Order processing is one of the key notions in Billing. When a customer buys a service, renews a subscription, switches to another service plan, or cancels a subscription, the respective order is generated in the system.
Orders are used to initiate the service provisioning process. On one hand, an order represents a service that a customer wants to purchase (in terms of CloudBlue Commerce – Provisioning Items); on the other hand, an order represents a provider's offer to provide the requested service for a definite price during a specified period (so-called Order Details).
In Billing, there are the following types of orders:
- Sales order (SO): this is created when a customer orders services from the End-Customer Marketplace, customer CP, or when a vendor orders services on behalf of a customer.
- Renewal order (RN): this is created when a subscription is renewed.
- Billing order (BO): this is created regularly as a result of billing a customer.
- Change order (CH): this is created when a customer purchases additional resources, changes the subscription period to a longer one, or changes the subscription service plan to a more expensive one. Another case in which a change order is created is when a customer decides to consume less resources, and changes the subscription period to a shorter one, or changes the subscription's service plan to a cheaper one. A change order can have both positive (in case of a downgrade) and negative (in case of an upgrade) amount.
- Payment order (PO): this is used as a supplementary order for payment processing. This type of order is visible only by the Payment Order ID link within the details of a respective payment document. You can find out a PO ID if you open the respective payment document in Billing and switch to the Payment Log tab.
- Cancellation order (CL): this is created when a subscription is canceled and if a provider owes money to a customer.
- Cancellation charge order (CF): this is created when a subscription is canceled and if a customer owes money to a provider.
- Resource order (RC): this is created when a subscription was synchronized with the plan it is based on, and there are some resources that require additional provisioning in an external system (for example, if the amount in a plan has changed comparably to those when the subscription was provisioned). The customer is not billed, the order has zero amount and is required only for provisioning and monitoring.
These types are fixed and cannot be changed. The user action (either create a new order, renew a subscription, or cancel a subscription, and so on) determines the type of order issued for the transaction.
Each order type has its own order flow that can be represented in a graph with order statuses as graph nodes and order flow transitions as links between statuses. After order processing is successfully completed, the order status becomes Completed. But in some cases, orders can stall in a certain status that requires manual operation.
If orders are generated automatically, they are marked as system in the list of orders in the Updated by column. If orders are created by the provider, they are marked as admin in the list of orders in the Updated by column.
For more detailed information about order management, please refer to the CloudBlue Commerce Provider's Guide.