When Price Components Can Be Applied

Application Types for Actions that Trigger Price Components

Application types are designated for different actions that occur in the system that can trigger price components. You define an application type on a price component (by specifying its Application Type property) when you create the price component in My MATRIXX. When an action occurs in the system that could trigger a price component, all price components that have the application type for that action are considered as pricing that could be applied. For example, when a product offer purchase (action) occurs in the system, an application type of purchase defined on a grant tells MATRIXX Engine to consider the grant as pricing that could be applied. The grant may be applied or not depending on conditions during rating.

Application Types summarizes the application types that can be defined on price components and their associated actions that trigger the price components.

Table 1. Application Types
Application Type	Action
auto_renew	No credit available for charging or authorizing service usage.
balance_threshold	Balance amount increase crossing a balance threshold.
cancel	Cancelation of a subscription catalog item or a one-time offer.
cycle_arrears_recurring	Recurring charges received during the previous bill cycle and applied at the end of the current cycle.
firstuse	First use of a balance instance. For periodic and on-demand balances, first use of a balance period.
purchase	Purchase of a catalog item.
purchased_item_activation	Activation of a catalog item purchased in pre-active state.
recurring	Processing for each cycle period.
resume	Product offer is resumed.
suspend	Product offer is suspended.
usage	Charging or authorizing service usage.

Application Type and Component Matrix shows which application types can be defined on which price components:

Table 2. Application Type and Component Matrix
Application Type	Charge	Discount	Grant	Refund	Forfeiture
auto_renew	X	X	X
balance_threshold			X
cancel	X	X	X	X	X
cycle_arrears_recurring	X	X
firstuse	X	X	X
purchase	X	X	X
purchased_item_activation	X	X	X
recurring	X	X	X
resume	X	X	X
suspend	X	X	X
usage	X	X

Service Usage

Price components associated with service usage are applied when a subscriber accesses a service. For sessions, usage components can apply to the event quantity or duration. For events without a duration, usage components can apply to the event occurrence, as with an SMS message, or to the event volume, as with a data package.

Balance Threshold

Price components associated with balance-threshold based pricing are applied when a balance amount increase causes the crossing (or reaching) of a balance threshold.

Balance-threshold based pricing can be applied during usage rating (including first usage rating) or non-usage rating, such as recurring, purchase, cancel, balance adjustment, and balance top-up operations. When the threshold is reached or crossed, all grants that have the configuration are triggered. For information about how MATRIXX Engine determines which offers to apply the triggered components (grants and balance state update components), see the discussion about balance-threshold based pricing in MATRIXX Pricing and Rating.

Catalog Item Purchases

Price components triggered by catalog item purchases are applied when a subscription or a group purchases a product offer associated with a service. The pricing contained in the product offer can impact simple currency and asset balances (non-recurring), such as those related to add-on services, balance top-ups, and the like. If a purchased product offer includes price components associated with recurring balance or billing cycles, the recurring pricing is applied after the purchase pricing is applied. However, if there are any pending recurring price components in product offers already owned, they are applied before the pricing in the product offer being purchased.

If a product offer is purchased mid-cycle, the associated pricing can be applied completely, applied with proration, or not applied at all. The proration behavior for a product offer is defined by pricing administrators during pricing plan creation.

Subscription Catalog Item Cancelations

Price components triggered by catalog item cancelations are applied when a subscription or group cancels a product offer that contains a cancelation price component. The pricing typically impacts a standard currency balance (non-recurring).

If the cancelation occurs mid-cycle, the associated pricing can be applied completely, applied with proration, or not applied at all. The proration behavior is defined by pricing administrators during pricing plan creation.

First Use of a Balance

Price components associated with the first-usage of a balance are applied when the specified balance is accessed due to usage. First-use components are not triggered by non-usage charges, which can therefore consume available assets without restriction. First-usage charges and discounts can impact any balance, not necessarily the balance defined as the first-use balance.

Note: Meters and virtual balances in a subscription or group wallet do not trigger first-use components to be applied.

The first positive usage charge to a simple, periodic, or on-demand G/L balance considers all applicable first-use components for that balance. Failure of first-usage charges on any balance disqualifies the balance for that usage charge. Otherwise, any applicable first-usage grants into the G/L balance are made immediately available for consumption by the usage charge.

For a periodic balance, first-usage charges are applied when a balance entry is first used. For example, you have a data roaming product offer that grants subscribers 5 KB of data while roaming, and charges them a daily $2.50 charge. When a subscriber is roaming and first uses the data service, the data usage triggers the kilobytes to be granted to the periodic data balance and triggers the $2.50 charge against a U.S. Dollars balance. If the subscriber uses all 5 KB of data, further service is denied. If the subscriber does not use all 5 KB during the 24-hour period, the balance amount expires and is again available the next day the service is used while roaming.

MATRIXX Support recommends that to apply a first-usage charge to an asset, the asset should be awarded using a first-usage grant when possible. This ensures that the asset is made available (including in balance queries) only after the first-usage charge has been applied, and it allows for delayed GL revenue recognition of the first-usage charge proportional to the lifetime of the grant.

Price components are not applied when the balance is first used as a result of balance normalizations or during cycle processing. For example, the application of a recurring monthly grant to an asset balance is not considered first-usage of the asset balance.

Purchased Item Activation

A pre-active purchased item can be activated as the result of a status life cycle transition, a subscription, group, or device SubMan modify request, by usage-triggered activation, and by time-triggered activation. If the purchased item is a bundle, all product offers within the bundle are activated at the same time. When the purchased item is activated, grant, discount, charge, and balance state update components are applied to purchased_item_activation applications. For information about pre-active purchased items, see the discussion about pre-active purchased items in MATRIXX Subscriber Management.

Usage-Triggered Asset Renewal

Auto-renew price components may be applied when usage charges without discounts (even if the discounted charges would have succeeded without auto-renew) cannot be applied. For example, a data roaming product offer grants subscribers 100 MB of data while roaming, and charges them a daily $10.00 charge. If the subscriber uses all 100 MB of data during a data session, service is denied. However, if a product offer includes an auto-renew grant that grants subscribers 50 MB of data while roaming for $5.00, the session is uninterrupted. The subscriber must have a currency balance of at least $5.00 or auto-renew will fail.

Auto-renew price components can be included in product offers owned by devices, subscribers, and groups, but not in global product offers. For group-owned product offers, subscriber-triggered usage auto-renews balances at the group level.

When a product offer with auto-renew components is selected, if there are shared balances, charges from lower-priority supplemental offers, but not lower-priority non-supplemental offers may be satisfied.

Recurring Balance and Billing Cycles

Price components triggered by a recurring balance cycle are applied when each new balance entry in a periodic balance is initialized (each new cycle). The pricing can impact any balance and not necessarily the balance entry that triggers the application of the price. The cycle period is determined by the balance template and can be hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly.

Price components triggered by recurring billing cycles are applied when each new billing cycle is created. The price components can impact any balance and are typically used to apply subscription fees. The cycle period is determined by the Billing Profile template and can be any multiple of a week, month, or year. When there are discounts associated with a recurring cycle, they are applied to the collection of recurring charges associated with the same balance cycle or billing cycle. During processing, price components are applied independently for each cycle. This is similar to how processing occurs for non-recurring non-usage events (each one is a separate event). Either all price components associated with a cycle are applied completely or none of the components, depending on whether there is enough balance amount available. If the charges are not applied, then any associated grants and discounts are also not applied and the cycle is not processed at all. As a result, the state of the balance remains unchanged, so the MATRIXX Charging Application will attempt to run cycle processing again at the next cycle trigger.