Once the SIM is in Status Active and assigned to an Account the Billing Status is visible to users in the Enterprise Portal.
3.4.1 - Billing statuses
The following values are available:
- Customer Inventory: This status indicates that the SIM is already assigned to an Account / Customer, but the subscription is not yet active. During the creation of a Customer, the contract will either be set to In Testing or Ready for Billing Activation depending on how it is marked in the contract.
- In Testing: In case there has been a test allowance (e.g., a free test data volume of 512 kB) agreed, the SIM will stay in this Status until the test allowance has been consumed. This is also referred to as FAT (Factory Acceptance Test)
A user with the necessary access rights can initiate charging by manually setting to In Billing before the test allowance limit has been reached. - Billing Ready: This status indicates that the SIM Card has an active Customer contract. The SIM is able to connect to the Network but billing is stopped. With the first traffic event, the SIM will be set to In Billing, and agreed fees are applied. In case there are no traffic events during a Billing Cycle (which would set the SIM to In Billing), no subscription nor any usage fees for this Billing Cycle will be charged.
- In Billing: Once the SIM Card has been set to In Billing each consumption will be charged according to the assigned tariff model. In the case that the SIM is no longer used for connectivity services, the contract can be terminated. This will set the SIM to the status Retired.
- Suspended: To suspend a SIM means to interrupt the charging until it is either resumed, or the SIM gets retired. Accordingly, the suspension period will be taken into account during the billing, following agreed business rules (i.e., a contract with monthly dues will be billed prorated).
Usually, a suspended SIM is still allowed to register to the Network, but all Network services are disabled ("all barred"). However, using a dedicated Suspend Service Profile, some dedicated services could be still allowed (i.e., SMS MT to still receive Short Messages).
In case the related Account got configured for Retrospective rating, the above-said proration of the MRC will only apply in the event of a SIM moving into suspend and within the same Billing Cycle. If a SIM moves into suspend and gets resumed within the same Billing Cycle, the normal Retrospective rules apply and the last Price Plan at the end of the Billing Cycle gets charged for the full duration (incl. the suspend period). Only if the SIM stays in suspend beyond the same Billing Cycle, the Retrospective rating rule gets interrupted and the MRC will only be charged until suspend day and the suspend duration (until the end of the Billing Cycle) will not be charged.
Once the SIM gets resumed the following month, the Retrospective rating rule applies again and the full MRC of the last Price Plan at the end of this Billing Cycle will be charged (incl. the suspend period within that Billing Cycle). - Retired: This means the SIM has been terminated by the Account. A Retired SIM is not allowed to register on the network. A retired SIM can be manually reactivated, but any test allowance will not be allowed a second time. Activation of a retired device will also require a device reboot.
3.4.2 - Billing status flow
The following diagram shows the described Billing Statuses and their possible transitions. Red arrows indicate automatic transitions, and green arrows mark transitions that can be triggered by Billing Manager and Enterprise Portal users with the appropriate rights.
3.4.3 - Processing Status
The PS (Processing Status) column informs Users about the status of various asynchronous processes, e.g. the Billing Status change.
indicates that the change process is ongoing
indicates that the change process has failed.-
In case there is no currently ongoing or failed process, the field is left empty.
More information is accessible on the Pending Changes tab, which may be easily accessed by clicking on the icon in the PS column.