What Does a Billing Supervisor Do?

The main purpose of billing management is to correctly calculate and charge users' fees for using network services. But this is not the only purpose. Charging management also needs to perform statistics on network resource utilization and network cost-effectiveness calculation. For network operators with a view to making profits, the billing management function is undoubtedly very important.

Billing management measures the use of network resources by users, establishes metrics, sets quotas, determines fees, and bills users.

Accounting management statistics help network managers make decisions about how to allocate network resources. Similarly, this data is also useful in managing system resources such as disk space, processing power, and backing storage.

Billing management includes the following steps:

> Determine billing principles.

> Collect data on network resource usage.

> Set usage quota.

> Issue users for network usage bills ^[2]

Billing management is responsible for monitoring and recording users' use of resources and allocating network operating costs. Its main functions include: collecting billing records; calculating user bills; allocating network operating costs, including communication media and communication resources used; network operating budgets; and examining the impact of tariff changes. ^[3]

The service event monitoring function module is responsible for capturing users' events of using network services from the management information flow. The monitored events are stored in the user's account log for users to query, and the relevant information is sent to the tariff management module to calculate the cost. In addition, the legitimacy of the billing event must be judged. If an error is found, a billing fault event is automatically reported to the fault management function.

The tariff management service function module calculates the fees that should be charged for network services provided to users in accordance with the tariff policy. Tariff policies need to be continuously adjusted according to technological progress and business conditions. At the same time, the discount rate should be set according to the time, date and nature of the service.

The service management function module restricts the types of services available to users based on the control information of the tariff management function module and the charging control module. For example, whether you have the right to make long distance calls, the right to use special services, etc.

The charging control function module is responsible for managing user accounts, adjusting fee rates, and service management rules. ^[1]

NetFlow technology

Accounting management is tightly integrated with traffic management. A key requirement when deploying Layer 3 switching is to provide flow visibility when flows are being exchanged for troubleshooting,

Simple tools for billing management

Simple tools can generally perform simple billing for certain resources, such as user usage of the server. At the same time, it should also provide the ability to monitor user resource usage. The collected data will be stored in a relational database as part of the network management system structure, and quotas can be configured by the administrator. To determine whether the quota is exceeded, you can use SQL queries, and the tool will display the results of the query.

Sometimes, managers may want to know when a user has three unsuccessful login attempts to a financial database over the network. This can be done by instructing the tool to query the financial database server for unsuccessful remote login attempts every hour and monitor this statistic. Simple tools then store this information in a relational database. ^[2]

Billing Management Complex Tool

Complex tools can perform network billing. Implementing a billing process on a computer network can be extremely difficult and time-consuming. Complex tools should be able to take computer network topology and billing fields as inputs and calculate the necessary I-bills for users.

Complex tools need data from network management systems and managers to implement their functions. It should be able to obtain the network topology from the relational database of the network management system. And, because the hierarchical map of the network management system is in the database, this information will also be available to the tool. The tool must then understand how the logical structure of the network is divided into billing areas, a step that requires manager input. ^[2]

Advanced billing management tools

Advanced tools can predict Liu's network resource needs on the one hand, and help users predict their network expenses on the other.

Measurement data and quotas can help managers determine whether network resources are adequate. Advanced tools can use a relational database to generate statistics that tell managers how often users exceed a quota during a specific time period. Extending this functionality, advanced tools should be able to determine if a trend in the network will cause quotas to be reached, and therefore remind managers to upgrade resources, add more equipment to resources, change quotas or any other behavior that may be required. ^[2]