Configuring iPECS Report Plus - Cost Calculation

Access this screen from the iPECS Report Plus Manager, click here on running iPECS Report Plus Manager.

The inputs to calculating the cost of a call are:

• The site of the call.
• The trunk number.
• The number dialled.
• The starting date and time.
• The duration of the call.

The stages of calculating cost of the call are:

• Use the site, trunk and dialled number to find the carrier used for the call.
• Use the carrier and dialled number to find the tier used for the call.
• Use the tier and date/time of the call to find the rate.  Calculate the cost for a call of this duration, taking care that a new rate is started when the call passes into another charging period.

Calculate the Carrier

Two factors determine the carrier associated with a call.  Initially, the carrier is determined from either the trunk or trunk group used by the call, and then both it and the dialled number can be changed by digit modifications associated with the trunk group.

For each site, there is a list of trunks. The trunk number is looked up in this. Associated with each trunk is a trunk group, which has an assigned carrier. Individual trunks can override this and use a different specified carrier.  The initial carrier used by a call is either that assigned to the trunk or to the trunk group.

With each trunk, group are associated zero or more digit modifications. The digit modifications associated with a trunk group may result in changes to both the dialled number and the carrier for the call.

Calculate the Tier

The set of time rates which are applied for a particular call are called a tier.  For instance, a local call with a flat rate of $0.25 and an inter capital call which is charged at $0.12 a minute during the day and $0.13 during the night use different tiers. iPECS Report Plus has four different types to identify the tier that a call uses.  Each of these is checked in order.

International – If the dialled number begins with an international access code of the country specified for the site then this is removed and the beginning of the remainder of the number matched against the lookup codes of the list of countries. If a match is found then this call is an international call. The originating country and destination country is then looked up in the list of tiers for this country to determine the tier to use.

Special – If the beginning of the dialled number matches against the special call prefix of a tier, then the call is a special call and uses that tier.

InterExchange – the area code of the call is added to the beginning of the dialled number if there is not already an area code at the beginning of the dialled number. The destination exchange of the call is then looked up in the numbers list for exchanges. The source and destination exchanges are looked up to see if they are related via an exchange group. Finally, the tiers are checked to see if any of them are related to this exchange group.

Distance – the latitude and longitude of each exchange is known.  From this, the distance between the two exchanges can be calculated.  Then the distance is matched with the distance bands of each tier to find the appropriate tier.

Calculate the Rate Cost

Once the tier has been found the date/time of the call is used to find the call’s rate and the charges associated with that rate in the tier are used to find the cost. Associated with each carrier are one or more period names and period sets. A period set assigns a period name to all times of all days of the week, including holidays.

For instance, a certain carrier might have period names flat, peak, off-peak and weekend.

The carriers period sets might be called flat, which applies the flat rate to all hours of all days, and national which applies the weekend rate all day Saturday, Sunday and public holidays, peak rate between eight and six weekdays and off-peak at other times.

One of the period sets associated with a carrier is associated with each tier.  

Each tier has a rate for each period name.  Each tier also has a specific costing scheme for each rate.  Hence for a call being charged the date/time is looked up for the tier’s period set to find a rate and then the charging scheme of the call is applied to the call. 

There are two types of charging scheme:

• Fixed cost, where a fixed charge is applied for the call.
• Per time cost, where the cost is calculated in set increments per unit time.  In this case, the duration is important.  If the call lasts sufficiently long that another rate becomes applicable this must be accounted for.  Per time costs also allow the possibility of the calls having a maximum or minimum cost or duration set.

 A tier also has a flag fall cost, which is a cost that is applied to a call as soon as it begins.

• Configuring iPECS Report Plus– Tariff Maintenance Manager
• Configuring iPECS Report Plus –Configure Tariffs

End of article.