Accounts are found at the root navigation menu level
An account is one of the fundamental entities in LogiSense Billing and an understanding of the account structure is an essential prerequisite for configuring the system. LogiSense supports a parent and child account hierarchy in a multi level tree like structure. There is no restriction as to how deep an account tree can go. There are three distinct tiers of accounts that can be added in the platform.
The top level owner is considered your main business entity. Currently the system only allows for a single owner (business entity) within the system but may see the ability to expand to other business entities in the same system in the future.
This is an account that has child accounts under it. Since account hierarchies can span multiple levels, a parent account can also be a child account of another parent.
These accounts reside under an parent account and often are configured to invoice charges to the parent account. A child account can also be a parent account for other child accounts beneath it.
This is a type of account that receives an invoice. When configuring accounts you can specify who the invoicer is for the account (i.e. you can specify another account that will be invoiced for the account’s charges). Any other account under the owner can be selected as an invoicer, but typically the account selected resides in the same account hierarchy (e.g. a child account setup to use its parent account as its invoicer).
Customers can leverage this account structure to satisfy different business models. For instance, an enterprise might have customers with different subsidiaries and use parent child relationships to manage these relationships. In another scenario, a customer may support share plan configurations where multiple child accounts share metered usage. In such a scenario a share plan might be assigned to a parent and the participating services in each share plan are assigned to each child account.
LogiSense provides a workflow for account creation which involves configuring account level attributes such as name, type, default bill group, and currency. Each account can have one or more contacts associated with it. Setting up a contact is a necessary part of account creation. Different types of contacts can be associated with an account such as a billing contact, support contact etc.
Several types of accounts are available: prospect, customer and partner to mirror the business classifications that a business has with their end customer.
Account level settings determine the account's bill group, tax settings, payment settings and invoicer settings. Invoicer settings allow another account to be billed for the account’s subscription and usage charges. Subscription and usage charges must be invoiced to the same account, they cannot map to different accounts. An invoicer can be set to any other account under the owner, although typically the invoicer account exists in the same parent-child hierarchy as the account that it is being billed for.
Associated with an account profile is its subscriptions. While packages and services and their associated pricing can be defined at the catalog level, LogiSense Billing provides account level mechanisms for overriding subscription details at an account level.
This becomes important when a business defines a $10 service at the catalog level but wants to offer it for $8 to a specific account. The default pricing on all accounts would be $10, but the customer rep can initiate $8 pricing on a specific account.
These overrides of pricing can either be a one off price change, or a price plan can be created for negotiated pricing for packages and services sold to the customer each time they purchase.