Discounts

Discounts reduce the charges applied to a currency or asset balance and can be a fixed amount or a percentage of the charged amount.

You can create discounts that are triggered by first-use of a balance, balance auto-renewal, subscriber usage, catalog item purchases, catalog item cancelations, suspended or resumed product offers, recurring cycle processing, balance threshold, and purchased item activation.

You can create flat-rate discounts, such as $5 off a monthly recurring charge, or more elaborate discounts based on a subscriber's balance quantity, usage quantity, or charge quantity. Typically, discounts based on a quantity type are defined as percentages so the discounted amount scales with the quantity.

Discounts based on a charge quantity are applied to the same balance that the charge impacts. For example, to create a purchase discount, a product offer that is valid during rating must contain a purchase charge.

To create a recurring discount, a product offer that is valid during rating must contain a recurring charge for a billing cycle, a balance cycle, or a purchased item cycle. A recurring discount component where Cycle is set to Any (any_cycle) can be applied to any recurring charge component having a billing cycle, balance cycle, or purchased item cycle. By default, the discount components from a product offer are applicable for the same product offer in the same purchased item. During configuration, you can enable enhanced hierarchy scope to apply a discount owned by a group to a charge owned by its members. For more information about enabling enhanced hierarchy scope, see the discussion about discount component selection in MATRIXX Pricing and Rating.

For discounts based on the charge quantity, the quantity is the total charge calculated during rating, including charges from all product offers that were used, not just those in the product offer in which the discount was included. Only discounts associated with a specific recurring balance cycle, billing cycle, or purchased item cycle are evaluated. No other discounts are considered. ​A discount component for any recurring cycle type is always considered regardless of the cycle type being processed. Discounts triggered by cycle arrears processing apply to billing cycles only. For information about cycle arrears processing, see the discussion about cycle charges and discounts in arrears in MATRIXX Pricing and Rating.

Discounts that get applied to the charge quantity can be applied to the original charges, before any other discounts are applied, or to the remaining charges, after other discounts have been applied. The original charge amount is the sum of all charges calculated for the event before any discounts have been applied. The remaining charge amount is the sum of all charges, minus any discounts that have occurred up to the point that this discount is run. You select the application method when defining the rate table for the discount.

You can also base discounts on a variety of object field values. The field can be in the network message or in the subscriber or device object. For example, a product offer might have a US dollar purchase discount equal to 10% of the value of an integer field supplied as part of the purchase. If the value of that field is 20, then a discount of $2 would apply. For discounts based on the charge quantity, the discount applies to all charges applied. For usage rating, the discount applies to all charges applied within the event segment and each segment is evaluated separately.

For information about rating workflow, see the discussion about authorization and rating workflow in MATRIXX Pricing and Rating.

For information about applying the scope of a discount to a product offer, see the discussion about discount component selection in MATRIXX Pricing and Rating.

Discounts are applied in order of this group list, but the discounts within each group are not applied in any specific order.