.
Unit Cost Price: The unit cost price is determined by the distributor and observed by the standard reseller. The price is determined either by the sell price set by the distributor or by the price list established by the distributor for the standard reseller. The price list may include discounts on the sell price, a margin or markup on the cost price, or direct pricing. In any case, this it the price that the distributor charges the standard reseller. There are no filter options for this column.
Unit Sell Price: The unit sell price is determined by the standard reseller. The price is usually defined by the reseller’s established markup on the unit cost price, which also takes into account any predefined special prices for specific end customers. In any case, this it the price that the standard reseller charges the end customer. There are no filter options for this column.
Quantity: Is the quantity of the product that has been charged. Sorting and filtering are available.
Unit: Is the Unit of measure, meaning Month, Annually, etc. There are no filter options for this column.
Total Cost Price: It is calculated based on the Unit Cost Price multiplied by the Quantity. There are no filter options for this column.
Total Sell Price: It is calculated based on the Unit Retail Price multiplied by the Quantity. There are no filter options for this column.
There are also two hidden columns that the user can activate through the Advanced Filter → Column tab. The two extra columns are the Product Type and Product Name.
Product Type: The product type to which the product belongs. Sorting and filtering are available.
Product Name: The name of the product. Sorting and filtering are available.
🔹 If the standard reseller clicks on the Advanced Filter button, the following pop-up window appears, containing two separate tabs:
Filter: This tab contains all filters that have been applied in the generic grid and are represented graphically.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<IMAGE>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Column: This tab contains the list of the columns and checkboxes where the columns can be included and excluded. As a default view of the columns are all the available columns. The only non-visible columns by default are the Product Name and Product Type, which can be enabled if required since they provide better distinction between Pay-Per-Use products, such as those of Azure.
In the Total Sell Price, Total Cost Price, Unit Sell Price, and Unit Cost Price values, the system does not apply any filters or sorting, as the calculations for these values are done automatically.
Exporting the Customer Charges
By clicking on the Export button, an EXCEL file gets generated and downloaded to your machine, where inside the spreadsheet, the columns will be either the ones selected by the user along with any advanced search or, if no change has occurred in the default view then, the default columns will be exported along with their values. Once the user selects one of the columns, such as Unit Cost Price, Unit Sell Price, Total Cost Price, or Total Sell Price, an extra column called Currency will also appear to display the currency in the EXCEL file.
Rules of Retreaval & Display of Invoices Containing Customer Charges
In order for the Customer Charges module to display the correct invoices and operate as effectively and as efficiently as possible, the following rules must be applied.
The invoice items correspond to a purchase made through the Standard Reseller's Storefront.
The invoice item has already been generated in our system through various means, such as the billing service, manually initiated by the BSS user, a renewal occurred, or via API.
The Invoice items are derived from:
If the Standard Reseller has purchased the same service for their end customer via the Distributor's Storefront.
If the Distributor has purchased the same service for the Standard Reseller's end customer via the BSS platform.
Therefore, if one of the above events took place, then the Invoice will appear on the Customer Charges page.
However, if one or more of the checks and events below take place, then no such invoice will appear.
The purchase has taken place via the Standard Reseller's Storefront, but the invoice is inside the Pending Invoices and Proforma.
From invoices that were generated before the Reseller upgrade (Light Reseller → Standard Reseller):
Invoices from the period when the Reseller was still in the Light Reseller tier and had not been upgraded to the Standard Reseller tier yet.
From older invoices that lack the markup or SRP information (before the Customer Charges module was published):
Invoices that were issued prior to the implementation of the customer charges feature and, therefore, do not contain the markup or SRP data.
Flow of Retrieval of Invoices Containing Customer Charges
For the Customer Charges module to be populated based on the aforementioned rules from the section above, a scheduled job is introduced. This scheduled job runs once a day at 07:00 AM (based on the timeframe of the reseller’s organization), and it checks if new invoices have been generated for each individual Standard Reseller. Once these steps are completed, it retrieves the invoice along with the invoice item and the corresponding end customer, and adjusts the My Unit Sell Price based on the Markup or Special Price set by the Standard Reseller for the product that is being converted into an Invoice Item.