Debt Balances

A debt balance tracks the debt associated with currency charges on a product offer. Debt balance is a simple, postpaid, locked, actual currency balance with unlimited credit that tracks the debt associated with currency charges in a product offer or bundle. Both the purchase and recurring debt balance must be simple balances.

A debt balance determines how an offer reacts to a currency change on a prepaid balance when the credit limit is reached. Any prepaid actual currency balance with credit can be used to pay off debt balances including recharge, top-up offer, and balance adjustments. Debt balances cannot use the subscriber or group balance adjust or top-up balance APIs: MtxRequestSubscriberTopupBalance, MtxRequestSubscriberAdjustBalance, MtxRequestGroupAdjustBalance, and MtxRequestGroupTopupBalance.

Note: A debt balance can be associated with external payment methods, allowing the debt to be paid off through an external payment request. External payment requests are generated at product offer purchase time and in advance of new cycle start time. For more information about external payment methods, see the discussion about balances with external payment requests in MATRIXX Pricing and Rating.

For information about debt balance during recharge or adjustment, see the discussion about debt balance during recharge or adjustment in MATRIXX Pricing and Rating.

A debt balance is defined by the balance template, the debt balance type, and the write-off policy, and is specific to the catalog item being purchased. Debt balances on an offer are created at purchase/activation time, with an end time of infinity. Debt balances are not included in balance normalization.
Note: A debt balance cannot be based on a main balance template.

Upon purchase or recurring processing, the debt balance is charged based on the currency amount after the prepaid currency balances are consumed; the fee debt balance is managed independently. For information about debt balance impact when a product offer is purchased or has recurring charges, see the discussion about debt balance during purchase or recurring in MATRIXX Pricing and Rating.

For product offers in a bundle, the bundle overrides the debt balance type so that:
  • The bundle can specify a debt type not in the product offers.
  • If two or more product offers in a bundle specify the same debt balance type, a single balance instance is created.
  • Two product offers in a bundle cannot specify different balance templates for a given debt balance type.
Note: To sort debt balances by recurring processing priority, you must set the Priority in the Cycle Data tab in the product offer or bundle pricing configuration. If no priority is provided, the priority defaults to zero and debt balances are not sorted.
The three debt balance types are:
  • Fee — Grace period fee and cancel charge debt.
  • Purchase — Purchase charge debt.
  • Recurring — Recurring charge debt.
The write-off policy for debt balance can be:
  • None — No write-off.
  • Cycle — Write off debt at end of the cycle.
  • Specific time — Write off debt at a specified time.
  • Expired — Write off debts when the offer expires.
The write-off policy for each debt balance type can be:
  • Purchase — Write-off policy can be none, specific time, or expired.
  • Recurring — Write-off policy can be none, cycle, or expired.
  • Fee — Write-off policy can be none, cycle, or expired.

For more information about how debt balance is written-off based on the configured write-off policy, see the discussion about debt balance and recurring write-off policy in MATRIXX Pricing and Rating.