Resellers can easily view and manage their customers' charges that are 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 they have received from the Distributor for any orders related to their end customers, where they can view specific information per invoice, sort, filter, and manage them, as well as calculate the unit sell prices, total cost, and sell prices accurately. Ultimately, Standart Edition resellers can use this information to create invoices that align with their pricing strategy and charge their end customers accordingly.
Viewing & Filtering the Customer Charges
The Customer Charges module in Storefront is located inside the main tabs section on the left-hand side of the screen. This module is visible only to the Admin and Marketplace Manager roles.
By selecting it, the reseller gets redirected to the Customer Charges page, where all the available invoice items from the Distributor’s invoices are presented in a tabular format with sortable columns that are indexed by each individual invoice item per end customer and are sorted, by default, based on the invoice number in descending order.
Specifically, each column header is clickable, transferable, 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. Also, from the Advanced Filter drop-down menu, resellers can display or hide columns as well as be able to apply more filters.
Let’s further analyze each column along with its values and 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 Storefront 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. There are no filter options for this column.
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. There are no filter options for this column.
Unit Sell Price: The unit sell price is the price that the Standard Reseller charges to the end customer based on the pricing rules they have defined for the product listed by the Standard Reseller. The Standard Reseller has the ability to use various pricing strategies for the product. They can apply a markup, use the SRP (Suggested Retail Price), or utilize the Special Price feature for individual end customers. 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.
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 by the system.
š” 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 can or have been applied in the generic grid and are represented graphically, with the use of logical operators and expressions.
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.
Exporting the Customer Charges
Clicking the Export button generates an Excel file named Customer Charges, which is downloaded to your device.
When exporting data from the spreadsheet, the selected columns chosen by the user and any advanced search filters will be included. If no changes were made to the default view, then the default columns and their corresponding values will be exported.
When a column is selected, such as Unit Cost Price, Unit Sell Price, Total Cost Price, or Total Sell Price, an additional column labeled Currency will appear to show the currency in the exported Excel file.
Rules of Displaying Invoices Containing Customer Charges
In order for the Customer Charges module to display accurate invoice items and operate efficiently, it follows these rules.
The invoice corresponds to a purchase made through the Standard Reseller's Storefront.
The invoice has already been generated in the system through various means, such as the billing service, manually initiated by the BSS user, a renewal occurred, or via API.
The Invoice derives 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 item will appear on the Customer Charges page, the following day.
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 invoices along with their invoice items and the corresponding end customers, 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.
Markup Retrieval to Calculate “My Unit Sell Price”
Ordering Through the Standard Reseller Storefront: When an order is created from the end customer through the Standard Reseller Storefront, we store the markup* at the order level to use it when an invoice is generated on the billing date instead of the order date. We do that to avoid inconsistencies in the calculation of the standard reseller’s unit price between the invoice and the order, in case of markup* changes. Each time a new invoice is generated for the same subscription, for example, on the renewal or on the addition of extra licenses, the current markup* is used, regardless of the initial markup at the order level.
* When the order is created from the end customer through the Standard Reseller Storefront, the system retrieves the markup, the Suggested Retail Price(SRP), or the end customer’s Special Price to calculate the My Unit Sell Price.
Ordering Through API or Billing Service Run or BSS Platform or Distributor’s Storefront: When an order is created through the API or the Billing Service Run or the BSS platform or the Distributor’s Storefront, then each time, we retrieve the current markup** in order to calculate the My Unit Sell Price.
** Specifically, we first check if there is a Special Price defined per end customer to retrieve the markup or Suggested Retail Price(SRP). If not, then we retrieve the markup or SRP defined from the listed product(s).
- Scenarios where the current markup is retrieved:
· When the invoice is generated on the billing date instead of the order date.
· On the renewal of the subscription.
· On the addition of extra licenses.
That means that the scheduled job run considers the last changes made in markup by the standard reseller.
Examples of Different Customer Charges Cases
In the following analysis, you can find examples from different Customer Charges cases that result in different invoices and invoice data.