Billing plans

[Systems Administrator]

	Sorry to bother you all again.  I'm looking at trying to modify 
freeside to cope with our current billing plans.  I'm hoping to merge any 
changes back into the codebase:
i)	for the greater advance of Open Source
ii)	because I know it will be easier for me/us in the long run

	Anyway, I'm writing to find out if there are any objections to the 
changes I'm planning on, so that if there are, I can consider doing things 
a better way.  Please note that I am basing my ideas on the demo version 
of 1.4.1, since I haven't downloaded 1.5.0pre yet (although I intend to 
when Fedora/Redhat 10 comes out on Nov 3).  

	Anyway, here's the changes I was planning on:
1.	Modify the "Add Package" page so it has Basic and Advanced 
	versions
2.	Set a tickbox for "rounding up the units", ie. if the plan has 5 
	hours included, and the units are hours, and you go over one 
	minute, and the "rounding up the units" is ticked, you get charged 
	for an extra hour, even though you've only used part of it.  
3.	Add a billing date field (with "anniversary" as well as numeric 
	options), so that we could eg. bill all customers on a certain 
	plan on the 28th day of the month.  I'd also add a tickbox for 
	"full charge" vs. "pro-rated"
4.	Add more free time handling.  Our current billing system (broken 
	though it is) allows three things to be entered for free time; a 
	start date, an end date, and a number of hours.  So for example, 
	you can have 10 free hours, but need to use them in the first 2 
	months.  
5.	Add another type of plan called the "Categorical" plan.  We use a 
	plan here where each month, we drop the customer into a category 
	depending on how many hours they use.  So 0-1 hours gives $2.75, 
	1-5 hours gives $9.95, etc (and over 150 hours gives 0.55/hour)

	My impression so far is that options 1-3 are just changes to the 
CGI, but that options 4 and 5 would require that fields be added to the 
database.  Am I right?  

	Also, Ivan, any idea how many months we're looking at for the 
things you want to do before 1.5.0 comes out?  Just roughly?  3?  6?  12?  

	Thanks all,

	:)

-- 
Tim Nelson
Systems Administrator
Sunet Internet
Tel: +61 3 5241 1155
Fax: +61 3 5241 6187
Web: http://www.sunet.com.au/
Email: sysadmin at sunet.com.au