Ensuring the Correct Usage Calculation for Canceled Subscriptions

When a customer cancels a usage-based subscription, it is important to make sure that CloudBlue Commerce collects the usage data correctly and that the customer is charged correctly for the actual usage. Since service applications usually provide resource usage data with some delay, Billing does not usually have all the actual resource usage data at the moment a cancellation order is placed.

To ensure the correct usage calculation for usage-based services and the correct customer billing for a canceled subscription to a usage-based service:

1. In the Provider Control Panel, click Operations on the top. Go to Products > Service Templates. Click the necessary usage-based service template.

2. In the General tab, click Edit. In the General section, set the Collect resources usage after subscription cancellation (days) property to the number of days after subscription cancellation that are necessary to complete the collection of the service usage statistics and to issue the correct bill.

   Important: If you expect a service to report the actual usage statistics within X number of days, set Collect resources usage after subscription cancellation (days) to X+1. See Peculiarities.

   Note: The setting is available only for usage-based service templates and can be edited only if you open a usage-based service template through Operations. If you open a usage-based service template through Billing, the setting will be read-only.

Peculiarities

Scenario 1: A cancellation order is processed several hours sooner than expected with usage data not fully collected

If you expect a service to report the actual usage statistics within X number of days, set Collect resources usage after subscription cancellation (days) to X+1. Otherwise, the set number of days may still be not enough to fully collect resource usage due to the Daily Billing Process settings and because the feature uses calendar days, not full days. For example:

Note: In this example, we assume that the Daily Billing Process completes the cancellation order processing fast. For real installations, the Daily Billing Process execution time can vary depending on data volumes, which may influence the actual time spent on usage data collection.

1. The Collect resources usage after subscription cancellation (days) property is set to 2 days. The DailyBillingProcessing event is set to launch daily at 01:00.
2. A customer places a cancellation order on the 5th of April at 20:00.
3. A request to stop the subscription service is sent from Billing (BSS) to Operations (OSS). The OSS stops the subscription service and notifies the BSS about it. The BSS adds 2 calendar days (not 2 full days) to the service stoppage day and sets the cancellation order to be processed on the 7th of April (the 5th of April + 2 calendar days).

4. At 01:00 on the 7th of April, the Daily Billing Process starts and processes the cancellation order based on the available resource usage data. The customer is billed based on the usage data collected within the 29 hours which passed between the cancellation order placement time and its processing by the Daily Billing Process.

   As a result, the system allowed only 29 hours, not 48 hours, for usage data collection. To ensure a minimum of 48 hours for usage data collection, it is necessary to set the Collect resources usage after subscription cancellation (days) property to 3 days, not 2 days.

Scenario 2. A cancellation order is placed after the subscription is suspended and is processed sooner than expected without usage data fully collected

If a cancellation order is placed after the subscription is suspended, the cancellation order is processed X days after the service is suspended, not X days after the cancellation order, where X is the value of the Collect resources usage after subscription cancellation (days) field. The cancellation order processing can also happen immediately if X days after the service suspension happens to be in the past. For example:

1. The Collect resources usage after subscription cancellation (days) property is set to 5 days.
2. A subscription is put on Administrative hold on the 5th of April; the subscription service is suspended.

3. Two weeks later, on the 19th of April, the customer places a cancellation order. The cancellation order is processed immediately based on the available resource usage data, because 5 days after service suspension (the 5th of April + 5 days) is already in the past.

   To avoid customer dissatisfaction, it is necessary to warn customers about the possibility of such inconveniences if they make such a cancellation.

Limitations

This feature does not support subscriptions to Amazon Web Services.