# Understanding Rates

MetraTech offers a great deal of flexibility in how you charge for products and services. As a CSR, you may need to explain to your subscribers how they are being charged. In addition, you may assign personal rates to subscriber accounts.

This help topic provides an overview of rates and how they are applied.

## Product Offerings and Subscriptions

Many businesses group service offerings or products into packages. A package might contain several items that customers are likely to order. For example, mobile phone service providers routinely offer packages containing such items as standard monthly charges, special rates for nights and weekends, and discounts on phones. A car dealer might offer a luxury package that includes a premium sound system, sunroof, and leather seats.

MetraTech refers to this type of package as a product offering. Your accounts can sign up for product offerings. A product offering that is associated with an account is then called a subscription. You provide product offerings; customers sign up for subscriptions.

## Priceable Items

The individual items in a product offering or subscription are called priceable items. The car dealer package contains three priceable items. You can offer priceable items to your accounts on an individual basis, or as part of a subscription. The car dealer might charge $1500.00 for a sunroof purchased on an individual basis, but charge only $1200.00 for a sunroof bought as part of a package. Similarly, you can vary the rates you charge for any priceable item.

There are a number of variables that can affect the rate of a priceable item:

- Whether it is part of a product offering.

- The date when the account is charged. (For example, the car dealer might offer a special price on the luxury package during the month of February.)

- Whether certain conditions are met. (For example, the mobile phone dealer might offer 200 free minutes of weekend calls. After the 200 minutes are used, the account is charged .10 per minute.)

- Whether special rates apply to an account.

Priceable items do not have to be part of a product offering. If an item is not part of a product offering, it still has a rate associated with it. This is the default rate for the item. Rate managers can assign default rate schedules for every priceable item, if they wish to do so.

## Parameter Tables

In order to provide you with the flexibility to vary the rates of priceable items, MetraTech uses parameter tables. A priceable item parameter table contains information pertaining to the priceable item. It has properties, such as a description and beginning and end dates. It contains one or more rate tables that define the rates that a customer is charged.

## Rate Schedules

A rate schedule stores the rates or rating parameters of a priceable item, expressed as rules with conditions and actions. For example, a cable TV provider might charge $3.00 a month for a converter box, but only $1.00 a month for additional converter boxes in the same house. The converter boxes (priceable items) are identical, but they can have different monthly prices (rates). A rule describing this is stored in the rate schedule. A rate schedule can have a number of rules.

## Personal Rates

It is possible to customize the rate that a subscriber is charged for an item. You perform that task in the Subscription function of MetraCare. Not every item is allowed to have a personal rate. You can determine whether an item is eligible for personalization; see Selecting Parameter Tables for more information.

## Product Catalog

The Product Catalog is the overarching entity that keeps track of priceable items, product offerings, parameter tables, and rates.

## What Rate is the Subscriber Charged?

A priceable item has three possible rates:

- The default rate established at system implementation.

- A product offering rate.

- A personal rate.

The MetraTech platform follows these steps to determine what rate to charge:

Personal rate (if there is one)

Product offering rate (if there is no personal rate)

Default rate (if there is no product offering rate)

Note: This is the most common "price list chaining" configuration in the MetraTech Platform. Your system's configuration could differ. See your system administrator for details.

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