Telecom Billing System Blog

A comparison of telecom invoicing systems: accounting versus billing software, and what's best for telcos. In today's competitive telecom market, sending timely invoices, collecting payments, and tracking your company's financial health are critical to success.

Supporting Your Business and Your Operations TimelyBill offers a single stack OSS / BSS on a cost-effective cloud model for both traditional telecoms and wireless  ↗️, VoIP, Broadband, and IoT service providers.

Prorated Billing with TimelyBill What is Proration or Prorated Billing? Prorated Billing is a way of creating fair charges to reflect changes mid-billing period. For example, if a customer joins in the last half of the billing period, a prorated billing system would only charge for the half that the customer used the service rather than the entire billing period. Example of Proration in Telecom Imagine you have a monthly phone plan that costs $50 per month, and your billing cycle starts on the 1st and ends on the 30th of each month. If you activate this plan on the 10th of the month, you've used the service for only a portion of the billing cycle. To apply prorated billing in this context: The total monthly cost of the phone plan is $50. The number of days you've used the service in the current billing cycle (from the 10th to the 30th): 21 days. The total days in the billing cycle (30 days in this case). Prorated cost = (Number of days used / Total days in the cycle) * Tota

Manage Your Customer Leads in TimelyBill If you’re selling B2B communications services, your sales team needs to manage and track their leads. While we don't pretend the TimelyBill system is a replacement for HubSpot, Salesforce, or Zoho, our integrated lead management tool does give you a foundational set of sales pipeline tracking features. It also enables you to manage the entire customer lifecycle, from leads all the way to billing with payments... all under one roof. No need to import or export data or manually enter data multiple times. This means you save time AND money! As part of our core CRM capabilities, TimelyBill has condensed the lead management process into a simple and easy-to-use component. With all key features included in the software, users can now manage their sales leads with just one application. The lead management tool  ↗️ allows TimelyBill users to better

Design and Activate Business Workflows TimelyBill's updated workflow management component ↗️ allows consumers to quickly design, manage and share a visual workflow. With our intuitive drag-and-drop system, managing your workflow solutions has never been easier. "Our updated workflow component is a significant arrow in the TimelyBill quiver. These redesigned features enable our users to visually build workflow packages that can then be designated to fire automatically based on specific business rules. This will significantly minimize the potential for errors," said Luke Crissy, TimelyBill's sales director.

Bill On Behalf of Your Partners and Resellers Sample customer portal designs TimelyBill's multi-organizational structure, as well as its template-driven document handling, allows you to run multiple companies from within a single instance. Our software seamlessly manages parent-child company dynamics. One of TimelyBill's multi-organizational utilities is Billing On Behalf Of (BOBO). TimelyBill's Billing On Behalf Of functionality features enterprise-level security, flexibility, and scalability. Managing parent-child companies or resellers has never been more efficient.  “Service providers prefer to sign on resellers who can resell products and services at high volumes rather than the ones who just enjoy the occasional SPIFF. Some resellers desire to promote their own identity while still acknowledging the service provider,” said Luke Crissy, TimelyBill director of sales. The TimelyBill multi-org capability includes co-branding, which allows a provider to promote resellers a

TimelyBill allows you to manually trigger the bulk emailing of customer invoices. Send Bulk Invoice Emails to Multiple Clients Everyone knows you can't make money if you can't deliver the bill!  Sending out customer invoices from TimelyBill is now easier than ever.  Our software allows you to email invoices with the click of a button. Steps to transmit your bills via email: Navigate to the Financial tab, and select Invoice History. Sort and filter the customer's invoice data as needed. Messages can be sent in bulk to ALL customers or to a filtered SEGMENT. Click the "Email Invoice" button, which will initiate the batch email process. Generated emails are template-driven and have the customer's invoice attached as a PDF. When complete, the "Emailed" column status flag(s) will be flipped to Y (YES). Note our single-click email feature makes the billing process more streamlined.  However, it is very important that invoices are reviewed before they are

Highlights from TimelyBill's March 2021 Release. We've been busy!  We have just launched a major release as part of our continuous effort to make the best telecom billing / OSS application available. 2021 highlights include: New Features: File Importer can schedule importing of files such as lockbox files, notes, refunds, and adjustments. Customer Messaging allows configurable, scheduled recurring emails to be sent to customers. This can be used to automate tasks such as annual service renewal reminders and credit card expirations or provide help service reminders after a period of activity. The new "Ticket Closer" allows for automated closing of trouble tickets based on any query of data in TimelyBill. i.e., change status to closed after three days in pending close with no customer notes. Bill now supports setting international country

Bundled Telco Offerings Many communications service providers bundle more than one product into a single group and sell them as a complete package. Our billing system supports bundling  various types of products together as a package. For example, a product catalog could include wireline, VoIP, cable, IPTV, satellite, IoT , or any other service.

Automated Tax Rating and Invoice Generation Service providers who provide landline, wireless, cable, internet, or VoIP are required to understand the complex nature of taxes and fees imposed on these services.  The specific taxes imposed on telecom services can vary depending on the country, state, or jurisdiction.

Example of TimelyBill's template-driven telecom invoices At TimelyBill, we understand that one size does not fit all when it comes to presenting invoices. That's why we leverage the power of Crystal Reports to create customizable templates. For example, logos, color schemes, number of columns, and individual elements can be swapped out, modified, or hidden to convey our client's unique identity and branding.

Feature Demo: TimelyBill's Quick Search allows users to find customers faster.  Our enterprise-wide Quick Search tool is accessible from any page, just enter a key piece of data and the system will either return a list of matches, or redirect to the account summary screen. For example, users can search by: Customer Tag Account ID (full or partial) Customer Name (full partial) Account Balance Serial Numbers Phone Numbers And more! Along with Quick Search, TimelyBill's data grids provide flexible data presentation and display options.  Learn how our OSS enables telecoms to quickly view, customize, sort, and export customer data.  Data Display and Exporting ↗️

TimelyBill's powerful customer view provides visibility and links to all aspects of the customer account. Managing telecom customer accounts can be a challenge. TimelyBill takes a user-centered approach to customer management. Our CRM screens are designed to help users quickly find what they need. Our CRM allows telecoms to improve operational efficiencies and improve their end-customer experience. Our primary CRM page is organized so users can quickly navigate using tabs and sub-tabs. The data is displayed in informational panels and searchable data grids to give users a full view of a customer's account. Here is a complete list of our CRM features found on the Manage Customer page: Quick Search   enables users to perform customer searches using various criteria such as partial names, phone numbers, ESN (Electronic Serial Number), and more. The Customer Tab  is the main section in our CRM that provides an overv

Our multi-tenant structure enables telecoms to run multiple companies from within a single instance of TimelyBill. In TimelyBill, your organizations are managed separately, giving you enterprise-level security and flexibility. Multi-org benefits include: Manage Multiple Companies Residential, Business, Subsidiaries, etc. Use Multiple Currencies US Dollars, Euros, etc. Sell in Multiple Countries US, Canada, Australia, etc. Configure Unique Product Catalogs VoIP, Wireless, IoT. etc. Distinct Reporting and Accounting User Access Limited by Organization Set-up Customized Templates Quotes Ticket emails Invoices and more Launch Custom Branded Portals Use personalized domains / URLs Define unique payment methods Visa, Mastercard, Discover, or American Express Bill on behalf of partners and resellers

TimelyBill has configurable invoice presentation options for service providers. CSPs can hide products, display as taxes, and present them in multiple languages.

Complete Telecom Invoice Management TimelyBill takes a unique template-based approach to allow telecom companies to present different invoices to their customer base.  For example, invoices sent to business customers may include more detailed call record information.  But invoices sent to residential customers are simpler and include summaries of charges only. Telecom Invoice Branding and Marketing Features TimelyBill invoices are professionally designed and can include: Custom logo and colors Dynamic messages Translated languages Page inserts for marketing or instructional purposes TimelyBill allows service providers to define, manage, and generate an unlimited amount of invoice styles. Telecom Invoice Customer Features Invoices can include a range of customer account and services information: Customer PIN codes "How to" read the bill instructions Customer payments Account adjustments Tax amounts Total charges summary Display RC and NRC charges separately Usage summaries Usa

Order to Activate in Telecom TimelyBill OSS automates  telecom provisioning   ↗️  to a variety of devices. A typical provisioning process starts with a new order.  The order then triggers a sequence of workflow steps and ultimately ends with an activated service.

Regenerate customer invoices with the click of a button Let's face it, producing a telecom invoice can be complicated. Even with careful data entry, there are scenarios where invoices are missing data, or have other issues.  While auditing helps identify invoices that contain the wrong information, correcting them can be more of a challenge.   TimelyBill has developed a simple process for users to quickly fix and regenerate invoices. This feature helps protect your revenue and prevent customer churn! THE UN-BILLING & REINVOICING PROCESS It begins with the removal or purging of the invoice, followed up by correcting any billing errors, and then is completed by generating the new invoice. STEP 1 - CANCEL OR UN-BILL THE INVOICES Users with the proper permissions can purge a single invoice or multiple invoices (if the IDs are in sequential order). Using TimelyBill's admin screen, users specify the invoice range to be unbilled (i.e., from Invoice #1000 to Invoice #1100). The unb

TimelyBill's robust reporting tools help CSPs drive business growth, identify potential problems, and improve overall customer experience. TimelyBill has two different reporting methods to help communications service providers analyze data. These reporting methods provide historical, current, and predictive views of telecom-based business operations. Custom / Ad Hoc Reports: These reports and dashboards can be created on the fly via Izenda's embedded Business Intelligence & Analytics Platform. Empower users to decide when and how they access their data. Provide charts, graphs, and visualizations that will delight your users and bring their data to life. Enable users to configure, customize, and share dashboards and reports in real-time at the speed of your business. Standard / Canned Reports: These reports are provided out-of-the-box via a library of pre-built SAP Crystal Reports. Here is a list of our current standard reports. Agent / Partner Reports

Revenue Management using  TimelyBill's Dunning and Collections Modules What is Dunning? In telecom billing, dunning refers to the process of attempting to collect payment for outstanding balances or unpaid bills. This may involve sending reminders or notifications to the customer, as well as taking additional steps, such as suspending service if the bill remains unpaid.