When to Use Multiple Rate Tables

You can use multiple rate tables in a price component when you want to try impacting one balance first and then another balance and not stopping until a valid balance is found.

For example, you can use multiple rate tables to create a charge that impacts bonus minutes first, prepaid minutes second, and dollars last. The following common scenarios use multiple rate tables in one price component.

Prepaid Assets and Overage Charges

If you provide subscribers with a balance of prepaid assets for service usage, such as an SMS balance for text messages, and you charge a currency rate for usage that occurs after the assets are used up, you need to create a charge that has at least two rate tables. One rate table impacts the SMS balance as usage occurs and one rate table impacts the currency balance when the assets are gone.

The price component might have a third rate table if you want to subtract the SMS amount from a Bonus SMS balance. For example, say subscribers accrue 5 bonus SMS messages for every 5000 messages sent. If you want to subtract from the SMS balance first, then from the Prepaid SMS balance, and then charge $0.10 for each additional message sent or received after both SMS balances are gone, the price component would have three rate tables:
  1. A rate table for the SMS balance that charges one SMS from the bonus balance.
  2. A rate table for the prepaid SMS balance that charges for each SMS sent or received.
  3. A rate table for the US dollars balance that charges $0.10 for each additional message sent or received.

Reduce Number of Rows in Rate Table

If you need to rate an event based on several normalizer parameters, some of which do not apply in all cases, you can split the parameter values into separate rate tables to reduce the number of rows in the rate tables. For example, say you have a voice product offer that charges subscribers based on local, long distance, and international zones and peak and off-peak time periods. You can set up the charge with two rate tables—one that deals with local and long distance rates and another than deals with international rates.

Unneeded Parameter Value Combinations are Present

There might be a case where you have multiple normalizers and one has one or more parameter values that do not require other normalizers to drive the rate because the rate always stays constant, regardless of those parameter values. To remove unnecessary value combinations from a rate table, use two rate tables.

In Example Rate Table, normalizer 1 value A requires two normalizers to drive to a rate and value B does not.
Table 1. Example Rate Table
Normalizer 1 Normalizer 2 Normalizer 3 Rating Formula
A 1 X $10
A 2 X $15
A 1 Y $10
A 2 Y $20
B <n/a> <n/a> $16
One way around this is to create the Example Shortened Rate Table 1 and Example Shortened Rate Table 2. You can set this up with the following two rate tables:
Table 2. Example Shortened Rate Table 1
Normalizer 1 Normalizer 2 Normalizer 3 Rating Formula
A 1 X $10
A 2 X $15
A 1 Y $20
A 2 Y $25
Table 3. Example Shortened Rate Table 2
Normalizer 1 Rating Formula
B $16