Billing in the staff console

Billing is where staff decide what can be charged and sold, look after each tenant's account, and settle the charges and payments that wait on a person. Usage is charged in credits, and one credit is a million micro-credits; plans and top-ups are sold in pounds. Every change asks for a reason, recorded in the billing audit with your name.

What you'll need

• Access to Billing in the staff console.
• A staff sign-in. Every staff account can currently use all of Billing; see Billing permissions below.

If an area or a button is missing, your staff role does not include it. Ask a platform administrator to extend your access.

The Billing rail

Section	Screens	Use it to
Billing	Overview	See where money is stuck this period, under Billing operations.
Setup	Registry, Catalogue, Rates	Register what can be measured, sell plans and top-ups and publish prices.
Operations	Tenants, Parked usage, Held charges, Held payments, Held connectors, Reconciliation	Manage one tenant's account and clear the queues.
Finance	Invoices, Audit	Correct invoices and read the billing audit.

Opening a tenant under Tenants adds its own screens beneath it in the rail: Summary, Ledger, Usage, Inventory, Rate overrides and Enforcement.

How a price reaches a tenant

1. A component (a product such as kb) exists in the Registry, with the meters it reports and the resource types it charges a daily base for.
2. Each meter and daily base gets a price under Rates. Usage on a meter with no price is parked, not charged.
3. Catalogue sells credit: plans and top-up packages, each with versions.
4. A tenant needs a billing account and credit, and its Enforcement mode decides whether work is refused when the credit runs out.

Billing permissions

Each Billing screen and action has its own staff permission key, listed below. At the moment every staff sign-in is allowed all of them, so every control this section describes is available to you, whatever Account Settings lists under Roles.

Permission	Covers
billing.meter.read / billing.meter.manage	Seeing the Registry / registering, editing and retiring components, meters and resource types.
billing.rate.read / billing.rate.manage	Seeing prices / publishing prices and tenant overrides.
billing.plan.read / billing.plan.manage	Seeing the Catalogue / creating and changing plans, packages and their versions.
billing.tenant.read / billing.tenant.manage	Seeing tenant accounts, balances and ledgers / provisioning a billing account.
billing.grant.create	Granting credit to a tenant.
billing.settings.read / billing.settings.manage	Seeing platform billing settings / changing a tenant's enforcement mode.
billing.usage.read	Seeing usage, inventory, and the held and parked queues.
billing.charge.manage	Releasing or writing off held charges and parked usage.
billing.purchase.read / billing.payment.manage	Seeing purchases and held payments / checking, releasing or rejecting a held payment.
billing.invoice.read / billing.invoice.manage	Seeing and downloading invoices / re-sending, superseding or voiding one.
billing.reconciliation.read / billing.reconciliation.manage	Seeing reconciliation issues and tracing ledger entries / running reconciliation for a tenant.
billing.audit.read	Reading the billing audit.

billing.correction.create and billing.purchase.create exist, but the console has no control for them.

Billing operations

Billing operations, the screen Billing opens on.

Enlarge

Overview opens Billing operations. Quick actions offers shortcuts such as Grant credit and New rate version. Where the money is this period follows credits from usage to payment and names each place they are stuck: parked usage, held charges, invoices not yet paid and held payments, each linking to its queue. Biggest leaks by tenant ranks tenants by held or unrated work, and Period close lists what must be clear before invoices are issued.

If something goes wrong

Symptom	Likely cause	What to do
A billing screen shows Oops! Something went wrong	The billing service is down or restarting.	Try again in a few minutes.
A figure is marked with an asterisk.	No service provides it yet, so it is a placeholder.	Do not quote it to a customer.

Next

• Registering components, meters and resource types - where pricing starts.
• Managing a tenant's billing account - one customer's money.
• Clearing held charges and parked usage - the daily queues.