Product Offer Required Balances
Product offers can identify zero or more balances that are required by that product offer. You can limit rating to just the required balances by selecting the Charge Only Required Balances general property, and adding all required balances on the product offer Balances tab. Otherwise, both the required and non-required balances and meters are charged for an offer.
When a product offer is purchased, it is added to the subscriber, device, or group and the Charging Server determines which required balances and meters are added to the subscriber or group wallet. It bases the subscriber/device/wallet decision on the Balance Instance Creation Policy defined in the balance template. It bases the decision of which balances to apply on the Charge Only Required Balances offer general property.
If the Charge Only Required Balances offer general property is set, the Charging Server only applies balances listed in the Required Balances table on the product offer Balances tab. If Charge Only Required Balances is not set, all balances in the wallet are candidates for recurring rating, first-use pricing, and granting, even if the balance instance came from a completely unrelated product offer. In such cases, pricing is applied to all compatible balances. In the case of grants, the balance that expires last is used.
The list of required balances for a product offer is fixed at purchase time. If a pricing administrator subsequently revises a product offer to require a balance template that was not required when a subscriber purchased it, it will not be created retroactively and linked to the product offer.
Charge Only Required Balances on a Group
A group can purchase a product offer when the Charge Only Required Balances product offer general property is set. During rating, if this option is set, group offers can charge only the required balances. Any group member (subscriber or group) virtual balance that corresponds to the product offer’s group aggregate required balances is selected as valid to apply the charge. This applies to both usage and non-usage rating on group required balances, if present.
- If multiple instances of the same product offer are purchased by the same group, each offer instance only uses and charges its required balance instances.
- If a subscription belongs to two or more groups and each group contains one or more instances of the same product offer, each offer instance only uses and charges its required balances instances.
- If a subscription is a member of two or more groups and the subscription is charged by an offer owned by one of the groups, the impacted balance can belong to a different group.