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TMF 666 & 629 | Billing accounts for prepaid and postpaid | cutomers and party account

  • 1.  TMF 666 & 629 | Billing accounts for prepaid and postpaid | cutomers and party account

    TM Forum Member
    Posted May 26, 2022 17:47
    1. TMF666 - Is it a correct assumption that a billing account must be created irrespective of whether the subscriber is postpaid or prepaid?
      I am referring to TMF 666 where the billing account resource has a ratingType field with values like postpaid or prepaid. 

    2. TMF666 
      My understanding of billing account
      1. billing account is the account against which a bill and\or charge are generated.
      2. A billing account can have a hierarchy of billing accounts where top-level BA will include account relationship to sub-level BAs

        I am having a hard time understanding the usage of a party account and how it is different from a billing account

    3. On TMF 629, my question is -
      1. can a customer have a hierarchy of customers?
      2. can a customer have multiple billing accounts at the same level ex: customer X  -> accountRef[ billingAccount1, billingAccount2]

    4. TMF666 - question on notification events 
      1. Are notification events published by the TMF implementing system? eg: system X is implementing account management API. Once POST /billingaccount is successful in system X, it will also publish a BillingAccountCreateEvent 


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    Shruti Chavan
    Amdocs Management Limited
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  • 2.  RE: TMF 666 & 629 | Billing accounts for prepaid and postpaid | cutomers and party account

    TM Forum Member
    Posted May 31, 2022 05:32
    Hi Shruti

    So, the Amdocs brains-trust has put its heads together and come up with the following, hope it helps:
    1. TMF666 - Is it a correct assumption that a billing account must be created irrespective of whether the subscriber is postpaid or prepaid? I am referring to TMF 666 where the billing account resource has a ratingType field with values like postpaid or prepaid. [Answer]  Yes.  Subscriber can use appropriate BA (Prepay/Postpaid)  based on its products. Amdocs experience is that accounts are not mixed, and an account would generally host pure prepaid or pure postpaid Subscribers/products.
       
    2. TMF666
      My understanding of billing account
      1. billing account is the account against which a bill and\or charge are generated.
      2. A billing account can have a hierarchy of billing accounts where top-level BA will include account relationship to sub-level BAs [Answer] Not sure what you mean by hierarchy. If you want a reporting hierarchy, use a financial account, which has aggregated balance from the contributing billing accounts. The model allows you to create arbitrary relationships between billing accounts if there is a business need for that.

        I am having a hard time understanding the usage of a party account and how it is different from a billing account [Answer] PartyAccount is a base class (Billing Account is one of its derived classes). I don't think it makes sense (in most business situations) to instantiate a PartyAccount for a postpaid situation. Maybe for prepaid, where there is no bill, a PartyAccount makes sense.
    3. On TMF 629, my question is -
      1. can a customer have a hierarchy of customers? [Answer] Not sure what you mean by hierarchy of customers. The Organization entity allows creation of hierarchies, and any node in the hierarchy can play party role of Customer
      2. can a customer have multiple billing accounts at the same level ex: customer X  -> accountRef[ billingAccount1, billingAccount2] [Answer] There is no limit in the model to the number of billing accounts related to a customer
    4. TMF666 - question on notification events 
      1. Are notification events published by the TMF implementing system? eg: system X is implementing account management API. Once POST /billingaccount is successful in system X, it will also publish a BillingAccountCreateEvent [Answer] Correct, it is the responsibility of the system (e.g. microservice) that implements an API to raise the events associated with that API.


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    Jonathan Goldberg
    Amdocs Management Limited
    Any opinions and statements made by me on this forum are purely personal, and do not necessarily reflect the position of the TM Forum or my employer.
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